Family Fun

We had a houseful this Thanksgiving weekend, as Ann and Patrick flew in to complete the fivesome of Buckeye Scanlans. Dinner was out at Greg and Lois’ house as usual and we all left stuffed like the birds we ate. Priscilla and John decided to have their own holiday dinner with their kids, their kids’ significant others and grandkids, so we didn’t see them. Their youngest, Lisa, and her boyfriend did come over for dessert, but that was it.

On Thanksgiving night, Shane and Patrick and I went off to the movies and saw “American Gangster”, starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. It was a great story and a great “guy” movie—Ann elected to stay home. I came out of the theater not sure if I should admire or despise the lead character. This was the story of the guy who smuggled heroin into the country inside of body bags from Vietnam. Hmmm. Despise. Let’s go with “despise.”

We did not contribute much to the area’s economy for Black Friday, but Ann and I ventured out to a couple of stores in the morning. Some stores were open at 4:00 a.m., but we did not feel compelled to shop in the wee hours. I bought a few toys for Christmas packing at church and some socks at Penney’s. Kathy and I will do some serious shopping at some point, but there was nothing we really saw that grabbed us in the store ads.

Friday was also “Game Day” at Greg and Lois’ house. We all returned to their place along with Shane’s girlfriend Courtney who drove up from Columbus for the occasion. We played Cranium, youngsters versus oldsters, and youth won out, but only by one toss of the die. We had a great time with the drawing, charades and word puzzles that challenged us throughout the contest. Piles of hors d’oeuvres made the ultimate sacrifice around the table, including some delicious apple-cheese-fig creations in little pastry cups.

Max busied himself with some of Greg’s toys while the grownups played Cranium, coming in occasionally to help out by starting the egg timer for some questions. He gleefully flung himself into photos with Shane and Courtney and Ann and Patrick and Shane. We had a stuffed animal that Kathy’s sister Lois had bought for a gag birthday gift (supposed to represent this horrible little poodle they had growing up) and Kathy learned that it was a “Webkinz”. You register your “pet” on line and then kids can play games, earn points, and “buy” things for their virtual pet. We think it’s an insidious capitalist plot to train kindergartners how to shop on line. Anyway, we got Max’s pet registered and we all played the games to win as many points as we could for Max. One Internet player posted a high score of 5,000+ in one game, and we knew that no five year old was capable of such heroics. Of course a screen pops up every once in a while announcing new pets for sale at your local retailer.

Ann decided to get a new Ohio driver’s license in case the driving laws relax in Ireland and allow her to more easily transfer her US driving privileges to her adopted country. The test is now on computer, and once you get thirty questions right, it stops you and tells you that you’ve passed. It only took our brilliant daughter 32 questions to wrap up the test. On Wednesday she will take the driving portion of the exam. We went out to a parking lot the other day to practice the “maneuverability” test and she did fine. Even I gave it a try and could probably pass it myself.

Since Ann won’t be here for Christmas, I decided to decorate the house early, putting up outside lights on Wednesday while it was still warm outside, and putting up decorations around the kitchen and living room to make things more festive. This is definitely the earliest I have ever put out Christmas stuff. I do have one tradition, which is to start writing out my cards during the Thanksgiving weekend, and I did a little work on them on Saturday and Sunday. Now I just have to print off the newsletter. I remember going to Owen Wulff’s offset printing business with Mom when she would drop it off for him to do. I also remember helping put stamps on the hundreds of cards she used to send out. I only have fifty or sixty people on our list.

Woo-hoo—another short week for me, as I am taking Wednesday off to chauffer Ann to her driving test, and then it’s off to the outlet mall where she will be one of the many furrinners who come here to take advantage of the weak dollar.