A Girl...

Utahrded

Toot toot! The November gravy train arrived ahead of schedule this year. My cousin's wife made all of the food for the big anniversary party, and let me tell you, mashed potatoes for fortyish people times two or three servings each makes for a whole lotta brown sauce.

This was the biggest party our family has had in a long time, or probably ever considering the high rate of marriage and reproduction among both Mormons and rednecks, both of which make up generous portions of my relations. People kept scanning the crowd and exclaiming how great it was to have almost everyone in the same place for once, and yet when we counted up the missing, it wasn't just a few stragglers: it was sixteen whole people. Sixteen plus the fortyish in attendance, and that's a quite an impressive record of marrying and reproducing in the sixty-five years since my grandparents said "I do" (at the ripe old age of seventeen; my grandpa actually needed his mother's signature to get married). In short, there were a lot of people packed into a ridiculously large house, and me without my wide-angle lens. Wah.

Happily, there was no shortage of photos taken at the event.

You'd think it was Britney, Paris, Lindsay, and, I don't know, McDreamy, getting out of a limo sans panties instead of just my mom and her siblings standing on t he stairs together, smiling and fully clothed.

The happy side-effect of my using a loaner camera (thank you, Simon) that was neither large nor intimidating nor strapped to my body meant that I occasionally handed it over to someone else and was in a picture or two.

Although Simon opted out of the group photo (something to do with the 2003 group photo having included my ex-fiance?), he graciously mingled with the aunts and cousins-in-law and second cousins once removed, as well as ate his share of mashed potatoes and gravy and sat through a long DVD retrospective of my grandparents' lives that included ancient home movie clips, photo slideshows, and an interview in which my grandpa used the term "suck face" in the correct context. Ew. There was much crying and cringing and yelling out of "There's me!" and "Oh my heck, look at my hair!" whenever a twenty-year-old photo flashed on the screen. There was also lots and lots of laughing. Who knew that my grandparents' quiet teenage marriage in 1942 would have given way to such an awesome racket?

Simon was such a good sport in enduring the family/religion overload that was Saturday. After a day spent milling around the Salt Lake Temple waiting for brides and grooms to emerge, getting in their wedding pictures, taking our own fake temple wedding pictures, touring the Beehive House (Brigham Young's residence), viewing the Lion House (Brigham Young's wives' residence), sitting in on a pipe organ recital at the Tabernacle, touring the LDS Conference Center, and then attending the three-ring circus that was the anniversary party, I thought he'd welcome an evening of wine, whiskey, and poker. And he did. Until he started losing.

I think it got worse when I started winning.

And worser still when I won and wouldn't shut up about it.

It was a great trip. We hung out, ate a lot of candy, watched Little Miss Sunshine, watched Lawrence Welk, drove up the canyon, looked at houses for sale, visited my grandma, went to Target, teased the cats, teased the locals...It was pretty much a perfect Utah weekend. It was all gravy.