Grandma and Grandpa really love the vacations where we can all be together in the same place. There were, for at least one night, the grandparents, the four brothers and sisters, their husbands and wives, and all of the grandchildren (all 4 + 2 + 3 + 2 of us) plus a future grandson-in-law and a few dogs.
The meals were divvied up by the day, so each family had a dinner. Breakfasts (if you were up that early) were always a surprise, sometimes planned with omelets or French toast, and sometimes cereal. Lunches were a "fend for yourself" matter: leftovers from the nights previous, a second breakfast (or first breakfast, for some of us), and sandwich supplies.
Evenings were spent in a myriad of ways, but usually involved games, either of the football variety (on the television) or board games, such as Bunco.
Additionally, a group of the cousins has gotten into more off-beat games, so Pandemic, Ticket to Ride, and Bananagrams were other favorites. (I've gotten so good at Bananagrams, though, that I had to have a handicap to prevent me from winning all the time. You try getting through a round with no two-letter words!)
The three-story house was big enough, and the top floor was large enough that it was possible for all of us to be in the same room at the same time (such as when we opened gifts around our second-life tree from the side of the road), but still have our space. There was some friction and family drama, but it was pretty easy to get lost by yourself for a while with no one noticing.
On Christmas Eve, folks began to scatter. Maria flew back to Oregon, Valerie and I with some cousins spent the New Year with the younger cousins in Virginia Beach, the rest of my family got ready to fly back to Washington on New Year's Day, and we all breathed a sigh of relief when all were home and accounted for.
We were cooped up for a few days because of the snow, but once the roads cleared, we started to venture out more.
Mom, Dad, Maria, and I spent a day driving down the peninsula, geocaching, bird-watching, and lighthouse-sighting.
The first of the lighthouses was under construction, but a boardwalk led out to a marsh with flocks of birds and a suspicious splash and trail that could have been a mammal of some sort.
We continued our way down the coast, stopping at the house featured in Nicholas Sparks' Nights in Rodanthe. Our southern-most point was the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.
We wandered inside the Visitors' Center (as we are apt to do) to find a park volunteer who "lived the life", working at Mount Rainier in the summer and here in the winter. (Dad was jealous.) He started a documentary for us of how they moved the lighthouse away from the shore in the 1990s.
With the changing coastline, the original structure had gotten too close to the ocean, so engineers were afraid that the pilings that were holding the lighthouse up were beginning to rot, which could be a danger for the lighthouse keepers and others who were climbing in it. So the decision was made (and then heavily contested) to move the lighthouse inland.
After digging at the base, and sawing it off the cement rocks that it was attached to, the pilings were found to be in good shape... but too late! Time to move it back a few hundred meters to its new site.
They bulldozed the trees between the two sites, then put the fortified structure on a bed that was moved by rolling bars underneath it. Over 23 days, they inched it along until it got to its new home.
The documentary went into great detail, including what this massive engineer manevuer did for the town. Our favorite part was the shopowner who was selling shirts that said "I swear I saw it move." (Read with a twang, of course.)
As we were driving back, the sun was setting. We found a beach to pull into, and took some amazing pictures of a brilliant sky.
The next day, a group of us went out to visit the Lost Colony of Roanoke and do some more geo-caching. The park had a trail we hiked through, then a little visitors' center and a stage where the production of the Lost Colony (a famous play) was performed.
The other families were so impressed with our geo-caching skills, that we continued to find other caches along the route. Imagine our surprise when one led all twelve of us into a library, where a book was the final clue!
On Christmas morning, we enjoyed presents from Santa and candy from our stockings before packing up and heading south to the Outer Banks for a week of extended family fun. (Extended both in time and in scope of family.)
On our way down, the only restaurant open for lunch was a Waffle House. Valerie noted that it was amazingly cockroach- and drug-free for a Waffle House. That was a happy fact.
When we got to the beach house, we immediately began divvying up the rooms, finding the ideal beds in the three-story mansion. However, that night, it began to snow...
We woke up to an unexpected winter wonderland by the seashore. And it was there that we found our perfect Christmas card picture.
Now, we took a few of the same picture, but later, we discovered that each picture had a misguided snowflake that ruined someone's nose or someone else's eyebrow. With the limited photo editing software, I thought it was impossible to fix. Until we copy and pasted my eyebrow from another picture. Can't even tell, can you?
My aunt and uncle's house by the beach a little farther north had gotten dumped on with snow as well, so on the 27th, we drove a few hours back to their place to play in over 8 inches of snow.
The night before, we had gotten a taste of the snow on the patio of the third story in the beach house.
