December 13, 2015: Dickinson Christmas Concert

We were pretty tired when we got up this morning.  We all slept in quite late.  Dad was up before Dominica and I got up for a change.  It was nearly nine when we got up!  It is a very cold and extremely rainy day today.  Huge storm pounding the island.

Our first order of business this morning was to get to Enterprise Rent-a-Car and get a vehicle so that we would be able to get to the Dickinson Christmas Concert as we do not all fit into the Spark.  Dominica and I drove across the island in the Chevy Spark.  The rain was very heavy but Enterprise was easy to find.

We got a nice, charcoal grey Chevy Malibu for $49 for the day.  It was positively pouring when we picked it up.  The poor people working at Enterprise were having a rough day.

I followed Dominica back to the house.  We had to work our way across the island and there was some heavy standing water on the roads.  At one point we saw cars parked with water up to their doors.

We ordered in delivery from Miss Kitty’s Seaside Cafe.  Dominica and I both got the country scramble which is a huge cat head biscuit, scrambled eggs, hash browns and white gravy. It was amazing!  We wanted to get more of it right away!  Liesl ordered the shrimp basket again.  She is addicted to Miss Kitty’s shrimp.

Before we left to go to the concert Dominica managed to get signed in and pay for our flights to Europe.  We are now officially all booked with our flights taken care of for the full first half of 2016.  We leave Texas on December 30th to fly to Istanbul, Turkey and immediately on from there to Athens, Greece where we will attempt to catch an immediate flight down to Crete.  It is going to be an insanely long leg and the longest any of us has ever done at once.

We are returning from Bucharest, Romania to Istanbul to New York in mid-June.  Another long, long trip.

We have our home in Greece all booked and paid for.  We have contacted a home in Transylvania that we are really interested in but do not have any confirmation about that one yet.

We had to leave at eleven thirty to drive up to Dickinson for the concert.  The Malibu was perfect, we fit into it easily.  The rain kept up the entire way up there.

We met up with the Grices going into the concert.  The girls and their cousins ran around like crazy people all over the school lobby while we waited for them to open the concert hall.

The concert was great.  We all really enjoyed it.  And I cannot believe how well the four littles did!  None of them was an issue at the concert – although they did all have iPads to play games to keep themselves occupied.  But they all made it through the entire concert.  Liesl’s cough was the biggest issue but Dominica was well stocked with lollipops to shove into her mouth if she started to cough.

Both Madeline and Emily are in the top band, the wind ensemble.  It was insanely impressive.  This is the first time that I have gotten to see them play in this group.  It is really something.  I’ve not heard any high school perform like that.

On the way back we stopped at Buc-Ees to get gas in the rental and to show dad the staple of Texas culture.  He was suitably impressed.  He even checked out the “Best Bathrooms in Texas.”  This is the newest and largest of all of the Buc-Ees so he really got to see it in all of its glory here in Texas City.

On our way back to the house we drove out to the north on the island and went to Joe’s Crab Shack.  Dad has never been to a Joe’s Crab Shack and he loves seafood so we figured that this would be a good stop for him.

We had a great dinner and the girls ate well too.  We always enjoy having dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack.  They are very consistent and have a very large menu that we really like.

Back at the condo we were going to watch a movie and dad did not know the song “Everything is Awesome” from The Lego Movie so I put the movie on for a minute to show it to him and he ended up getting addicted and wanting to watch the whole movie!  So we watched that which make the girls very happy.  They love that movie and have not watched it in a very long time.  Not since we were in Peekskill.

After The Lego Movie, we finished up our annual viewing of White Christmas.  Good thing that we got it done, it is now officially the Christmas season for us.