My dad's Christmas memories

I found a long-forgotten project on my computer the other day, a collection of "family lore" surrounding the Christmas holidays that I pulled from my own blog and from the blog Reid used to keep and from my mom's blog. I had some good stories. Some touching stories. Some funny stories. Some this-is-how-things-were stories. But I'm missing several perspectives. 

Tonight when I was talking to my parents, I asked my dad to share some Christmas memories from his childhood. Some of them I actually remember hearing, now that he reminded me of them. I'm going to write down what I remember of our conversation here.

First, you should know that my dad has five brothers (and a sister). You should know that the first handful of boys came one after the other—boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like firecrackers.

Here's a little scrapbook page of the oldest four (for some reason I have it in my mind that this was my Grandpa's scrapbook):

Thanksgiving 2024

We went to Thanksgiving dinner at Grandpa and Darla's house this year, and what a treat that was! We've been in charge of Thanksgiving dinner for many, many years in a row so not being in charge was quite a relief. Of course, Andrew kept busy in the kitchen experimenting with bread and pie (our two major assignments) and Miriam made a big ol' vat of cranberry sauce. But that's all we had to do. 

Dishes were a lot more manageable. And our leftover status is on point.

GG came for dinner as well. We ended up with ham, zucchini stuffing boats, frog eye salad, potatoes...and some other things I'm probably forgetting. It was a delicious feast and the company was wonderful. 

We ate dinner soon after arriving, though first Phoebe had to chase big Titus around to show him little Titus. He kept running from her and then every time he'd decided to give in and greet her she'd scream and run away. But eventually they managed to stand side-by-side.

Autumn birthday balloons

We've finally pulled down our birthday balloons from our autumnal crew! 

New poem just dropped

I wrote a poem about Phoebe's little incident with the pokeberry bush and it was published today in the most recent issue of Irreantum (21.4)! It's called "In which my toddler eats forbidden fruit."

And that's really about how much I have to say about that, except for the fact that I haven't worked on my term paper all day and don't really want to start working on it now, so perhaps I'll start brainstorming for our Christmas poem (because that deadline is coming up, too, and it's Thanksgiving and all my professors keep telling me to make sure I take time for a break (even though they're the ones with the deadlines—Rachel is experiencing this with her classes as well)). 

So some creative writing...as a treat...right?

Miriam's on the road!

Miriam took her learner's permit test this morning, so she can officially get behind the wheel! 

She only missed three questions on the test, so basically passed with flying colours! By this time next year she'll be a fully-fledged driver, which is wild! 

She'll miss out on getting all her hours in driving to seminary, which is how Rachel got her hours in. This isn't because the girls aren't going to seminary—they are! But Rachel is driving them in, and Miriam can't drive with Rachel (she has to drive with an adult). Last year Rachel and Miriam drove to seminary with Grandpa, so he was in the car supervising Rachel's driving.  

But, that's okay. We have plenty of other ways to get driving hours in. 

And we know to have her practice in Andrew's car (which has a back-up camera) so that she can reverse park into a stall during her driving test. 

And...I'm sure it will all be just fine.

Way to go, Miriam!

Now to sign her up for driver's ed...

And the cheeks softening on the dollar trade...

As the farewell post for one of my classes (spoiler: QUAL 8400) I wrote a little song, recorded it, and put it up in the discussion board. It was one of the options that we could select to say farewell to our peers and, well, I think we're all fairly sick of reading and writing in that class.

To give you an idea of how much writing we had to do, I had my final paper: 5036 words; weekly reflections and writing assignments: ~15,000 words; midterm paper: 3200 words; a 10,695-word transcript; 7000 words of responses to peers—that makes for a grand total of approximately 41,000 words! 

Times that by three courses...

So I, yes, I went a different direction with my final reflection on the course.

