texas christmas: day 16

We spent Tuesday in College Station.  Laura and Dave had to stay in Austin, after the scare on Monday with Laura's blurry vision, which made us all sad.  And the Hubers had left first thing that morning, so it was Don and Carol, my family, Matt and Cassy's family, Micaela, and Amara.  We started out by eating lunch at Freebirds, then walked across campus to the football stadium (which is being renovated).

Jed had a little bit of a hard time keeping up with the group (his focus isn't always so good), so we found the best way to get him to keep moving forward was to have him throw or kick a ball of moss, run up and get it, and do it again.  I would kick it further when he got close to it - a couple times in a row - then let him get it once or twice, then kick it myself again a few times.  Just to keep things moving.  He thought this was a fabulously fun game.

Everything on campus was closed, so after we walked to Kyle Field, we walked back to the cars (poor sleep-deprived Jed rode in the stroller, so we moved much faster) and swung by McDonald's to get ice cream before the basketball game.

It was my first time in Reed Arena, and I loved it!  I love being an Aggie and being at a home game is even better.  Sadly, it was the worst performance by the A&M men's basketball team in several years, so it was disappointing to watch in that way.  Jed also loved the game, and after sitting silently for the first several minutes, fascinated by what was going on, he started pointing and yelling excitedly.  "Go Miller Go!"  "Made the basket!"  "Oh, missed!"  "Run!"  He is well trained in what the Aggies say, and frequently yelled at the top of his lungs: "Gig Em!!!"

We had to leave early, because Matt and Cassy still had to drive to Houston and the rest of us needed to get back home for bedtimes (and we were anxious to watch the bowl game).  There was a beautiful sunset right as we left.  We were all pretty tired by the time we got back, but it was a really fun day!

As soon as we got home, we gave Jed a little more dinner and put him to bed.  Then we gathered in the living room for the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, in which A&M was playing Duke.  Laura had resisted the urge to turn the game on when it started (she and Dave were home), and we had all avoided looking at the score online.  Instead, Laura and Dave recorded the game, and we started playing it from the beginning once we were all home and together.  It was a pretty nerve-wracking game, and we (mostly the defense) performed exceedingly poorly the first half.  But we came back in the second half, and won!  Due to technical difficulties the end of the game hadn't been recorded, so we looked it up online when the recorded part of the game was over (there was about 5 minutes left in the game) to find out the final score.  We missed the final 2 interceptions of the game, so it was a little anticlimactic, but still very exciting.  Gig Em!