Family visit

My family's visit this week was like a "greatest hits" event full of our family's favorite activities. We went hiking, to a gingerbread festival, to Temple Square, to some museums, and miniature golfing. We enjoyed a Thanksgiving dinner, a game tournament, and of course, the traditional "Crazy Night" homemade pizza. 

Here's our early Thanksgiving dinner. With two sisters and a grandma around, it was the easiest holiday meal ever, hands down.

Aunt Connie came down from Boise to see the family. Within minutes, little Michael snuggled right up to her, and everyone else gravitated toward her. When Aunt Connie starts talking, I don't want to get out of earshot--she's completely intriguing.  

 

We hiked two trails in Big Cottonwood, where we coincidentally found a letterboxing cache. Our unexpected find has inspired me to research geocaching, and we plan on going soon. 

 

This is the beginning of a game tournament. Winners took home a bubble gum machine, glow sticks, and bottle rockets. Dad clinched the booby prize, a can of refried beans.

Spending this last week with my family has helped me appreciate the friendships that I have with my siblings, but especially with the "older kids" (Amy, Kim, Sandra, and James). I remember the first time we invited James to an after-the-younger-kids'-bedtime board game party. Over a rollicking game of Balderdash, James laughed so hard that he had to lie on the floor for several minutes before resuming play. Since then, we've spent hundreds of hours in late-night game sessions, including dozens of game parties with our church buddies. 

     The sisters are an unrivaled team in any acting or guessing game because we think alike. We finish each other's sentences and ruin each other's jokes. James is a wild card, always coming up with these one-liners that have us girls cracking up. (Example: the other night at dinner, the waiter mentioned that his name is Jacob and his younger brother's name is Zachary, just like my boys. After Waiter Jake left the table, James leaned forward, eyebrows cocked, and whispered, "Is he from the future?" Sitting back, James grinned smugly while we laughed our tortilla chips onto our plates.) 

  Tonight my house is quiet: my siblings are gone and my kids are asleep. And I'm up (too late!) feeling grateful for fun memories, old and new.

On chilling out: dancing like it's 1999

Once in high school my buddy Wes and I entered a swing dance competition with 100 or so other couples. "Here's our strategy," he told me. "We're going to dance so wild and so fast that the judges won't have a chance to tap us out." That's what we did, and we ended up evading the judges long enough to win. 

Late that night my friends and I drove home like champions, plastic leis tickling our necks as the summer air streamed into my '89 Honda Civic. I remember thinking that there was no better feeling than being 16. 

And now (just nine years later!), Eric was recently surprised that I was tapping my fingers on the steering wheel in rhythm to a song on the radio. "Oh, cute!" he said. "You're relaxed!" Others regularly ask about my welfare, offering concerned upturned eyebrows and furrowed frowns. Strangers bombard me with "there's never a moment's rest, is there?" or "now, don't you have your hands full?" Last week my physician asked me questions about how stress is affecting my health. I always find these queries strange, at best, and sometimes intrusive. Honestly, I'm not feeling stressed.

Enter Kim. Tonight my perennially carefree (and fun!) sister came over to take Jacob on an aunt date. When they came home, she introduced us to some youtube videos, including several variations of "Hamster Dance Spiderman." We spent the next 45 minutes trying to learn Spidey's smooth moves, and I'll have to admit that I revisited the clips after the kids went to bed (I have to get that lunge twist combo!). The experience tickled my serotonin receptors for sure.

I want to say that I "felt like myself" tonight, yet I always think it strange when people use the phrase. Aren't you always yourself, no matter the mood or stage of life? There are just aspects to the self that are less desirable and that we consider outside of ourselves? Lacan's "mirror stage" enlightens the analysis, as I can imagine an alternative stage in which I (the "real") am wholly (and, paradoxically, also fragmentally) represented through the "mirror" of dance. But I like to (romantically) think of myself as the dance's representation, even though I realize that the "real" encompasses much more.   

In short, I've been missing out because I'm too stressed to enjoy life. The Hamster Dance Spiderman helped me learn this. Try it out yourself if you feel like it: Hamster Dance Spiderman.

P.S. Do my thoughts still exist if I don't blog about them?