Fun and Games

This past Christmas was a Clarkston Christmas. In the Cache Valley in Utah, there is tiny town of around 700 people called Clarkston. My dad's parents live there, in the home that my grandma grew up in. The house started with only two rooms, but it is now spacious, with plenty of room to accommodate parents and children, siblings and cousins, grandparents and grandkids, and great-grandkids. There is a barn with calves and horses, and, right now at least, a nine-foot snowman in the front yard.

Since I grew up in Indiana, we were only able to travel out to see extended family once every few years. But even though we had to rebuild relationships with aunts, uncles, and cousins every new trip, Grandma and Grandpa were always the same. The house, the warm ambience, the stark and permanent mountains, they all stayed the same.

And so did the games.

Mine is a game playing family. Our little family, alone in the midwest, loved playing board games, hide-and-seek games, invented games with trampolines and lines and trees and balls (think Calvinball)--everything worked. But these tendencies increase exponentially when we converge with the rest of the family at my grandparents' home.

This Christmas holiday was characteristic of the family gatherings I remember. With twenty or more people milling around, some cooking, some cleaning, some watching the latest animated movie, some reading, some plunking around on the piano, some chatting, some milling around on their various wireless devices, there is nearly always some combination or other of people (of all ages) playing a game. We played card games, play-doh games, dice games, improv games, word games, Wii games, board games, variations on any and all games (Speed Scrabble, anyone?), and all in the approximately four days that most of the family was together.

One of the main instigators of all this game-playing craziness is my Uncle Mike, Dad's older brother. He's the one that keeps everyone laughing long enough to get into the games that others might be too introverted/embarrassed/party-pooperish to try.

The result? We never get stuck in the same old game-playing ruts, and everyone had a chance to try something new. Where else would you see a group of 19 people between the ages of seven and seventy sculpting play-doh masterpieces?

The Christmas holiday is technically over, but I'm only in my second stage of this vacation. Patrick has already left to return to Georgia and the job hunt, but Cambrie and I are spending a little longer in Utah (Layton, this time) to spend some time with my mom. It's so wonderful to reconnect with my family! But there are still plenty of games to be had here.

Happy New Year, everyone!