My family was scattered on Christmas. The last time I can remember us so scattered was when I lived in Uzbekistan. It was the Christmas of 2004. I was overseas with a sickly little Charlie Brown tree, Carla was braving an ice storm and emergency shelters in Columbus, and Megan was in Apple Creek. (Carla eventually braved the icy roads to join Megan’s family since electricity in Columbus was out and there was no heat.) That left my two younger brothers, Payton and Jordan, and my older brother’s family together with my parents. In brief, all of the daughters were gone and all of the sons were home.  This year was, coincidently, nearly the same with the exception of me being in Uzland.

In past years, Kevin and I tried to make it to both of our families’ Christmas parties. It was utterly exhausting. We spent more time on the road going from North Liberty to Des Moines to North Liberty to Kalona and back to North Liberty. I cried a lot because I cry when I’m exhausted.

We finally put down the rules. No more back-and-forth, over-the-hills-and-through-the-woods. This year, we started our every-other-year with our families. Since we spent Thanksgiving with my family, we spent Christmas with Kevin’s. That took me out of the sibling equation at my parent’s house and, instead of Carla going to Megan’s house this Christmas, Megan’s family went to Carla’s house. So, again, the daughters were all gone and the sons were all at home with my parents.

Gosh, I feel like I should’ve made an algorithm for that. Keep in mind that I’m 1 of 6 kids. There are 4 in-laws and 8 nieces and nephews. When my parents had a Knights-of-the-Long-Table style dinner table built for their dining room, you better believe it came with about 10+ leaves to extend it all the way into the living room to seat roughly 22 people. And would you believe that my mother actually has a tablecloth to fit it? She does. And dare we ever run out of room there, we’ll resort back to the trick of my childhood where the kids get to sit at the kitchen table by themselves (or, if we overflowed from the kitchen table, we also had a card table to fit 4 extra kids). Christmas at my parents house has always been hot in the kitchen, cold in the living room, mountains of food everywhere you look, PS3 competitions, piano duets, children shrieking and laughing (and then sometimes crying), thundering down the stairs, board games, cards games, running into people… Basically, it’s this huge chaos of mass confusion that’s ultimately so wonderful.

I would be lying if I said that I didn’t miss all of that this Christmas.  I think it’s natural to want to be with one’s family on Christmas.  But being with my in-laws is also wonderful in a much quieter, less chaotic kind of way. And I do genuinely like my in-laws so it was nice to spend time with them.  Plus, I have the lucky bonus of being with Kevin regardless of where we’re spending Christmas.

Kevin had to work Christmas Eve morning so I had the bags ready to go as soon as he got off.  The weather was icky, visibility was sketchy, and the roads were bad.  There weren’t that many people out as many of them had tried to beat the storm by traveling on Thursday night.  I attempted to take a picture with my new iPod, but didn’t really know what I was doing.  Obviously.

We spent Christmas Eve at his mom’s house. We ate (she’s a great cook and that’s a huge compliment given the cooking skills of my own mother) and then opened gifts.

Then we got into a pretty loud, heated battle with Catch Phrase.  It’s hilarious how quickly heart rates rise just by hearing that beeping sound that gets faster and faster as time runs out.  It was good we had the rulebook because there were some arguments that had to be settled.  But mostly there was a lot of high-fiving and “go team”ing.

My sister, Carla, and I did our annual Christmas Eve gift exchange via phone. We kept it fairly short, probably mostly because I missed her so much that I didn’t think I would be able to keep my emotions in check throughout the rest of the evening.  It’s hard living so far apart.

Christmas Eve came to a close with goodnight hugs and Merry Christmases.  As we slowly emerged from our beds the next morning, we stayed in our pajamas and cuddled under blankets and watched, appropriately enough, Toy Story 3 while we sipped our coffee.