Yes....I realize how late I am in posting about the past holidays. I invoke the cliché "it's better late than never".
Every year at or near Christmas time, family get-togethers are something I always look forward to. Normally, my extended family (my parents, and my siblings & their families) meet where my parents and older sister live in Arkansas. This year, things were different; they all came to us.
Once the complete head-count was done, our clan consisted of 18 people. Unless you have a HUGE house, you have to be creative to facilitate a gathering of that size. Our creativity came in three phases, divided over two main areas: 1) sleeping arrangements, and 2) dining room accommodations.
Taking care of sleeping arrangements required two of the aforementioned phases of creativity. First, my younger sister and her family have an apartment not too far from my home. In addition to the three in their family, they were able to keep one of my other sister's family of four. That left only 11 people who needed to sleep in my 3-bedroom house, giving rise to Phase 2: Operation Air Mattress.
Don't worry, I wouldn't make my family sleep on glorified blow-up pool floatie things. Air mattresses have come a long way in the last several years, including heavy-duty material and built in air compressors that have a queen sized mattress ready for sleep in mere minutes. The bottom line is that we were able to sleep everyone comfortably. Problem solved.
Now comes the dining room accommodations... When we are all at my parents, the dining setting is pretty much pre-defined. They have a very large dining table w seats around 10 to 12. A simple run of the numbers shows that we have 6 to 8 people more people than that. They also have a breakfast area between the dining room and kitchen where another group can eat. This has frequently been the dreaded "kids table". You can imagine how well that goes over with some of their grandchildren now in or near their 20's. I sure wouldn't dig it.
Angie and I have a moderate sized dining table in what I guess you'd call a "breakfast nook", which can accommodate up to 6 people. Again...that pesky math... And though our house has a place that is probably classified as a formal dining room, I've never been too much of a formal dining room type of guy. I can't see dedicating a large amount of space to that, then only using it sparingly. In short, we use that room for something else, so it would not help us with our dilemma.
We decided to convert our garage into our dining room. That conversion consisted of:
- leaving the cars out of the garage the whole time,
- adding insulation to the garage door (to help retain the heat),
- installing additional fluorescent lighting (that remains in place)
- borrowing a VERY EFFECTIVE propane heater from Angie's Dad, and
- borrowing three 6-foot tables and eighteen folding chairs
- draping sections of the garage with tarps, (just because they knew it was my garage didn't mean I wanted them having to look at my lawn mower while eating)
If our solution was judged it based on elegance, we probably wouldn't receive a high rating. But judged on effectiveness, it would receive top marks. We had PLENTY of room and enough seating for everyone without being crowded, and there was a great sense of 'togetherness'. My Mom commented that "it sure is nice for all of us to be in the same room".
Angie planned the meals wonderfully, and coordinated with my sisters the division-of-labor. They each contributed and we had more than enough food. I love that my Mom didn't have to stress over meal planning and prep. She did contribute (turkey just wouldn't be the same without her dressing), but didn't have to carry such a big part of the load. It was a major good-good, for which I strongly credit Angie.
The garage/dining room also served as one of the game playing areas. My family is big on playing games. I mean BIG on playing games. So, having that much table space available suited that well. The other game playing area was in front our TV. One of my sisters brought over the Wii that they'd gotten for Christmas. It was fun watching and it was fun playing. (My family is very competitive, in case there's ever a question of where I get that tendency.)
All in all, I'd say that it was a successful time. We had a good time, got to spend some quality time with family, had plenty of room, had plenty to eat (actually...I had too much to eat, but that's another story entirely).
All of my family departed by the day after Christmas. Veronica went with her mom on that day to spend the remainder of the holiday with her, and Angie and I turned our attention to her side of our family. Her parents came up from San Antonio on Christmas Day, and we traveled with them to her brother's home in Missouri.
Traveling with them was great. It was just the four of us, in their van, so we had plenty of room to ride comfortably. Angie's dad and I split the driving, which made the trip seem much shorter. (Funny how that works when you get to sleep for a couple of hours here and there. Normally, I'm the one driving for an entire trip.)
Actually, we had a fifth - and unplanned - passenger. It wasn't a stowaway, however. At the last minute, the dog-sitter we had arranged for our dog Eddie fell through. To say that we weren't happy about it was an understatement. Luckily, Angie's brother said we could bring him along. He has two dogs, but they are large, outdoor-only dogs. We ended up keeping Eddie in a crate in the bedroom we had for the first night or two, and then acclimated him with the other two dogs after which he was cool to stay outside with them for extended periods. (In fact, it was funny to watch this 12-lb Yorkie start barking at and trying to boss around these two 80+ lb dogs. Little dude really came into his own.)
We did something while there that I would never imagine doing: going to an amusement park in freezing weather. We rode only one rollercoaster ride. It was fun, but it was also so freakin' cold!!! I don't know that I'll want to ever do that again. I love rollercoasters, but more when it is shorts-and-T-shirt weather.
The time in Missouri was really good. Angie's brother and sister-in-law are pretty cool, and it was fun hanging out with them, playing games, watching football games and movies, etc. And their two little girls are ridiculously adorable. The older one is as smart as a whip, and I enjoy cutting up with her and teasing her a bit. And the younger one (just around 2.25 years old) says "Uncle Jim" in a way that completely melts me. Hard to resist that...
We didn't have the space challenges in Missouri with Angie's family that we had here with mine. They've got a good sized house and...well...there were 10 LESS people at that gathering. That sort of has a way of adding up.
As was the case with our time with my family, it was a good time all around.
The other obvious holiday that we enjoyed was New Year's. All of our "family-family" members were back at their homes, so we observed the out-with-the-old--in-with-the-new with our "friend-family", the Reeds. Given that they have a baby, we went to their place. (Makes it easy when the tyke takes a nap for him to be in his own bed.)
I think a bit of lingering road-weariness got to me, because I laid down on their couch for a moment shortly after dinner, and ended up falling asleep for almost an hour. Not to worry, I woke up in plenty of time to ring in the new year.
So...yeah...this update was long overdue. Plus, having to do it all through recall now 2+ weeks after the fact may have made it not as vivid. But I think I've captured all of the important stuff.
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