"and now good morrow to our waking souls"

Pennsylvanians are CRAZY. CRAZY HARDCORE.

This is a tale of Pennsylvanian Christmas Hardcore-ness.

Preface:
I spent Saturday night at Greg's house, with his family, because he invited me to the Howe Family Christmas on Sunday (his mom's side). On the way to Greg's house at about 9 p.m., it was sleeting and dark and freezing and unhappy -- the edges of his windshield were forming little ice patches as we drove. The salt trucks were out makin' the highways safe(r). People were driving stupidly. I was hoping Greg's new car would not suffer damage in such bad driving conditions (yes, he signed for a new car last week! Woah hardcore grown-up-ness!)

Act I:
Now, Mrs. Snader has massive amounts of siblings -- 7 I think -- so mere preparation for this event was way hardcore. Mrs. Snader cooked and carved 40 lbs of turkey the day before, and her sister cooked and carved 35 more. In case you can't add, that's SEVENTY-FIVE POUNDS of turkey.

I mean, holy crap, right?

I wake up Sunday morning to the usual Snader household apocalypse (I guess with 5 kids the definition of "inside voice" changes). [and no, Mom, I didn't let the noisy wake-up make me grumpy -- aren't you proud?] All six of us kids shower, breakfast, dress, caffeine, bundle up and venture outside. . . ready to go.

Act II:
The weather was not ready to let us go, however. We walk outside to a driveway sheathed in almost a quarter-inch of ice. Every individual blade of grass is iced over, and just shatters underfoot. Halos of ice surround every twig, branch, and tree trunk. The cars? Oh, the cars. Also sheathed in a solid quarter-inch of ice. We used the one ice scraper to chip at the ice around each door of the two cars; half an hour later we've broken in and are ready to pile in and leave. (the whole time we were trying to break the ice to get into the cars, Greg's youngest brother is hip-checking the side of the car to try and shatter the ice.)

Then three people remember things in the house they'd forgotten to get/do, so we wait a while longer.

Then Greg, Charlene, and I pile into his new car and leave to get gas -- the driveway was so slippery we don't want to follow close together. We drive with one tire in the grass. It is way hardcore. Greg cannot see out of either of his side mirrors because hey -- they're still covered in a quarter inch of ice.

Act III:
We get a phone call at the gas station -- after we've broken into the gas tank -- the windshield wipers on Chris' car are broken. So we go back, pick up the other three kids at the bottom of the driveway so we don't have to try an drive up the steep icy slope, break into the trunk without an ice scraper to deposit all our belongings, then cram six people into Greg's car.

Then we drive an hour. Loudly. And with much poking, arguing, yelling, teasing, smushing-one-another-around-curves, more sleet, and lots of rain. And lots of reminding ourselves why the heck we were leaving the house on a day like today, when the weather is utterly terrible. Seventy-five pounds of turkey. Just remember, we have to go eat 75 pounds of turkey.

Finally we arrive at the Howe reunion. We eat almost all of the turkey.