Author name: Sandra Tayler

When we arrived home yesterday we found our house not quite as we left it. We expected the pile of mail on the counter since we’d left a key with our neighbor and asked her to bring in our mail. We did not expect to find several packages sitting with the mail and several more tucked into the fridge. Fans and friends were very kind to us and sent us extremely thoughtful Christmas gifts. I’m not going to try to list everything because I’ve decided that individual thank you notes are in order. I hope to get the notes mailed this week before I get distracted by other matters.

Once again I am awed and amazed at the generosity and kindness of people. None of the people who sent us packages had to send anything, but they did. Thank you!

The return from California was much more interesting than I had planned for. We delayed our departure for a day because we didn’t want to drive over Donner Pass in a snowstorm. This meant that we planned to leave at 11 am on Thursday rather than 11 am on Wednesday. But then on Wednesday evening Patches announced a dire need for a pot to throw up in. He didn’t actually throw up until more than an hour later when we had company visiting. Deyo and Mctavish were extremely kind. They were so convincing about not minding, that I finished their visit with Patches snuggled into my lap and occasionally depositing into the pot. It was so fun to visit with them, like having new friends and old all wrapped into one happy package.

As the visit wound down to a close Howard and I discussed travel options. Stomach flu usually has an incubation of 12-48 hours. The drive home takes about 12 hours. We figured the sooner we left, the greater likelihood that we could arrive home before anyone else started exhibiting symptoms. So Howard crashed into a nap and I finished packing the car. The kids all got to stay up and watch movies. Around 1am Howard staggered out and we loaded tired kids into the car and left. We had a bucket for Patches, lots of paper towels, and many garbage bags. I’ve mentioned before how Patches is the sweetest sick child I’ve ever seen. He was a real trooper carefully using his bucket as necessary and not missing once.

In short order all four kids were asleep. They continued to sleep for the next 7 hours. I caught some sleep too. Donner pass was clear, but there were some high winds which blew snow over the roads. It was rather eerie to be driving at 4 am on a windy road through a forest with the wind buffeting the van. Powdered snow curled across the road almost like mist and then seemed to reach out and grab the van as we drove past. We learned to watch those swirls and slow down because they indicated strong winds which would throw snow at the entire van. There were a few trucks on the road with us, but for the most part it was just us and the snow and wind and road. I found myself thinking of Caradharas and picturing snow elementals of the mountains objecting to our intrusion into their domain. True to the Caradharas image, the winds stopped pushing at us once we were headed away from the mountain rather than up to the top. The rest of the trip had occasional high winds, but none as poetically interesting as that pre-dawn passage over Donner.

At Lovelock we stopped for gas and I took over driving for three hours. Everyone else slept while I entertained myself by eating snacks and singing along to music. We stopped for breakfast at Elko. Howard and I fully expected the kids to insist on going in to the McDonald’s play place, but one and all they declared that they couldn’t go play there because Patches was sick and we might get other kids sick. Have I mentioned what wonderful, thoughtful children I have? They were kind and considerate of each other during both of our long drives. During the last leg of the trip Howard drove, the kids watched movies, and I took some naps.

In all, it was an excellent road trip with just enough adventure to it that we’ll have stories to tell. It bodes well for our hoped for long road trip next summer. For now we’re all tired and just glad to be back at home.

Today began with a puppet show.  At least it did for me.  For Howard it began with Dungeons and Dragons.  He ran a campaign for the older kids and I took the younger ones to a puppet show.  This particular show was really well done.  The pupeteer had all the kids laughing out loud and interacting with his puppets.  There were at least 40 children there and none of them wandered off because they got bored.  Gleek and Patches chattered about the puppets all the way home.  I was amused at the amusement of the kids.  I’m afraid that Jack and the Beanstalk just doesn’t hold much fascination for me anymore. 

After our return to my parent’s house, I dived head first into the attempt to gather all our belongings into a single location.  I wanted to inventory and figure out what was missing while we still have time to find it.  Tomorrow we’ll be back on the road to go home.  I’ve had a wonderful vacation, but it is time to go home now.  I am both glad and sad about that.  At least this vacation I can arrive back home having done all of the things that I intended to do. So that’s good.

Our stay in Livermore has been extended by a day courtesy of snowy weather over Donner Pass.  I am selfishly glad for the extension.  I’ve been having loads of fun relaxing and visiting.  Howard is having fun too, but he’s starting to feel hemmed in with all the people.   While there isn’t a single person here he doesn’t like, there are just so many of them that his inner introvert is huddling in a little ball and whimpering.  There are 7 children and 9 adults here, and only 9 rooms to be shared by them all.  Unless you count the hallway as a room.  Which I don’t.  I did count the bathrooms because it is possible to hide in one for awhile if you’re willing to risk the ire of all the people who wish to use the facilities.  Fortunately today we have a plan which will get Howard out of the house and to a quiet place where he can paint minis for several hours.  