That little snowman lasted a good four days (until Coco ate the carrot nose).
We were next joined by my dad, flying in from Who-Knows-Where Oklahoma (even though there is really only one city in Oklahoma that anyone knows anything about).
And, the next day... we went monument-hopping again? (Valerie went to go visit some friends and see the Supreme Court, where she's going to be working, eventually.) So Dad and I went geo-caching. But without a GPS. So we walked and wandered and made it around the Tidal Basin.
That evening, we decorated the freshly-made (by a day or two) sugar cookies. I was asked to do an interpretive one of a friend. Can you guess what his characteristics are?
We ended the week with the rest of the family flying in for Christmas Eve. We had a first round of Christmas presents. In our family, the youngest chooses the first gift to give someone that's underneath the tree. After that person has finished opening it, and everyone has done the appropriate ooh-ing and ahh-ing, they select the next gift to open.
We finished up the evening with a photo shoot for our post-Christmas card. We purposefully didn't get them out on time this year, since the last time the six of us had been together was last Christmas (though all of us had seen everyone else, just not in a single place and time). The result was less than stunning...
...good thing that we changed it after going to the Outer Banks!
So it's been multiple months since Christmas has passed, but I can't find it in me to skip around in my (slightly) chronological ordering of things.
I might have to recall what I did through pictures, since at this point, I'm not sure...
First, it looks like, my aunt graduated with her PhD from Duquesne, so my grandparents drove up to see it (and we all drove back to DC together).
It was a mess of airport pick-ups and drop-offs, as I detailed last last time in this infographic. However, despite this, I was able to visit and re-visit some historical places in the area. For the first few days (Dec. 20th-22nd, for those of you at home who are keeping track), we played tourist with Chris, who had never been to the area.
First, Maria, Chris, and I went to Mount Vernon for a day, to see George Washington's acreage and way of life. They had a talk/show about how to dance that was both informative and hilarious; they picked on a few of the tourists to get them to dance and look silly in front of their families. (We walked in too late to be chosen, but early enough to still be amused by their antics.) We also visited Mrs. Washington. Martha was rotund and cheery (and very photogenic, despite "not knowing" what cameras were).
The next day, we visited the White House and wandered along the National Mall. (I mean, we did this multiple days, but this one was when Chris was still with us.) We peeked into some of my favorite places, such as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. I like contemporary art, and this was the place for it.
We also went to the National Gallery of Art. While Maria and Chris wandered off by themselves, I was amazed by "Multiverse", a piece with a wall and ceiling full of light-emitting diodes. I must have gone back and forth on the moving walkway five times.
Another piece I enjoyed was of casts of hands in many positions (all of which made you want to mimic it with your hands).
So after the galleries, it was off to check out the Capitol building before Metro-ing back to the suburbs. We ran into a gangly group of teens that were all dressed the same, and a giant Christmas tree from Montana.
We ducked inside the Museum of Natural History in the late afternoon to see some dead, stuffed things, and a movie I was convinced was in there (but I had actually seen it at Disney many years ago). Instead, we left just as the sun was going down and saw a brilliant sunset by the Washington Monument.
The final day was spent monument-hopping (now with Valerie in tow!). We visited Washington, then World War II, then Lincoln, then Vietnam, then Korean. We covered a lot of history and a lot of marble.
Of course, no break would be complete without some cookie-making.
Then, just like that, Chris was gone, and my dad appeared from Oklahoma...
I almost can't make the excuse that school is getting in the way any more. I have fewer classes than ever (though more group projects), but I have some substantial commitments outside of classwork. Namely, I have my CA role ("Community Advisor", or head RA), my role as trip leader for a group going to Ghana over Spring Break (in less than two weeks!), my student advisor position for the Student Dormitory Council, and my peer minister role at the Lutheran University Center.
So, the point? I have a bunch of interesting stories and cool pictures to share about:
Christmas break (still haven't done that)
My Alabama visit (Roll Tide!)
Happenings around CMU
Church group funtimes
My project involving a robot (yes! and apples!)
My musical month (Camelot, Hair!, and soon The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee all in February)
And I might just gush about my fabulous Valentine's Day, solicit money for my trip to Ghana, obsess about the other trips I'm taking that are coming up, and maybe be boring and talk about the schizophrenic Pittsburgh weather.
Christmas vacation this year was a whirl of snow and coordination. With my family on the other coast descending to my grandparents' house (and then further descending to the Outer Banks in North Carolina), there was much coming and going.
Here is a infographic. I worked very hard on it. Details are as accurate as they are going to get:
