What I Did On My Christmas Vacation, Vol. I: We Actually Went Out. Together.

On the Thursday before Christmas, the Johnson family ventured over to Auburn, Alabama, hometown of the Todd. We were there for Christmas, to see Todd's Aunt Sherry and Uncle Shaileish, and his cousins, who were in town for the holiday. They had not met Matilda yet, so we thought we should get together while they were in town.

On Friday night, Todd's parents watched the chilluns while we headed into town for an evening out. (Todd grew up in Auburn, but his parents now live about 30 minutes outside of town, in Dadeville. It is fun and rural-sounding to say, "we went into town.")

We met up with our friends Iain and Noelle, Iain's brother Matt, and Scott and went out for an actual dinner without children. FUCKING AWESOME. As was the ass-kicking margarita. I agreed to drive back to the lake (dark, two-laned county roads where you are likely to see 5 or 10 deer on any given night), so I refrained from drinking too much, but we headed to a bar in town for drinks. This is one of a small handful of bars in Auburn, Alabama and is the unspoken "meetup" place for the locals home for the holidays. Much fun was had by all. We even took pictures, and I met a few Auburn folks that I had heard much about, but never met.



This is Iain. He is Todd's best buddy. I can tell when Iain is getting toasty, because he always starts giving a lot of hugs and telling me about how Marley always said that Todd was the catch out of all the Auburn boys. I am not sure who Marley is.

This is Todd. He is a total catch.

This is me. As you can see, I lied about stopping the drinks after the margarita. Er. . .margaritas.





This is Jim. He's an old friend of Todd's. I don't know him that well, except that he is always quick with a hug when I see him, and he gets around better drunk on crutches than I do on my feet.




This is David. I also had never really talked to him much, although I had met him before. He does not like to have his picture taken, and turned the camera on me, resulting in the picture of me drinking the beer that I was not supposed to be drinking. He is a writer for the Auburn-Opelika paper, so maybe he was trying to get the big story.





Like I said, I was supposed to stop at the first margarita. Adria is the one with the nice boobs. (See cupped hand.)






Suzanne and Noelle look very happy here.





This is Todd with Cricker. Cricker is a nickname. His real name is Chris, but I can never remember that. He has a really cute girlfriend with excellent taste in holidaywear.



Stay tuned for volume II.