Christmas day

The gate was fairly quiet Christmas Eve and there were only a few of the workers who live close enough to make a mad dash home to spend the day with family.

Santa did find us out here in the middle of nowhere Texas :-) and we each a couple of presents to open Christmas morning. Rudee got some new "bling" and I got a Kindle reader that I had been hinting to Santa that I wanted.

I went to bed after opening gifts so I could get a little sleep after the night shift and when I woke up the 5th wheel smelled wonderful. Rudee had been busy cooking. She had turkey, baked beans, mashed potatoes, rolls, develed eggs and for desert we had home made pumpkin pie. UMMMMM, everything was delicious and we both ate too much :-).

Sunday evening we got a skype call from our kids and spent 45 minutes talking to all of them on the computer. We enjoyed seeing and talking to everyone. Skype is really a great tool for fulltimers to stay in touch with family and although our signal was not the greatest we could spend time with everyone and it helped ease the pain of being away during the holidays.

We actually had some sunshine today which was a welcome Christmas gift. The weather is supposed to clear up this week and we are looking forward to things drying up around here.

After dinner I downloaded my first book to my new Kindle. Nick Russell is a fellow fulltimer and publishes a newspaper from his motorhome while he travels. We got to know Nick and his bride Terry several years ago at a Life on Wheels Conference and have ran into them a few times since. He has written a mystery novel, Big Lake, that is available on line at Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Big-Lake-ebook/dp/B00522RM48/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1324891061&sr=1-1

I started reading it this evening and had trouble putting it down! What a deal, less than $1.00 for a first class mystery novel! He is currently writing the sequel and I am looking forward to it coming out.

Tonight is shift change and usually proves to be a busy time for me overnight as the incoming shift arrives for their week of work. They usually start drifting in around 9pm and this continues until the wee hours of the morning. Then there is the rush shortly after 6am with the guys getting off the night shift head out the gate to start their week off. Sunday nights and Monday mornings are busy times in the life of a gate guard :-). I'll keep you posted.