Some people use the day after Christmas as a huge shopping day.  Around here, we’re all just sleeping or sitting in collapsed heaps.  At least the adults are, the kids have been playing with their new toys.  Mostly the play has been quiet, they seem to be tired too.  I made sure that Patches, Gleek, and Link all went to bed on time last night.  I’d idenified all three as overly cranky yesterday.  Kiki was sneakier.  She took a nintendo DS to bed with her and played with it under the covers.  She is very upsetable today.  Tonight I’m going to claim all the portable game systems and lock them up before bed.

I should probably begin organizing our things so they’re ready to pack back into the car.  But I’m feeling singularly unmotivated to do so.  Maybe I’ll curl up somewhere and play Sudoku instead.

This morning began at 7 am.  Howard and I rolled out of bed to discover my sister and her husband in the kitchen, but nary a child to be seen.  We had fully expected to be pounced awake at 5 am.  Howard started cooking bacon and the kids began to roll out of bed.  They were remarkably patient about waiting for everyone to gather.  We actually sat at the kitchen table talking and laughing while Howard finished cooking the bacon.  Then we ate bacon.  When I was a kid we were always bouncing around in the wee hours of the morning.  My kids are different.  More often than not Howard and I wake them up.  Finally Kiki went and woke up Gleek who was the late sleeper.  Then we all trooped in to look at the morning surprises.  It went really well.  Our big surprise was that We managed to get our hands on a Wii.  I’d given up on the idea of getting a Wii because I’m not willing to stand in line for hours at subfreezing temperatures and we can’t afford to pay the prices they were going for on ebay.  Then last week Amazon had a lottery which allowed people to enter to win the chance to buy one of Amazon’s Wii consoles.  I entered.  I won.  We had the Wii shipped to my parent’s house.   It has seen nonstop use since this morning.  

In an ideal world the kids would have time to savor an opened gift and truly appreciate it before we moved on to the next one.  If we had done that this year the whole crowd of us would still be in one room opening gifts at Midnight, or maybe even New Years Day.  This was one of those years when everyone gets piles of everything that they wanted.  I’ve been glad to watch it after the past two lean Christmases.  I keep telling myself that the abundance of this Christmas is acceptable because we don’t buy new things during most of the rest of the year.  But it is a little dismaying toward the end of the Christmas present opening, when all efforts at turn taking are abandoned and the kids don’t even bother to read the tags before opening the gifts.  Kiki has a little bag she loves and we have no idea who gave it to her.  On the other hand the frenzy didn’t begin until after the kids had all carefully handed out their gifts that they had selected.  At the beginning we divded the presents into piles of things that each person was giving.  Then the person carefully handed a gift to the person whose turn it was to open.  I have a lovely memory of Patches cradling the gift that he was anxiously awaiting the chance to give to Gleek.  He’d picked it out, and wrapped it, and waited for weeks trying very hard not to tell what it was.  Handing over that package and seeing it opened delighted him.  I’m so glad to see my kids enjoying the giving as much as the getting. 

It was also interesting to watch the difference in shopping styles.  Mom and I and my older Sister all carefully planned and conferenced for months to make sure that each child would have a perfect set of gifts.  The gifts are carefully thought out and will be enjoyed for months and years.  My Dad, My oldest brother, and My youngest brother all went shopping on Friday.  They bought piles of stuff, wrapped it and handed it out.  By the end of the present opening all the kids were clamoring to open the presents from my oldest brother because he picked fun toys that they’ve never seen before.  These were toys that could be used right now, while most of my and my mom’s carefully selected gifts need quieter places and times to be enjoyed.  Once again my mom came through with an amazing array of wonderful gifts that my kids are going to enjoy for a long time to come.

The morning surprises have now been dispensed, the presents have all been opened.  Now is the time where the kids play with toys while the adults sneak off to take naps.  Later we’ll have a big Christmas dinner and then the holiday will be over for another year.  Or almost over.  We still have another whole day at Grandma’s house to enjoy.  Then we go home and have vacation time there.  On New Year’s eve will be a Tayler family event with even more gifts.  I’m sad that we’re coming to the end of our vacation.  It has been truly wonderful.

I went to church with my parents this morning.  This is the congregation that I grew up in, so I had several sweet old ladies come up to me with variations on “I knew you when you were this tall.”  It was fun to see familiar face, but they’ve all gotten so much older when I wasn’t looking.  And there are some faces which are conspicuously absent, which makes me sad.  Some people are so vibrant it seems like it should be impossible for them to die.  But they do.  We all do eventually.  Church was also filled with a host of new faces.  I looked around and tried to picture how it would be if I ever came back to live in Livermore.  It would be a strange mix of old and new.  But after 15 years I can’t assume I really know anyone here.  People change so much in that amount of time.

