Mission #3: Final Wrap-Up
Wednesday December 25, 20136:15 pm
First off, if you're still reading this...kudos to you. You're a patient soul.
Christmas dinner was wrapping up. Ham was delightful. Funeral potatoes are always a delight. Red Hot Jello will always be a favorite of mine. Life was good. We had four Mormon missionaries from our local ward (aka congregation) over for dinner: a pair of elders and a pair of sisters. The conversation had been lovely and the company was oh so grand.
Checking my phone, I had the final voicemail from the mysterious unknown number. I put in on speaker phone so everyone at the table could hear and participate.
The regular cast of characters were back: Mountaineer, Freelancer, Phoenix, Oracle, and Raptor. But we had some new friends joining us for the ride! The missionaries were given code names as well in order to protect their identity (because, you know, the badges on their chest weren't going to give anything away): Alma and Amulek, as well as Sariah and Abish.
The first clue was left on the windshield of Freelancer's car. The instructions were simple: go Christmas carol to each of the houses we had visited earlier in the day.
So we did!
Hats off to the kind and patient souls of the S, J, N, and P families who allowed us to interrupt their Christmas festivities not just once--but twice. That's a whole lot of love.
Thankfully we had the missionaries with us so we could truly tap into that righteous power as we went to sing. Our family can be described many ways with many choice words but "good singers" are not really accurate descriptors. We got really good at singing the first verse of "Joy to the World" (spoiler alert to those families involved: yes, we sang that song at every single house). And it honestly was the nicest way to wrap up Christmas. At least for me :)
I've grown up with these families. Coming home from college is as much about seeing these people as it is about seeing my own immediate family. It takes a village to raise a child...and holy cow I definitely needed a village. I could go into specifics on how each of these families and each of these people have touched my life...but they know who they are. They know (or at least SHOULD know) how much they've meant to me. You're all fantastic and I love each of you to pieces. Thanks for allowing us to come be totally goofy today :)
At each house, these kind people patiently gave us yet another clue: each containing one word to spell out a final message. Piecing it altogether, we obediently followed the instructions to go sing to the G-family.
As much as I had been enjoying these secret missions, it required us to be pretty much constantly on the go all day. Which was fun. It made the presents portion of our Christmas stretch for a good solid 10 hours--which is pretty impressive when the youngest in the family is 14. But it was also kind of tiring. There was no vegging in pj's all day and picking at leftover monkey bread. It was go-go-go-go-go all day. So by the time the third mission rolled around and we'd already gotten two batches of pretty huge gifts, I was telling Mom in the car: "If we get to the end of this and it's like 'Merry Christmas your gift at the end of this mission is the gift of Christmas cheer!' I'm going to be upset!"
I sound like a Grinch. I know. I said it to Mom like 5 times though.
Lo and behold, what does the family clue from the G-family say: "Your gift is FAMILY because families are eternal!"
We all groaned and rolled our eyes and I gave my Mom a hard time about it while we walked back home.
Getting home, there were envelopes with each of our names on it. We got Disney giftcards for us to spend when my family comes to visit me in Florida in April. Merry Christmas to me :) I'll get to wrap up four months of living at Disney World (I'm so excited. So so so so SO excited. Can you tell!?) by my family coming to visit me and we'll party it up down in Florida. I think that'll be really neat.
So...if you're reading down here at the bottom than you are really dedicated or, and the more likely option, incredibly bored. Kudos to you for reading four posts about how Christmas went at our house this year. You're a trooper.
This is the spot where I should make some profound statement about how none of today really matters because at the end of the day, it's all about Christ and what He did for us. And that's true. That's what today is really all about. But, as it was so nicely put on Sunday, if we're living our lives with Christ as the focus...that's what every day should be about.
I have not a clue as to how spending Christmas day being a secret agent with my sisters has some big profound, life-altering, metaphorical meaning. I don't. Not a clue. Maybe tomorrow inspiration will strike and I can come in here and tie this up with a nice clean ending. But hey, it's 12:30 in the morning. It's the 26th now. Christmas 2013 is officially over. A lot has happened in 2013. I've been incredibly lucky and it's taken 20 full years for death to finally be a real scary personal force in my life. I lost people in my family that I was close to...and others that I wasn't as close to. Maybe there isn't some profound spiritual message this year so much as just a really awesome memory that I'm always going to hold onto. Because if nothing else, I got to witness my baby sister kiss a boy on the cheek today and watch her turn a shade that would put even Rudolph's nose to shame. That was pretty darn cool. There are going to be years that I'm not going to get to spend Christmas with my family because I'm busy with my own family (fingers crossed knock on wood).
Dad asked me this year what family traditions were important to keep around this year. I mentioned that the scavenger hunts we did as a kid were always super fun. I don't remember the presents we got or what the clues said or even where we had to look. My memories just involved us running around our house like complete psychos as we tried to find the next clue. We did that this year. Just on a much larger scale using cars and latitude/longitude coordinates and mistletoe and Norwegian.
Growing up, I loved riding in the car with my Aunt Cheryl but she never had any good music that would please a kid. Except for one tape. She had a Sesame Street Christmas tape that I loved and we would listen to it in the middle of the summer when we were going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium or to the beach or on whatever aunty-Sydney adventure she had planned for us. To this day, I can't hear the "Twelve Days of Christmas" being played without hearing the different Sesame Street voices singing all of the parts. It's my favorite version of that song. But anyways, there was a song on that tape that I haven't been able to find anywhere else and even as a kid I remember listening to it and realizing that there was some real profound truth in it.
So. Even though I'm not capable of a clean concise 'concluding paragraph' that would satisfy my high school English teachers, hopefully including this song will get me off of the hook.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiPI5c1KPx4
Merry Christmas!
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