Christmas 2005 Re-cap

Christmas started out on the 22nd by driving from Chicago to Burlington to stay overnight at my parents house, then riding with them and my brother(who had arrived that morning) to Early, IA. On the journey there, somthing very funny happened at the Flying J Truckstop in Elk Run. To pass the time, my brother and I were looking at this large display of ceramic snowmen Christmas tree ornaments that had people's names on them. Well, my mom came over and wanted to see if they had her name on there. When she put her finger ont he "C" rack, the whole shelf fell and all the snowmen shattered on the floor. I foudn thsi quite hilarious, but my mom was worried that she was going to have to pay for about $150 worth of broken ornaments. She turned herself in and luckily didn't have too.

Once in Early, IA, we hung out with my Grandpa on the farm until after dinner the next day when we again traveled even farther north to Marcus, Ia, where we lived until I was 5. There, we visited family friends for the afternoon before again heading farther north. We finally arrived in Rock Rapids, Ia(can't get much more north than that) around 5pm for my dad's side of the family's Christmas dinner. In retrospect, it was one of the best Lens family Christmas's I've ever been too. My cousing Mitch(a junior in HS) and my cousin Brad(a year older than me) totally had me cracking up most of the night. There were 44 people there for dinner, which was more than we had anticipated, but far less than the family total. After dinner and mingling was over, we headed back down to my other grandparents farm.

The 24th was a full day of running errands and getting ready for the 25th.

On the morning of the 25th, my grandpa(who has alzheimers) was telling us a story and it went like this. "I was sitting in this chair looking out the window and I saw a 35 pound Elk-deer up in the tree. It was a rainy son of a bitchin day, maybe sleeting. So I went and got the gun and headed out to the shop for shells and I couldn't find any, so I called Greg(my uncle). He came down and shot the thing out of the tree and it landed on the ground and bounced about 3 feet in the air after it hit the ground. Then it headed straight for Greg, took about 3 steps, and died." Well, we about dies when he was telling the story. I had previously heard the story and knew that he was talking about a raccoon and NOT an Elk-deer. However, we call cracked up that he called something an Elk-deer...in case you are unaware, there is no such animal as an elk-deer and if there was a thing as an elk-deer, I'm almost positive that it wouldn't be able to climb a tree. During our stay, my Grandpa also called my brother Josh, "Alan" to his face and we all started laughing so hard that I had to get up and leave the room. My Grandpa had no idea what was going on and so instead of telling him that we were laughing because he called my brother Alan, Josh told him that I farted and that is why we were all laughing. I indeed did NOT fart.

At noon on the 25th, my uncle and his family came down to the farm and we all had dinner, played bingo, and opened gifts. We left shortly thereafter to head back to Burlington. Upon returnign to Burlington, my immediate family had our Christmas and exchanged gifts. I think we all got everything we asked for and more. It was great.