What fun it was to return to the US for the holidays. I split my time between Utah, where I most recently lived prior to moving to Thailand, and Illinois, where I grew up and my parents still reside. I got a chance to spend time with 10 of my 13 siblings and see a few friends.
I first flew into Salt Lake City, Utah and met my new niece, Donna (Anna's 2nd child). She is an absolute joy and I think she found me equally lovable. After a few short days in SLC I flew to Champaign, Illinois where I grew up. It was fun to be back in the house of my youth and to be with mom and dad. The snow was falling when I arrived. The fresh blanket of snow definitely helped me feel the Christmas spirit.
In Champaign I met my nephew, Oscar (Thomas' first child) who was just a month old. It was strange to see my baby brother as a father and interesting to watch him struggle between the kid he is inside and the adult he is now, as a new father. Often, his first instinct was to go and hang out with the teenagers, but he then remembered his responsibilities and took good care of his wife and sweet baby.
Each day more and more family trickled in. At the height we had 54 people in the house! Feeding that many mouths is no small task! We made a menu for the meals each day before everyone arrived and listed out the ingredients needed. Mom, dad and I went shopping and bought a lot of food. Luckily the garage was cold enough to use as refrigerator so we set up tables and piled up the groceries. I'm sad I didn't think of taking a picture of all the food! That would have been a fun memory. Oh well...next time. Next task was figuring out how to sleep everyone! My parent's house is a single story, ranch style home with a full basement. There are 5 bedrooms in addition to my parent's room but 2 of the rooms have been converted one to an office and one to a sewing room, to fit the needs of my parents with no kids left at home. We reclaimed the sewing room and put a family in there and a family went in each of the 3 remaining rooms that could be used. We then took over a neighbors house where 3 of us stayed and a church member who was also not going to be in their house over the holidays offered up their condo where the 2 largest families stayed. Problem solved.
The next challenge with a crowd the size of my family is keeping the kids busy so they aren't complaining of being bored. Luckily there wasn't much we had to do in this department. Dad had arranged for us to take a tour of the high school where each of the 14 children in my family graduated from. This ended up being a lot of fun as we relived memories of productions we had been in, teachers we liked, teachers who didn't like us and sports we played. The grandkids got to see where their parents had gone to high school and it was all a big hit. Mom and dad had also rented out the ice skating rink one night so we laughed as we all relearned how to skate. For some of the grand children, this was their first time on the ice. It was great fun and miraculously no one got seriously injured although I think most of us were left a bit sore and bruised from having fallen so many times. I took one big spill which I blame on Thomas but I guess he probably blames me for his one big spill as well...guess we're even. Other than these 2 activities there was nothing else planned. The kids had great fun sledding down the hill my parents live on, building snow men, playing numerous games (including several games of Risk and a new game called Curses...a big hit!) and in general just enjoying each others company. It was fun to see the kids get a long so well and have so much fun.
When I arrived in Illinois the family had been unable to find a suitable tree (Thomas refused to have a tree shorter than him...he's something like 6' 4") so the day after arrival mom and I were running some errands to get some final Sub for Santa gifts and we drove out to a nursery mom likes to frequent. There, they had the perfect tree! We loaded it on top of the CR-V and took it home to be trimmed with all the decorations from my childhood. You see, the McConkie family tree is not an elegant one. It's first wrapped in strings of hand strung popcorn and then overloaded with handmade ornaments from our youth. There are the decorations we made at school with our photos on them. There are the ones we colored as part of an art project. Some of the ornaments remind us of events of the past or places we visited. Then there are the very special ones which mom and dad made their first 2 years of marriage. I loved listening to dad recount Christmas morning, the story of how when he and mom were first married they didn't have money to buy pretty ornaments for their tree but that mom had saved the tubes from the rolls of receipt paper from her work. She brought them home and she and dad painted and decorated them and hung them on the tree. The second year of their marriage was similar and so they purchased red yarn and made tassels to hang on the tree. Those decorations go on our tree still today. It's fun to think of my parents as young and poor.
Christmas Eve is our special night. It's when we enjoy our Christmas feast, act out the nativity of Christ and celebrate the reason for the holiday. This year our meal consisted of ham, mashed potatoes, salad, green bean casserole, a jello salad, our favorite molasses bread which we only make at Christmas time, hand made rolls (my sister Heather's recipe) and mom's carrot pudding for desert (it never was my favorite but I was the only one in my family who didn't like it). Camille organized the nativity, assigning each person a role. During dinner we adopted one of Bryce's family traditions and pretended to be shepherds in the fields the night the sign was given of Christ's birth. We talked as shepherds about what it would be like when Jesus was born and how he would come to deliver us. An angel then appeared to us to deliver the good news of Christ's birth. After dinner we all put on our costumes and moved into the front room where a fire was blazing in the fireplace. We played our parts (I got the role of photographer), read from scripture and sang to give praise and honor to the babe born in Bethlehem (played by baby Oscar). We then hung stockings over the fireplace and sent the kids off to bed before Santa's arrival.
I was a bit surprised Christmas morning when I woke up, got dressed and waited with the other adults as the children were all still fast asleep. It was a strange feeling not being woken up in the wee hours of the morning by kids anxious to open gifts. Around 8:15 the anxious children started showing up and just before 9 all the children lined up in order of age, the curtain hiding the front room, was taken down and the children spilled in to find what Santa had brought them. For some it was a new doll, another got a bb gun. One got a football, others new music and a remote control car. All were happy with what they had received and enjoyed watching while others opened gifts they had purchased or made for each other. One child made a poster for his dad to display some favorite baseball cards, another made a small log cabin for his mom and another made pottery at school. What fun it was to watch parents and children exchange gifts and express gratitude to each other. The joy of Christmas.
...to be continued...
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