A Victoria-n Yule-mas

Friday night, we headed down to Victoria to celebrate an early holiday with my sister, her friends, my mom, my grandma and my family.  We have a hodge-podge of various religious holidays that different people celebrate in my family, so it is fondly called Yulemas.  When my husband and I first started having holidays together, we decided to hold our celebrations on neither of our holidays and to combine the names (that way we were be both equally respectful and disrespectful to both holidays).  This odd tradition of ours has taken hold with the rest of the family.  So, anyway....

On Saturday night, we traveled down to a town called Sinton for a ship holiday party - we had a grand time finally getting to meet the rest of the crew on the USS Joan of Arc.  We had a fabulous time with the Ferengi Gift Exchange, and I walked away with a wonderful copy of the new Star Trek DVD that has a special case shaped like the USS Enterprise.  Which is now proudly sitting on top of the living room TV.  :-)

Sunday morning, we opened presents.  I was absolutely thrilled to get tons of warm clothes (I've been freezing!), a Catholic Bible, a translation of the Latin Vulgate (because I don't plan on learning Latin!), and my very own copy of the Hebrew Tanakh.  Of course, now I have to learn to read Hebrew sooner than later, but that's just a really good excuse to do something I was already going to do anyway!  :-)  Mom and Grandma left in the afternoon, and we all made new character sheets for a game of D&D.

On Monday, my sister had to work.  :-(  So, we passed the time with Agent X playing new games he got, Rastaman watching new movies he got, and me preparing letterboxes for planting.  When we had come down for Thanksgiving, we discovered that the one box in the county had gone missing, so I had come prepared for planting with all of my box making supplies.

This morning, we planted three boxes in downtown Victoria before heading home.  One is a stamp I carved from an eraser on our last trip, and then two boxes with a holiday theme.  I just couldn't resist making boxes that said "Victoria-n Christmas" in them - there's so many pretty Victorian era houses in the area.

Fabulous trip!  Other Texas boxers are discussing Victoria on the Yahoo group we have, and there's a couple who plan on looking for them soon.  Exciting!  :-)  Which means that maybe other boxers will plant some on their way through town, giving us something to find next time we're down there!  YAY!

So, here's today's Lessons in Letterboxing:

• Always bring carving supplies on trips.  Because people leave you all alone and you need something to do so you don't go kill them for abandoning you.
• And bring lots of box making supplies.  Just in case you're in a boxing desert - because one person can change a desert into a mini-oasis for long car trips.
• And remember to print the darn clues for the boxes along the route you ALWAYS take and keep them in the boxing bag! 
  

Happy Hunting!
Rogue Artist