Whew! Wednesday: exit the school building, pack up the fam, drive to Harwood, ND for a Christmas celebration w/ good family friends.
Thursday: exit Harwood, drive to Mandan, ND for a Christmas celebration w/ my wife's family (brother, sister, dad, etc.).
Friday: exit Mandan, drive to Dickinson, ND for a Christmas celebration w/ my wife's mom's extended family.
Saturday: exit Dickinson, traverse the Badlands of ND through the treacherously icy Killdeer Mountains across Lake Sakakawea (past the 4 Bears Casino in New Town) to Dad's farm outside McGregor, ND for a Christmas celebration w/ my dad and stepmom.
Sunday: Christmas dinner w/ my stepmom's family, entertainment courtesy my children and a karaoke machine.
Monday: return via ND Highway 2 through the Magic City of Minot and Devils Lake w/ its ever-rising lake to East Grand Forks, MN.
Tuesday: Christmas w/ my own immediate family (wife and daughters) in our own home. Plus, unpack and find places for the Christmas haul.
It's always good to see family and close friends, and thoughtful gifts are great, but this traveling is exhausting. And the only religious-themed conversations that we had occurred before we left EGF for destinations far and wee. What's Christmas about again?
'Twill be good to be back home for some relaxation before 2005 rolls around and the school year resumes. I've got teaching to do and student-ing, too (at UND).
Upcoming highlights: Advanced Writers' incoming poetry set #2 (more enjoyable for me to read than for some of them to produce, I think) and their "coffee shop" readings the last week of the semester. Also, American Lit. scholars are keeping double-entry reading journals for several chapters of Huck Finn during the break, and I get to read those, too, when we return. The semester has flown.
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