Kitten's Korner

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Kearney Adventures--Day 1

My family, including Grandma and Grandpa, trucked it up to Kearney today to visit my Aunt Reanna and Uncle Rick. They spent Christmas with Rea's side of the family, so we're spending New Years and celebrating Christmas at their house at the same time.

This morning was a little bit stressful. Not so much for me, but Mom and Dad were kinda freaking as they rushed to make sure that we could get out of the house on time. I did manage to pull out for a few minutes to call and tell Randy good-bye. Shortly afterward, we were on the road. This soooo did not release any of the tension. First,
Gareth started complaining that he felt sick, so we had to make a side stop at Food-4-Less for a bucket in case he needed to throw up. When we got to York we started getting pelted with rain, which eventually turned to sleet as the temperature dropped. Then the roads got SUPER icy and the wind started blowing really hard. We passed a lot of cars that had spun off the road, and Mom got really worried. Finally, Liam needed to pee an hour away from Kearney where there are no rest stops. Lucky for him, we had an empty water bottle on hand. At first, he was a little hesitant, but once he finished he thought peeing in a bottle was the coolest thing ever. He cracked many “Don’t forget it’s not lemonade” jokes by the time we got to the house. When we went to throw it away, we saw just how bad he had to go. He filled the whole freaking bottle!!! That boy can pee! Gareth was the only one not amused by this. He though it was a total abomination to go to the bathroom in something you’re supposed to drink out of.

At the house, it took a little while to calm down. The ice on the roads was really scary, so we needed a lot of hugs once in the house. I didn’t realize just how bad it was until I looked at the grass. Every single blade was coated in a cylinder of ice the size of my fingers so that it looked more like a crystal wonderland than a front lawn.

Moods soon lightened as we sat around the dinner table, talking and laughing while the lights flickered above our heads as a result to the terrible wind outside. Just as we were about to clean up and open Christmas presents, the lights went out entirely. We all ran to get the candles and gathered around the table and the soft glowing light. We didn’t even get time to enjoy the comfy hominess of the candle lit room when the lights came on again. With a sigh, we finished the dishes and sat in the living room to open gifts. My second youngest cousin, Molly, got a Baby Alive doll. It’s a baby doll that you have to play with, feed, and change her diapers to keep content. Because you know that we don’t have enough real baby poop in the world, so we need to change an artificial diaper every now and again. –sigh- I don’t understand kids.

Right now, everyone’s kind of settling down and getting ready for bed. It looks like we’ve got a pretty fun weekend ahead of us.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Christmas has...changed

Christmas in my family has slowly been evolving over the past years. We still keep the same traditions and all, and maybe it's just because I've been getting older, but I've started to see things change a little bit. For the better, of course ^_^

At about 7, my dad came to wake me up because, unlike my brothers, I hadn't gotten up at five in the morning to stare at the Christmas tree and the gifts leaking out from underneath. As I rose sleepily, Dad commented, "You must be turning into a grownup. You're tired on Christmas morning!"

I trudged up the stares and took my place on the living room couch, where my parents started to divvy up the presents. I already knew what part of my gift would be because every year I get a doll, usually porcelain, to add to my collection downstairs. In years past, I've received little girls riding ponies and princesses with their dresses all pretty. This year it was a gothic pirate girl holding a skull with a blade clamped between its teeth. My other gifts were similar. A Jack Skellington jacket, and a hoodie that reads "Pink Goth" across the front. Oh yeah. Change is good.

After a quick clean up, it was off to Grandma's. There, the gifts weren't quite as dark, but they were all just as wonderful. My one big gift was a keyboard that I had been asking for since September!! WOO HOO!!! As a thank you, I tinkered around on it, playing carols until the rest of the family arrived.

I love Christmas at my grandparents house because it's always such a loving environment. That much has always stayed the same. Sounds of cooking came from the kitchen as the rest of the adults set the table for breakfast, and Gareth sat in the living room playing with his two Godzilla toys which he has named "Triangle Godzilla" and "Godzilla House".....don't ask me why.

Another thing that stays the same every Christmas is the tradition of ebleskivers. Ebleskivers, if you don't know, are a little pancake balls usually filled with some kind of treat like peanut butter, cherries, or bananas. In recent years, Grandma has added another filling to the list. A nickel. Obviously, no one eats the nickel, but whoever is lucky enough to find it gets five dollars. It adds a little friendly competition to breakfast, and it makes sure that there won't be many left overs. All of us dived into the two platters as soon as they touched the table. We also partook of the other dishes, of course, because that's part of the rules. You have to eat the other food, too.

After a long time of competitive face-stuffing, Grandma reveled that the nickel was in the tray on my side of the table. Everyone suddenly became hungry again. Finally, with only a handful of ebleskivers left on the tray, there were only two people who weren't too stuffed to eat them: Rowan and my cousin Leah. Rowan just grabbed five of them randomly and started eating, but Leah and I, deciding to work together, took another rout. I took a clean spoon and gently used it to turn every ebleskiver on the tray, looking for some sign of a filling. Any that had one were pushed aside. One of them, though, didn't have any peanut butter or cherry juice leaking out the side...and it looked strangely flat. I tossed it onto Leah's plate, and as she cut it open, the silver of a nickel poked up through the dough. We had won! That's what you get for teamwork, I suppose. ^_^

The final change, probably the best, was a game. Grandma had suggested that Dad bring the game "Life Stories" along so we could play it after breakfast. The game has four stacks of cards, each with different kinds of questions on them, but all of them ask you to dig into your past and recall, as the game says, your life stories. I didn't know that there was so much about my family that I didn't know. It was absolutely amazing some of the things they had to say. I'm thinking that this should definitely become a tradition.