hometown love

Here's the deal: I love my quirky San Angelo. It's where I was born and raised, and I love to go visit. My favorite time of year in San Angelo is Christmas. Mainly, I love Christmas at Fort Concho. Fort Concho is an old frontier fort that is remarkably well preserved. The 1st weekend in December they always have a big Christmas festival. It involves crafty shopping, Lions pancake breakfast, Santa, frontier reenactments/artillery demonstrations, roasted AND kettle corn, music shows... this may sound lame to you, but I think it's a little bit of wonderful. Naturally, I've been eager to share this wonderfulness with Collin for awhile now. We got to this past weekend...

We arrived late Friday night and immediately headed for the river Christmas lights. I saw 2 people I knew.

Oh, how I love you small town life.

And then there was the Best Western... oh man. Horseshoes in my hotel room. 

We started out the next day with some business and then onto the fort. We ate at the Lions Pancake Breakfast. One of the first things we stopped to look at was a contest of gingerbread churches modeled on various international churches...

We made it to an artillery demonstration- much to Collin's delight. Just FYI- cannons are really loud.

Phone Museum...

We went to lunch with some of my family after that, and I was too excited to remember to take pictures. Then we had to hurry back, because heaven forbid we miss singing Christmas carols in a frontier chapel with a dulcimer & band! Collin was most excited about this. I'm pretty sure that lady playing the dulcimer was my local librarian while I was growing up. 

You're never too old to play Cowboys and Indians, right?

 I said, "Look at those axes." Collin emphatically informed me that they were tomahawks. "Haven't you seen The Patriot?" My bad, darling.

A little "frontier shopping"

 Frontier baseball? I had never seen this one before.

 Fresh kettle corn... like manna from heaven.

 You know... a tracker ride to downtown Concho St. shopping sounds nice. You heard right. We were taken by a tracker for about half a mile down city streets. Let's just own all the stereotypes.

 Downtown stores in San Angelo have this weird thing where they decorate extravagantly. It's kind of out of control sometimes, but fun!

And Eggemeyers. I stole Collin's iced mug rootbeer for this pic. This is about when they talked us into a $13 hunk of cheese. We spent at least an hour in that store.



All in all, a good trip. Nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of daily life, even if just for a day!