This past Christmas my side of the family mostly scattered to their in-laws for the holiday – everyone should have a turn, after all – so having a big get together in Tennessee like we did in 2023 wasn’t really an option. But my in-laws have Christmas in January according to the Julian calendar and my brother’s in-laws don’t celebrate Christmas at all so we decided that we’d get together just the eight of us to enjoy each other’s company for the holiday, and since the B&B thing worked out so well the previous year we’d do that again as well.
Fortunately Kim enjoys making travel arrangements because otherwise we’d still be home wondering how it suddenly became June. She found a very nice place in the Poconos in northeastern Pennsylvania and then canvased us about what we might want to do while we were there, with a spreadsheet and everything. We got to vote. There were many votes for hanging out and playing games and none for climbing walls and this is indeed the family I love.
It turned out to be a complicated bit of travel in the end with a fair number of moving pieces to track. We’d start at the B&B in Tobyhanna PA, where we’d meet my brother and his family. We’d spend a few days enjoying the holiday together and then head to Jersey City to spend some time at their place. Lauren’s friend Aleksia would join us in New Jersey the day after we arrived and then Oliver would head out to see Dustin in Charlotte NC the following day, and then we’d drive back to Wisconsin with Aleksia after the new year while Lauren would fly from NYC to Spain to spend some time with her friend Arden there. It all worked out surprisingly well.
For the journey east we looked at the weather and decided that it would be best to leave earlier and make the drive in two days rather than one, so we after we put the semester to bed we packed up the van with about four times the amount of stuff that we’d brought to spend eighteen days in four different European countries the previous summer, had lunch at our local Culvers because we live in Wisconsin after all, and took to the open road. A few uneventful hours and a reasonable dinner on the Ohio Turnpike later we stopped at a hotel near Youngstown for the night and then headed out the next day for the final leg of the drive. I had my UW Badgers sweatshirt on which – not for the only time this trip – led to a surprising number of random strangers approaching me at gas stations and other retail establishments to ask about football because that is the common language of the American male.
We arrived at the B&B and had the place to ourselves for the first day because my brother’s car was experiencing Difficulties that had to be addressed on the last business day before Christmas and that took some time. It was a very nice place – spacious, clean, and with all sorts of things to do. Lauren and I played ping pong for a while, which is something I don’t think I have done since the Bicentennial.
Fortunately Kim enjoys making travel arrangements because otherwise we’d still be home wondering how it suddenly became June. She found a very nice place in the Poconos in northeastern Pennsylvania and then canvased us about what we might want to do while we were there, with a spreadsheet and everything. We got to vote. There were many votes for hanging out and playing games and none for climbing walls and this is indeed the family I love.
It turned out to be a complicated bit of travel in the end with a fair number of moving pieces to track. We’d start at the B&B in Tobyhanna PA, where we’d meet my brother and his family. We’d spend a few days enjoying the holiday together and then head to Jersey City to spend some time at their place. Lauren’s friend Aleksia would join us in New Jersey the day after we arrived and then Oliver would head out to see Dustin in Charlotte NC the following day, and then we’d drive back to Wisconsin with Aleksia after the new year while Lauren would fly from NYC to Spain to spend some time with her friend Arden there. It all worked out surprisingly well.
For the journey east we looked at the weather and decided that it would be best to leave earlier and make the drive in two days rather than one, so we after we put the semester to bed we packed up the van with about four times the amount of stuff that we’d brought to spend eighteen days in four different European countries the previous summer, had lunch at our local Culvers because we live in Wisconsin after all, and took to the open road. A few uneventful hours and a reasonable dinner on the Ohio Turnpike later we stopped at a hotel near Youngstown for the night and then headed out the next day for the final leg of the drive. I had my UW Badgers sweatshirt on which – not for the only time this trip – led to a surprising number of random strangers approaching me at gas stations and other retail establishments to ask about football because that is the common language of the American male.
