And a Happy New Year!

Colin and Mandie celebrating New Year's Eve at

Pat O'Brien's on the San Antonio Riverwalk

Happy New Year from the McKenzies!! We hope that your holiday travels and visits with friends and family were as wonderful as ours were!

As you read in our last post, we had planned to take a whirlwind tour of the South over the Christmas break, and it ALMOST went off without a hitch! A friend of Colin's from MSU is also studying conducting and is a fellow Texan, and had planned to carpool down to Texas with us in his own car with his Cocker Spaniel. Unfortunately, on the day that we were supposed to leave for Texas, his car would not start! So, Colin and I being the wonderful friends that we are :), delayed our trip for a day to see if they could fix his car. The dealership could not fix it in a timely manner, so we offered to take him with us to Texas. That is right--three people, four dogs, and all of our stuff for three weeks of travel in a Honda Accord for over 20 hours!! Sound fun, right? Really, it ended up being fine and we were glad that we could help out a friend.

We visited Texas and Georgia to see both of our respective families, and it was wonderful to be home for Christmas. We even had the added treat of seeing my Aunt Vicki and Uncle Bob in Baytown when we didn't think we were going to be in town at the same time, and seeing lots of people from Columbus when Mrs. McKenzie had a dinner party at her house, including Colin's brother's in-laws who also live in Columbus. Good times were had by all and we were so thankful that we got to be with everyone we love over the holidays. To see pictures from our Christmas vacation, click here to access the web album.

Then, it was off to San Antonio for the Alamo Bowl! San Antonio is one of my favorite cities, so we enjoyed very much taking our Michigan friends to experience Texas in one of the most fun places in the state. We were able to ring in the New Year on the Riverwalk, which was very fun. MSU lost the game to Texas Tech, but I felt that we put up a good fight, and the game was much better that we had expected it to be. To see pictures of our trip to the Alamo Bowl, click here to access the web album. To all of our friends that we didn't get to see this trip to Texas, we are coming back in the summer and hope to see you then!

We had to leave the day after the game to drive back to Michigan so that I could be back to start my new job as a Reference Librarian at MSU. I have been working for a week now and absolutely love it! It is exactly what I wanted to be doing in a job, and I am enjoying every minute of being a working girl again! Colin has started his Spring semester of classes and has enjoyed conducting the pep band at hockey games for MSU. We are looking forward to a wonderful semester and hope that Spring comes soon to the state of Michigan! Not that we don't enjoy the snow, but the eight degree weather for weeks at a time is a little too cool for our tastes.