An Unexpected Christmas

A good friend, Russ Brown, is a substance abuse counselor and also a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. One of his favorite sayings comes from AA; "If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans." Our Christmas ended up being a good example of just how true that phrase is.

Claremore Christmas
Every year we get together with one side of Matt's extended family in and around Claremore, OK (just outside of Tulsa.) Generally it involves a Dirty Santa game but this year the game was tweaked into Let's Make a Deal. All of the kids had brought random items from home like movie ticket stubs and pencil stubs and rubber bands. (If you aren't familiar with Let's Make a Deal, the host asks the audience if anyone has some random weird item on their person. The first person that can produce said item gets to play.) Everyone provided the prizes; some were winners and some were losers. We came home with some smell-good bath stuff and Santa Claus ring-pops. A good haul.

It's always fun to get together with that side of the family. Lots of cowboys on that side; including one professional bull rider whose nose looks like he's tangled with one too many bulls. You'll notice the occasional cowboy hat in the background. Everyone eats and talks and laughs and comments on how big the kids are getting, and the day usually ends with everyone saying "we really need to get together more during the year." Not that this will happen, but we all feel better for having said it. It's a great chance for Matt's mom to get to see her brothers and sisters on that side of the family (Mom has three siblings on her Mom's side and three siblings on her Dad's side, so there are quite a few aunts and uncles to keep up with. This is Aunt Vicki, Uncle Van, and Uncle Tim and Mom's step-mom, Mary Ellen.)

Lots to Do in December
We didn't take any pictures of our Christmas tree this year, it looks a lot like our Christmas tree last year. But we did have to take a picture of the neighbor's yard across the street. We liked to say that it looked like Christmas threw up in their yard. But at least they do yard and house decorations. The Gosney home looks abandoned except on those nights we'd open up the window blinds so people could see we did in fact have a tree with lights on it.

Several of the local church wards put together a live nativity each year in conjunction with a series of Christmas concerts. Our good friends the Stapley's got to be Mary and Joseph, with one of their new twins playing the role of Baby Jesus. Matt made a short appearance as "the angel," obviously poorly cast but a fun way to serve and get in the holiday spirit.

No Christmas in Utah
Remember the AA quote above? Well, here is where it really rang true for us this year. On Wednesday the 23rd we drove down to Oklahoma City to spend the evening with Matt's folks before flying out to Salt Lake City on Christmas Eve. We alternate spending Christmas day in either Oklahoma City or Salt Lake with Sharon's family. This year was the year to be in Utah. Well, we got up on Christmas Eve and the weather was not cooperating. It was raining and the temperature was dropping quickly, to the point that it looked like it would soon be freezing rain. Even though we didn't need to be at the airport until about noon Matt decided that if they were going to make that flight they'd better get to the airport quickly. So Matt and Sharon packed it up, said goodbye to Matt's Mom and Dad, and headed out into the bad weather towards the airport. We made it just in time for them to cancel our flight. (Originally we were scheduled to fly out at 1:35 p.m. to Denver, then on to OKC. By the end of the day, all of these flights were canceled.)


By the time we made it to the airport the weather was getting worse and worse. A nice thick layer of ice was covering everything and then, by about 10:30 or so it started to snow. And it snowed, and snowed, and snowed. But it didn't just snow. The wind was also blowing. And blowing, and blowing, and blowing. We had 60 mile per hour winds and a total of 14 inches of snow in about 10 hours. This was the weather map at the airport. Not encouraging.


We definitely wanted to try all we could to get to Salt Lake, and we even got booked on a flight later that day. But with white-out blizzard conditions we were hoping against hope. Here's a picture of Sharon, trying to be a trooper at the airport as we were realizing that we wouldn't be heading to Utah for Christmas this year. And here is what it looked like at the airport as we left. That's a solid sheet of ice.


Eventually the airport canceled all flights for that day and we figured it was a good time to try and head back to Mom and Dad's. They live about 20 minutes from the airport. It took us 3 hours to make the drive back. It was definitely scary with the wind howling and blowing so much snow that you couldn't see past the hood of the car. We saw a lot of people stuck, lots of wrecks, and eventually the interstates all shut down (some people had to spend the night at the airport because they eventually closed all the roads down around it, but some folks had to spend the night in their cars on the interstate because they were closed down too. We were very grateful to make it back.) Our Christmas day was spent hanging out with Mom and Dad, nobody could leave their houses so we spent the day watching TV, reading books, and taking naps (well, Matt took the naps.) Not exactly what we'd planned for, but it ended up being a very relaxing Christmas day!

We made it out of the house on Saturday, all the way to the mall and back, and counted 14 abandoned cars along the way - all stuck in the snow including two 18 wheelers. It was crazy. On Sunday Matt's brother and sister and all of their family made it over to the house for "Christmas." The kids didn't seem to mind that everything was delayed. In fact, nephew TAG seemed to enjoy drawing out the whole opening presents experience.


Of course there was the normal array of pies. And what is quickly becoming the traditional Matt's lasagna. We were actually sorta glad we got to be in Oklahoma since we weren't going to be able to eat the lasagna (we made it up before we came down so that the family could just pop it in the oven for Christmas.)


We absolutely enjoyed watching the kids open up their Christmas presents. Niece Lucy is, as you can see, absolutely adorable and very adept at entertaining herself in the rocking chair.





TAG loved his policeman's outfit, declaring to all of us, "I look sharp!" He did look sharp! He blew on that whistle far too often and would wiggle through the house saying, "Officer coming through!" We were glad to be able to see that as well.


In the end, while Christmas wasn't exactly what we had in mind, it turned out to be time well spent. We were sad to not be able to make it out to Utah but we'll be shipping those gifts out shortly. We expect photos of those presents being opened and appreciated!

Hope everyone else had a wonderful, even if unexpected, Christmas!