My mother came down sick yesterday, so she wasn’t able to teach Gleek in Primary.  Fortunately my Dad filled in.  She didn’t mind the substitution at all, she probably got away with lots more bouncing around than she would have if my mom had been there.  Patches ran off to nursery happily.  Then at some point he looked around and realized he was in a strange place with strange people.  The nursery leaders brought him to me.  He had tears streaming down his face and he clung to me.  Howard followed us out into the hall.  Then Howard asked Patches if he’d like Daddy to play cars with him.  Patches nodded and the two of them went offto go play cars.  Later Howard was able to come back and rejoin me in Sunday School.

Kiki decided that she didn’t want to be in Primary with her class.  I asked her why and she declared it was because there was a girl in the class who didn’t like her.  The fact that this girl didn’t like her made her feel unloved and lonely.  I pinned her with my Mommy stare and informed her that the opinion of a girl we’ll see maybe once in two years should not matter to her.  I required her to identify opinions which should matter to her.  I further informed her, that if the opinion of this girl does not matter, then the girl has no power to hurt Kiki.  I don’t know if any of my mini lecture stuck.  I never can tell what is going on inside her head during these conversations.  

And then we went home.  Now we’re gearing up for all the Christmas eve events.  It is nice to begin Christmas eve with church.  It gives a nice feel to the day.

Tomorrow is Christmas eve, a day rife with traditions.  We are faced with the challenge of blending the traditions of three households into one harmonious evening.  We have an advantage in that our family traditions and those of my sister’s family are based on the traditions of my parents’ family.  But years of being apart has caused traditon drift.  A powow was in order to make sure that it can all fit together.  My family has never opened a gift on Christmas eve, but that is a critical event for my sister’s kids, so it will happen.  Our family always gathers around a candlit table to eat cookies, read the Christmas story, and write down what gift we intend to give to Christ for a birthday gift during the next year.  That tradition will be part of the evening.  My parents always go carolling, so that will be part of the evening.  My sister’s family always reads The Grinch Who Stole Christmas so that will happen too.  It is going to be a fairly packed evening.

I’m looking forward to this blending of traditions.  It will be a nice change for one year.  Then next year I’ll be very happy to be at home with only my own traditions to manage. 

When I arrived here at my parent’s house I had a short list of things I wanted to do while in Livermore.  One of the biggest items was for me to get in touch with a certain friend from my high school days.  She was more of a sister than a friend.  Our relationship came complete with many fun times and some huge arguements.  She was the only high school friend I ever shouted at.  She is also the only high school friend with whom I’ve kept in any sort of contact.  We keep losing track of each other, but every few years we get together to catch up.  It has been more than four years since we last caught up, the meetup was way overdue.  So I tracked her down and yesterday we spent three hours together just visiting.  I was able to see her new house and her husband whom I’ve never met.  She regaled me with many funny and interesting stories about how her life has gone.  At the end of high school I felt like our lives were headed in opposite directions, and yet despite my youthful perception we have arrived at very similar places.  We’re both running online businesses.  We’re both happily married.  We both have kids, although some of her children have four legs rather than two.  We both love fantasy style things.  I have already decided that when I have more money to spend on pretty things, I’m going to go shop at her store.  (http://www.justanothersunset.com/servlet/StoreFront)  Who wouldn’t want Nene Thomas’s A Chance Encounter on the wall?  Simply beautiful.  I loved visiting with my friend so much that we’re going to reprise the visit next Tuesday, only this time I’m hauling Howard and his minis and paints along.  My friend loves to paint minis too.

A second important thing for my California visit was organizing a meetup with local area Schlockers.  That event took place last night.  To give you an idea of how much fun this event was: at one point I was telling some story and I found myself saying “here in Utah” when suddenly I realized I was nowhere near Utah.  I was so comfortable in that group of people that at a subconscious level I felt like I was at home.  I think this is one of the greatest gifts that Schlock has brought to us, we find wonderful new friends everywhere we go.  My only regret for the evening is that the group was so large that I couldn’t talk to everyone as much as I wanted to.  There were so many people there with fascinating lives that I wanted to know more about.  I want to know more about dogs for the hearing impaired and what it is like to own a laundromat, and the fledgling webcomic one person mentioned, and what massage therapy school is like, and half a dozen other things.  There were so many threads of conversation that I would have liked to pursue further.  There was laughter and delicious food and hours of fun conversation.  Howard made sure that everyone who came, went home with a picture either in a book or on some other paper.    I’m going to have to see if I can collect some of the photos that were taken.  I’d like to be able to have visual reminders of how much fun this was.  Events like this are why I want to be able to go with Howard to more conventions.

So yesterday was a day of old and new friends.  Today will be a day of laundry and children and mucking out the car.  These things are necessary in order to prepare for the holiday festivities which will begin tomorrow.