Posts Tagged ‘distant relatives’
Midnight Sun
After picking up Cyndie and Elysa at the airport yesterday, the stories flowed in rapid succession without pause. Tales about crossing into the Arctic Circle. Descriptions of a weekend at the island cabin of Norwegian relatives. Descriptions of the beauty of the fjords, the unique cruise ship, the uncharacteristic heat wave, the relief to be home after a loooong day of travel, and the ensuing jet lag.
Cyndie stayed awake as long as she could before conking out around 8:00 p.m., equal to 3:00 a.m. in the time zone they just returned from. That is on top of only getting a few hours of sleep the night before. I plan to offer her plenty of compassion and tolerance for any demonstrations of fogginess in the next few days.
Of course, at our age, it’s not clear that our mental acuity ever fully returns to previous levels after we tax ourselves to dramatic degrees.
Before Cyndie dozed into a restless early-evening slumber, she granted my wish for a few photos from her large collection documenting their adventures celebrating Elysa’s birthday, with a healthy dose of midnight sunshine.
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Festivities Underway
The week after the winter solstice has become a time of amplified car commuting in my mind, ever since we moved an hour away from family in the Twin Cities, to rural countryside in western Wisconsin, where we have animals that need tending.
For some occasions, we have been lucky to find sitters to live in our house and care for our horses, chickens, and dog, but holidays are a tough time to ask others to do the job, at the expense of their own family gatherings.
Generally, that means we do the hour drive to participate in a few hours of holiday festivities, and then duck out early to make the hour drive back home again. Although the commute has become second nature for me to get to the day-job, the short time between trips each day around Christmastime makes the driving seem much more significant.
And, on Christmas day, we do it twice in one day.
It is not ideal, but it is always worth it, on both ends. We never regret time spent with our animals, and the time with family is forever priceless.
This year, we have an added bonus of relatives visiting from Norway. That wouldn’t be my relatives. The Fisknes family are from the Ravndal clan on Cyndie’s family tree. Cyndie’s great-grandmother was a Ravndal. We drove out to Eden Prairie last night to greet the family of five who are initially staying at the home of Cyndie’s brother, Steve.
After Christmas, the plan is for them to spend a night or two with us at Wintervale.
We don’t have oodles of snow to show off, but that might just change right in the middle of their visit. Precipitation is coming, but there is a sad chance it could be rain and snow mixed. Yuck.
The horses are enjoying the lack of snow cover during their brief forays onto the frozen grass of the back pasture. Yesterday, when I opened the gate for them, Delilah and I lingered in the field with them to appreciate the moment.
All three horses emptied their bladders in quick succession, and then followed that up a short time later with a rambunctious roll on the ground. Seemed like a very business-like routine in preparation of an afternoon of free grazing.
I am getting prepared for some free grazing of my own. Our kids will visit us this morning for our little personal family Christmas brunch, and then we drive to Edina for Christmas eve gathering with Cyndie’s cousins on her mom’s side.
I will sneak out early to drive home. Christmas morning, I finish chores and drive back for the Friswold gift exchange extravaganza.
The festivities are definitely underway.
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Relative Something 