I just got braces, so I won't be posting a video of me singing it for you (because I still feel like I am learning how to talk around these things). My enunciation isn't the best right now, so I added subtitles (which is always a good idea for videos anyway). 

We had to answer a number of questions in our response (mentioning a peer who was particularly helpful, what readings were particularly useful, things of that nature) so it's smashing a bunch of random thoughts together but...it more or less made sense, I thihnk.

Here's what I tried to sing (I also played the ukulele, which is why the chord markings are there):

C                                                          F

In QUAL 8400 we learned a lot of things

              G7                                                     C

on qualitative research and how that research brings

                                         F

perspective to our fields. Each choice in method yields

              G7                                      C.         G7

an emic understanding of our planetary sphere.  Oh!

Chorus:

C

Phenomenology

C                  C7

ethnomethodology

F                       C

hermeneutics, grounded theory

D               G7

critical traditions

C

Feminist theory

C                           C7

ethnography and sym-

F                    C

-bolic interactionism,

G7.                  C

post-qual inquiry

Today's activities

This morning Andrew took Benjamin, Zoë, and Alexander to the Festival of Trees to see Benjamin's creation on display. We didn't realize that Benjamin would be given tickets for entering and had planned originally planned that only he would go with Dad, but because of the free tickets we had a couple of the other kids go along.

Georgia festival ticket prices feel a little outrageous (i.e. more than double) compared to Utah's pricing, which is unfortunate. But I suppose it's (1) for a good cause and (2) completely optional. We don't have to (and didn't) take our whole family to the festival, but sometimes I do wish events could be a little more "family friendly" around here. 

Anyway, here's Benjamin beside his display:

Georgia Festival of Trees: Christmas Brick Challenge

"There! I'm finished!" Benjamin declared. "Bare minimum—I get third place."

We told him that it was the experience of completing the challenge that was important, not winning. And he was satisfied with that because he honestly made a fantastic creation. 

It had two houses, decorated inside and out, a mountain with a cave inside, a fishing pond, a cozy fire, a snowball fight...it had just about everything imaginable. He originally named it "Christmas Truce" after the story of the Christmas Truce during WWI because the two warring groups in Star Wars are cooperating in this scene. Benjamin can tell you what the warring groups are...

First Encounter with a Newspaper

 

The Georgia Writers Museum mailed Zoë a copy of the newspaper her story was printed in and she tore open the envelope with gusto. 

"What in the world!?" she exclaimed as she unfolded and unfolded and unfolded the paper. "This thing is huge!! Are ALL newspapers this large?"

"Looks about right," I said.

Fun fact! I used to have a paper route!

I took over from my brother when he started early morning seminary. I'd get up and fold newspapers and then ride around on my bike and deliver them around town in the wee hours of the morning. 

I gave it up when I started early morning seminary myself a couple of years later, but...yeah...I guess you could say I'm pretty familiar with the general dimensions of newsprint. 

"For real?!" she squealed. "I thought newspapers were like…magazine-size…or something. But no! Look at this thing! That actually makes a lot of sense…when you think about it."

"What does?" I asked.

Filters

Finals are upon us. 

Or at least upon me. 

And I'm feeling it. 

But we'll get through it. 

The other day I was talking with Rachel and Andrew rather late in the evening, after Rachel and I got home from campus. I have three major papers due in the next three weeks and didn't feel like I had a lot written for any of them (and still somewhat feel like that), but I had to do an oral presentation on one of my papers and when I compiled my slide notes for that I found that I had nearly 2000 words. 

And I called it my first draft. 

"I already have 2000 words in my first draft. They're bad words, but they're words," I said.

"You're using bad words?!" Rachel said, with some feigned pearl-clutching.

"Would you like to know what people really call first drafts in my world? Poopy first drafts, that's what. But they don't say poopy."

"They say crappy?!" Rachel gulped, continuing her feigned horror.

No. They don't say crappy, either...though that's also a word we avoid in our house, to be honest. They use a much stronger word.