A Good Old Fashioned Family Christmas

The structure of this day is that we got up early, went to Ieper and Flanders Fields, then went to Brugge, then had a nice meal at a fancy French restaurant, then came home. The story, though, has a lot more in common with a Salvadore Dali painting than any of the simpleness of the so-called supposedly gives. The beginning is simple in that we got up early and left early. (Early meaning actually early, meaning 6:30 AM. Early usually referring to anything before lunch. How lazy have I become? Well... Sometimes I like to set my alarm early for example at 10. The alarm goes off... I get up, I laugh to myself a little, I turn it off and go to sleep... It's kind of like a little pick me up in the morning. AND to be honest, 6:30 is a lot more closely related to what I consider as late, as in late the night before. BUT yes, I will one day be responsible and get up early, and be in a desk and drink lots of coffee... but did you know that Winston Churchill also didn't get out of bed until late each day? The guy would sit till all hours dictating to people and ordering them around from his bed.)

But the story. The story of jumbled confusion begins at Flander's Fields. We all thought that Flander's Field is the big place with all the crosses and poppies not unlike the poem of the same name. We all thought that it's all about Canadian things considering a Canadian wrote the poem. The true story is it's a small American memorial where two American divisions pushed the Germans back on the last few days of the Great War. The real memorial is about 30 minutes away near a town called Ieper. But in honor of Danelle and my mom's parents we stayed and had a guide take us through the memorial. Who, in his British accent, couldn't believe we didn't know the history of this place. ummm... Haven't we all learned by now about the death of the individual? Names, dates, and places don't matter... Don't we know that the official version is usually the wrong version? And that if you really need to know anything, ask Jeeves... And most importantly, that the only really important thing in history is to learn how not to repeat our past mistakes? Such as don't ever tell anyone ever that you went to Harvard if you've just been wrong about something people are supposed to know...

... 30 minutes later we're in Ieper. With a museum about Flander's Fields and a map to the big memorial. Interesting fact: It was also one of the cities in Europe that was completely destroyed in the war and has a list of all the other cities that were destroyed as well on a large stone slab... Berlin, Beirut, Coventry, Dresden, Hiroshima, Ieper, Leningrad, Nagasaki, Rotterdam, Sarajevo, Stalingrad, Verdun, and Warsaw. It was rebuilt with modern tools to look old, if that makes sense? Ieper also was a foreshadow of bigger problems to come. Once we parked in Ieper everyone Instantly got out of the car and went in a different direction. Washrooms, food, shopping, maps to the cemetary, and coffee. (I think a lesson from this experience is that the less plan you have, and the more you're able to just go wherever the flow seems to take you, the more joyful and the less annoyed you'll be in big groups.) Luckily it actually worked out really well, surprisingly, and half an hour later everyone had coffee and food, and we had a map to the memorial. The real Flanders Fields...

http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/inflanders.htm

From Flanders Fields we went to Brugge and again everyone went off in every direction. But this cannot for a second be mistaken for the teamwork of Ieper. Our meeting place was a huge area, our time to meet was uncertain at best, and the crowds separating us were in the thousands. We possibly set a record for how quickly we lost Mom, Adrienne and Danelle, on the very first street in Brugge, while going to see some Michaelangelo statue in a church. Shopping is more important than history apparently. Then I split off from Lindsay, Jill, and Dad when I went to climb the tower in the middle of town. Then escalation. I guess Danelle lost Mom and Adrienne in hopes of meeting up with the rest of us, and Dad got separated from Lindsay and Jill for similar reasons the other way. Danelle and I ended up waiting around the same meeting point separately on opposite sides of the building for the same 40 minute time span in hopes that we'd find someone else. She busy feeling sorry for herself and me busy taking random pictures with my camera. A full 3 hours after we all split up we got back together in the same place once again. Successful, depending on your definition, as only 3 of us didn't want to talk about the afternoon ever again. Nobodys and everybodies fault. The fighting through crowds, the awesome shops, the beautiful town, the nothing enough to eat or drink, the sleepiness from an early morning, the highs and lows of family time, and possibly a headache... overall I'd say a great and terrible day. But, just like Disney movies, this trip came back together at an amazing French restaurant with a great beef stew and an even better Salmon in white wine sauce. Enya was playing, there was a fire in the fireplace, it was a long day, we literally all fell asleep between ordering our food and getting it brought out to us. Similar experience actually to my last time in Brugge when I fell asleep not 10 steps from the restaurant in the middle of the church service. Danelle was so embarrassed, but I reminded her that Jesus himself said, "Come to me all who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest." Needless to say I win more arguments than I lose. But ya, that was our day, great day, tonight is New Year's and I think I've heard about 400 firecrackers, fireworks, and I don't even know what going off around here, so I better get gone and start celebrating.