Christmas With the Crankies, Part II

When Laef and I got married, we made a pretty easy agreement that we would split holiday time with our families. So, one year we go to Missouri to see his family and the next year we see my family in California.

We spent 2007 with my family and last year with Laef’s.

I’ve worked in sports for as long as I can remember and 2007 was the first year in over 10 years that I didn’t work in sports and wouldn’t be spending my holiday at a bowl game with the Oregon football team. My excitement over this prompted me to try and rally ALL of my siblings and their children to spend Christmas at my mom’s house in Northern California.

Today I went back and found a blog that was published on Tales From LaLa Land on December 17, 2007.

It turns out, trying to organize anything with my family is NOT as easy as it should be. Not only am I a giant cluster, but my siblings are as well. I think what it boils down to is that we hadn’t spent a Christmas all together since we were kids. It’s like we couldn’t grasp the concept.

Anyway, here is and edited version of the post:

This is the first year that I got myself really organized and sent out Christmas cards to all my friends and made cupcakes to bring to work. I’ve been shopping for the past few weeks so I’m pretty much done. It’s the first time in at least 10 years that I feel really prepared.

A lot of that stems from the fact that when I worked in the Oregon athletic department I never had a free weekend in September, October or November. Once December rolled around, the Ducks were usually preparing for a bowl game, which would usually fall right around Christmas. So, I guess I have been somewhat detached from the holiday spirit. Not to mention, I just never had enough time to be organized to do it.

This year is the first time in years that I will be able to go home and enjoy the holidays. No worries of a pending bowl game or working on the softball media guide. When I realized that we’d be going to my parents, I emailed all of my siblings to see if they’d like to all go to Mom’s since we haven’t done that since, well, since I can’t even remember.

You would think that I was asking each of them to find a cure for AIDS, devise the Oregon game plan for the Holiday Bowl (one in which Cody Kempt throws four TDs) and adopt a baby from Darfur — all before December 25.

I have two older sisters and one younger brother. My oldest sister has two daughters, my next oldest sister has one daughter and two-stepchildren and my brother has a one-year old daughter and a baby boy on the way. I’m the reject living in sin with my boyfriend who is eight years my junior.

There have been arguments about everything from when to celebrate, to what kind of food to eat, to when the “big” dinner should be to how much we should spend on each other to where everyone will sleep, to who is allergic to dogs to who hates Turkey. Anything that can be debated is being debated.

And, I love it.

I guess I have this vision that despite all of the craziness in each of our lives that for those two days I will take it all in and enjoy the fact that I’m lucky. I have a family — a crazy one — that will provide epic material for this blog.

It ended up being a GREAT time. My brother took all of our money in an epic poker game. I was hung over on Christmas Day (one of these days I will have children and this phase will pass), the girls all danced to Hannah Montana and we managed to all generally love being with each other.

So, this year, it’s been a little less complicated trying to organize who will be where and when they will be there and what we will eat.

I can’t wait to see what blog-worthy things happen in 2009.