The first week of the month was a bit busy. And by a bit, I mean hectic. The first weekend we went to the German Christmas Market downtown and met up with a couple, the husband of which worked at camp with us. We went to the Goose Island Brewery and made a night of it. The next week was the final week of the semester, so I was wrapping up one large final paper on Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle. On top of that, I had to deliver a few gifts for church, and plan a reading for the program, and also help plan the church Christmas social.
The reading was held at a boutique bookstore in the Logan Square neighborhood. I read a poem and a very short flash fiction piece--there were fourteen of us students reading, so we all had to keep short. I MC-ed and managed to get through everyone in less than an hour. So we had more time to hang out with my classmates, which included going to a pub where we ordered much food and chatted about books and professors and stuff (Lawrence took part mostly in the eating and the drinking and chatting about anything not-book, writing or school-related).
There was also the church Christmas social that weekend, and we were social and made a poorly-constructed graham cracker house, but we came home with a handful of candy canes. Lawrence had a showcase for his guitar class at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Lincoln square, and I didn't have class, so I got to go. It was neat. We finished up our Christmas shopping and decorating, and then I flew out to Utah the next weekend.
At first, the rental company gave me a minivan. And then I was like "Yeah, I don't really want to drive this...through the snowy mountains of Wyoming" so I traded it in for an SUV (and coming back to a small car now makes us feel small and low.)
I got to meet my good friend Meo's baby girl who was born in October...she's the closest thing I have to a niece or nephew at the moment, so I splurged and bought a bunch of stuff for her. She's very cute. I met up with some other friends while I waited for Lawrence to arrive. Lawrence flew in after work on the 20th, arriving after midnight Utah time (his flight had been delayed an hour). We spent the day at Meo's, and then went to Temple Square in Salt Lake City. In all the times Lawrence has been to Utah, he's never been to Temple Square, and it's beautiful this time of year with all the Christmas lights and nativities. We met up with April and Adam, the friends who came out to visit us in October. It was cold, so we weren't there long.
My parents asked us to pick up a drone for one of my brothers, so we drove about 40 miles out of the way to get in, got a little hangry and stopped for sandwiches, and finally made our three and half hour drive to Star Valley. It's very snowy in Wyoming. I think more this year than last year. I was grateful for the SUV. We stayed at my Hotel Galloway, i.e. my grandparents' house and spent the days leading up to Christmas bouncing around the three stores in town with Grandma and Mom.
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| Lots of this scenery on the drive |
My brother Morgan was set on having a chess tournament, so he taught Lawrence the basics of chess-playing. We took the kids swimming at Grandma's (where the two youngest boys and Lawrence enjoyed some a nice game of "hit each other in the head with a ball as hard as you can"). We played a lot of games, teased each other, watched silly movies. Lawrence went caroling with Mom, Rylee, and Harrison while Nicole and I made pie. Lawrence got his own cherry pie (mostly because no one but Lawrence and my mother like cherry pie).
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| Grandma Galloway's backyard |
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| Morgan teaching Lawrence how to play chess |
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| Lawrence asserting his dominance |
My married brother Anthony and sister-in-law Rachel arrived late Christmas Eve--also spending the nights at Grandma's. It was a pretty full house.
Christmas Day my youngest brothers usually wake everyone up at six, but, because this year Christmas fell on a Sunday, they were required to wait after church, which started at nine. My mom made us sticky buns (a tradition left by her own mother), Lawrence made bacon, we all ate and finally opened presents.
Let me tell you, eleven people make a lot of wrapping paper. Our family present-opening tradition is to take turns opening presents one-by-one from youngest to oldest, so, with eleven people, it also takes a couple of hours. We'd gotten all the siblings something of their own--the three younger boys matching Chicago beanies, my sisters keychains (they both have their own vehicles), Anthony and Rachel some movies and a night-in set. The kids all got us stuff as well (much to Lawrence's surprise.) The youngest boys got him a rather nice wallet, my sister got him a scarf, and my other brother got him a nice nautical-looking pullover (jumper). My dad made us a lovely, huge (3ft) clock--which will have to be shipped to us in due time.
The chess tournament began following presents. We had three chessboards--one of which was a beautiful new hand-crafted set my dad made for Anthony. Lawrence lost to me (not bad for his first game though), and I, in turn, lost to Morgan in about ten minutes. He's thirteen, and has been beating me at chess for the last five or six years. It came down to Morgan and Anthony, the two avid chess players of our family. In the end, Morgan won.
We gorged ourselves on a feast of crablegs (steak for Anthony and Rachel who did not enjoy crab). Those of us who eat crab had to try and stuff about two pounds of crab in each of us. Some of us were really struggling toward the end, but we made it. We got dinner cleaned up and made graham-cracker gingerbread houses--which resulted in a huge frosting-cracker crumb-mess, and a neighborhood of sweet houses.
The movie It's a Wonderful Life topped off the night. It's tradition in the Galloway household to watch it Christmas Eve, but Dad wanted to wait for Anthony and Rachel to watch it. It was the first time either child-in-law had ever seen the movie. If you haven't watched it, it's a classic. It's an old black and white film featuring Jimmy Stewart who plays a man whose life has been dedicated to being a stand-up guy and always finding a way to provide for others. He falls into some trouble one Christmas Eve and concludes that everyone's lives would be better without him, and his guardian angel comes down and makes it so. He sees how his absence from the lives of those he'd touched would have affected them, and he decides, after all, that his life is worth keeping, and then lo and behold the whole town comes to his rescue in his time of dire need. It's a nice feel-good Christmas classic--if it sounds familiar, it's because it's now in a canon of plot-lines.
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| Lawrence's (left), Shanelle's (right) |
The next day we all bundled up and took the gingerbread houses up into the mountains with a couple of .22-caliber rifles and six-shooter revolver--and a handful of homemade firecrackers. Long story short, the gingerbread houses were decimated. Another Galloway tradition. Lawrence got to feel a little like Clint Eastwood and John Wayne with my mom's revolver--though the caliber is hardly more than a bb-gun--and he managed to blast the top off my dad's graham-cracker outhouse. If this seems like a strange sort of activity to you, just remember it's cowboy country, and there were two other families that came up the mountain with the same idea.
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| This kid (my baby brother) is always my buddy |
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| Mama Galloway |
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Christmas ended with a bang (quite literally), we picked up the shreds of paper plates and wound our way back down the mountain for some pizza. Lawrence and I stayed the night with Meo again to catch our early flight the next morning. All in all, the holiday was a good one, the first on Lawrence has spent with the Galloways, even though we came home exhausted and will probably ignore any social invitations for at least two weeks.
'Til next year!
~The Calverts
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