Winter Wonderland

Every winter my mom and I, as well as my Aunt Sandy and a random selection of her children go to Portland International Raceway to view Winter Wonderland, a holiday lights spectacular. This year we were surprised to see my cousin Matthew, who moved out of state last year, come and join us. They all arrive at our house and we hang out for a second while we hear a recounting of Matthew and Daniels arrival in Oregon and the subsequent drama that ensued.

After a few minutes Charlie leaves to go bowling while the rest of us present, Mom, Aunt Sandy, Samantha, Matthew and I get into Aunt Sandy's car and begin our journey . . . except we have to go back and get a gas receipt in order to use a coupon my Mom acquired. Alright, now we are on our way. The drive goes quickly as Matthew and I discuss everything from HDTV's, digital camcorders and movies. Apparently, Casino Royale is an excellent film.

We travel the estimated 15.4 miles to PIR and get into the line of cars waiting to enjoy the majestic beauty that is Winter Wonderland. We get to the front of the line and begin our journey through arches, the twelve days of Christmas and various other holiday and non-holiday related light displays. All the while, we were stuck behind a terribly slow SUV who is practically moving backwards. It isn't a problem though, you have to go slow and save for a tense moment in which my Aunt nearly took down an entire display of lights with her car, it was pleasant.

Afterwards we headed to Arby's for dinner where we ate, drank and talked about . . . well, I can't say exactly what we talked about. I do remember a conversation in which my Aunt said that she can make her wood stove sound like Chewbacca, an event I'm looking forward to experiencing first hand. I also recall a discussion about what Die Fledermause, a German operetta by Johan Strauss II, meant translated into English. We later learned it means The Flying-mouse.

Once we finished dinner, we started back to our house. Here, Samantha and I worked on her iPod, getting music ripped, encoded and transferred while the rest of the group talked out in the living room. Some time passed and then it became a quest to remember the name of a cousin's other son. We headed to the Internet and wasn't able to remember so we moved on to baby name books my Mom uses for her Sims characters. After some looking around in the books, laughing hysterically at a section on how to make names, my Aunt blurted it out. A sense of relief filled the room and it marked the end of the evening.