We arrived at the B&B and had the place to ourselves for the first day because my brother’s car was experiencing Difficulties that had to be addressed on the last business day before Christmas and that took some time. It was a very nice place – spacious, clean, and with all sorts of things to do. Lauren and I played ping pong for a while, which is something I don’t think I have done since the Bicentennial.
Kim and I also made a trip into town to the world’s strangest grocery store – a festival of random conversations, glacially slow (but exceedingly friendly) deli service, a small non-service dog that some random dude led around the aisles and which shit on the floor by the deli, and several people who may or may not have ever seen a self-checkout station in their lives but were determined to learn how to operate one 36 hours before Christmas, lines of fellow customers be damned. You have to applaud their tenacity, if nothing else.
Did you know there’s actually a very good pho place in Tobyhanna? It’s true! I highly recommend it. We went there for dinner and discovered that we were some of the few non-Vietnamese people in the place – it’s always a recommendation for a restaurant serving regional food when people from that region (in heritage or actual geography) are the bulk of the customers – and we had a grand time of it even if trying to get out of the parking lot was a topographical nightmare. It was really good pho, though unless you haven’t eaten in days you should probably get the small.
We’re not really gifty people in the main so we didn’t really have any huge Christmas Morning Gift Spectacular planned, and since my brother’s family had already taken care of that for themselves before they left their home we decided that we’d do that the next morning before they got there. Their car had been fixed but there was a snowstorm in the New York City area that caused delays, so it was a good time to do that.
It was a grand and lovely thing when they arrived.
There was cookie decorating.
We had the traditional “odd number of kinds of fish” Christmas Eve dinner – three kinds rather than seven, defined rather broadly to include spaghetti with clam sauce, popcorn shrimp, and Caesar salad since the dressing has anchovies in it and that’s close enough for us.
And there was the Dice Game, which is what we do instead of going bankrupt buying Christmas gifts for everyone. It’s also more fun, since everyone gathers and trades and generally gets involved. We started this about a decade or so ago, maybe more, and it’s become one of my favorite bits of the holiday.
Oddly enough I ended up with exactly the two things I brought, which never happens. I always make it a point to buy things I like just in case, but it was something of a surprise.
The next morning there were stockings hung by the kitchen sink with care, which is what Clement Clarke Moore would have written had he known.
Most of the day was spent doing not much at all, which is precisely the sort of thing one should do for a holiday. Kim put a puzzle out on one of the tables and most of us spent some time putting it together. It turned out to have 999 pieces in the end, but we’ll count that as done. I made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. Some people went out to the movies to see either the Dylan biopic or Nosferatu, both of which were reported as worth seeing. It was a good holiday.
On our last full day in Tobyhanna some of us decided to go to nearby Stroudsburg to wander around a bit. Kim, Oliver, and Lori made their first stop at a giant craft shop, while Lauren, Sara and I headed up to Main Street and found a used book store, among other things. We all met up for lunch and then walked over to the antique mall, which all picturesque mountain towns are required to have.
And then we went axe throwing.
Axe throwing is one of the weirder trends that has popped up in recent years, and if you haven’t tried it yet you should. It’s pretty self-explanatory. You rent a lane for an hour or so and throw hatchets of various types at a wooden target and if it sticks into the wood you get points. We were the only people in the place that night so we got some prime attention from the owner, who spent a fair amount of time teaching us how to throw the three different models of hatchet before letting us loose. Naturally the teams divided out into Geezers and Offspring, and it was a spirited competition with a few victories on each side. And nobody got whacked. You have to like that.
Afterward we went back to the pho place, this time with all eight of us, and confirmed that yes indeed this was good pho.
Having done that it was time for games, and we spent much of the remainder of the evening playing Telestrations – a sort of “whisper down the lane” game with drawings, if you’re not familiar with it; it’s a game that gets better with either a lack of artistic talent or a surplus of alcohol consumption, or both – and another game that required us to answer questions about each other, always a dangerous but entertaining activity.
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate.
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