Family Weekends
We just got home from a full and wonderful weekend at Mom and Dad’s celebrating our second Christmas with the Killen part of our family. Have you ever noticed that extended family weekends are more like an interesting journey than anything anyone could blandly call “a visit?” Our weekend couldn’t even be described as a trip down a straight road dotted with a few trees and a random mobile home (think Nevada…between Las Vegas and California). It was actually more like a race down Lombard Street, with its twists and turns, scenic views, and famously windy atmosphere.
Not only did this weekend include stockings, gifts, and our annual buffet, it included the first annual Killen Family Farkle Championship (Kevin noted on Facebook that he had won one of the two championship games—we laughed so hard the whole time we were playing that there just had to be more than one round—and discovered that there are many, many sad individuals who have yet to be introduced to Farkle.:)), the semi-annual Killen Family Ping Pong Tournament (My favorite comment coming from my neice McKayla, who said to Scott, “Dad, I think you’re doing more ponging than pinging.”), and our family picture.
You know, Adam and Riley were in a great mood pretty much all weekend, but when we decided to take that picture, Riley got all emotional on me. Initially, she was upset because I insisted she not have 18 different tiny-twists-accentuated-with multi-colored-ball-shaped-hair-ornaments for the picture. Then she was upset because she was too tall to sit on Mom or Dad’s lap next to her cousin Kate. You would not believe how many “but I want to sit next to Ka-aate” battles we fought over the weekend.:) Adam just grew impatient. Why did we have to trouble him with a picture? Trust me, only Adam knows how to say, “Time to take a picture! Cheese!!!!” in such a mournful way that you actually believe it might be a physically painful experience for him. He said(or moaned) all of this while pointing at the camera as if to say, “I’m holding you responsible for this ridiculous situation.” If you’re fortunate enough to get a copy of this picture, I am sure that Kevin will have done such a fantastic job making lemonade out of lemons that you would never guess at the curve we flew through on that one.
As for the ping pong tournament, Kevin won, so we are now proudly displaying the coveted trophy that Mom made out of an old ping pong paddle, buttons, and ribbons. It is my job to add the tags with the winners’ names inscribed on them. I love watching this contest unfold. Mom jumps, shouts, laughs, and hugs her way through the entire tournament. It’s a beautiful thing.
We are so blessed by our family. When we get together, the children are only outnumbered by the adults by one. Trust me—one extra is not enough to call it “even Stephen” with this group. We sleep everywhere. Mom and Dad have a majority of the children camped out in and around their bedroom in various places on pull out couches, cots, and bedrolls. Some of us snore, some us get up at 2 am to tell our son to quit reciting his favorite Bible story or playing how many loud noises can I make with my mouth and go to sleep, and some of us take Nyquil and sleep through everything. We all have talents we feel blessed to have and equally significant idiosyncracies. We hug and laugh a lot, we have serious and not so serious talks, we cry, we get angry, and we hug some more. We drink hot chocolate together around the fire pit in Mom and Dad’s downstairs deck, admiring the white lights that Dad strung around the ceiling, eating sugar cookies, and just enjoying each other’s company. We laugh at the conversations our children have with one another. We cry about the unknown things that lay in days ahead. We resolve together to be better to each other.
You might say that in its most beautiful moments, the ones in which we succeed in loving each other the way we really want to, our weekends together are like a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway: just breathtaking. I have to say though, in the end of the day, it’s the whole package—Lombard Street on big wheels—that makes us all look back and agree that we are a family truly blessed to belong to each other.
