2021-2022 Christmas Trip to OKC Part 1

Frank and I had spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Alex so we flew out after Christmas to Oklahoma City to visit Robin and family for the rest of the holiday season. Our trip ran Tuesday December 28th to Thursday January 6th, one day longer than planned due to flight fiascos. Had we realized that the omicron version of COVID-19 was on the rise, we might have cancelled our plans, as we had done in March 17, 2020. We are so glad we did not cancel. But ignorance is bliss; we flew out as planned, were very careful, and completed the entire trip COVID free.

We kept our activities mostly indoors and socially distanced when outside the home.  We had a blast seeing progress on home projects, playing board games, laughing all through an aggressive session of Hondo Pow Ling Tau! (explained later), eating Robin's huge home-baked chocolate chip cookies, and just generally hanging out with the Robin and Jeremy and kiddos Autumn (9) and Isaiah (6). Frank and I enjoyed watching the grandkids' unique personalities, personal preferences, and quirky behaviors, emerging. Jeremy's mom Anna was visiting other family in Colorado and graciously offered us the use of her apartment during our stay in OKC. The December 2021 Part 1 of our trip is covered in this post. The January 2022 Part 2 of our trip is covered in the next post.

Tuesday December 28th
Our initial flight out of Oakland through Denver was delayed an hour but we had a 2 hour layover before our second flight to Oklahoma City. Deplaning in Denver was also delayed for lack of ground crew to drive up the jetway.  The flight attendant asked those with tight connections to push their overhear call button. A scattering of blue lights lit up along the overhead baggage compartments. Other passengers were advised to please let the those folks with a flight to catch off first. We stood and made our way out into the aisle only to stand there for over a half-hour, waiting for a jetway to be driven up so we could walk off the plane. Ground crew was woefully understaffed, whether it was due to COVID or the weather was unclear. We were lucky our connection was also late; so, with a bit of a sprint four gates away, we made it! We arrived at OKC, better late than never. Robin and Autumn did the airport pickup and we walked into their home to behold a beautifully decorated tree with the gifts we had mailed ahead waiting beneath.

Robin had prepared a delicious slow cooker dinner of cranberry pork. It smelled so good and we were so hungry, having eaten very lightly before departure and having no spare time in Denver to eat. Of course I packed some snacks; but warm, fragrant food was so appealing. It taste every bit as good as it smelled. I got the recipe and will definitely try it back in California. We ate and opened some gifts. Everyone seemed excited about the The Hardest Hidden Pictures book we'd gotten for Jeremy. He definitely would not be solving it alone.

Robin then drove us over to Anna's apartment where we met her two birds and settled in for the night. The parakeets twittered away cheerily but we had no difficulty at all getting to sleep and staying asleep until mid-morning.

Wednesday, December 29th
Robin and Jeremy had made some home improvements but we had arrived after dark the previous night and could not really take them in. As we pulled up in front of the house in the light of day, we noted and admired the new roof, new windows, and fresh paint job. The place really looked fresh and crisp. Indoors, they had walled off a portion of a very long family room with a pair of glass paned French doors to make a dedicated sewing room for Robin. Frank greeted and petted their cat Elliott while seated in Robin's new sewing room.

Isaiah is in the first grade and demonstrated his reading skills to us before we launched into some board games.

First up kids and adults played Mafia de Cuba. A cigar box which the "mob boss" has seeded with a predetermined number of diamonds and dollars is passed around from "lackey" to "lackey" while the mob boss interrogates each one to figure out who is loyal and who is the leak or an FBI agent. Frank, strictly adhering to logic deductions, could not understand how Autumn, who often often used body language and innuendos, had a better successful guess rate than him. The game goes quickly. We played a few times and then the kids scampered off for some YouTube time while the adults continued on with the game Calico.

Calico is a game of building quilts with hexagonal tiles then encouraging cats to sleep on them. There are six colors and six patterns. Some cats are attracted to certain patterns. Get adjacent colors alike and you can add buttons to your quilt. Points are awarded for cats, buttons, and groups of six tiles with  unique combinations of colors and/or patterns. When the entire board is filled, the player with the most points wins.  It is a colorful, competitive game with simple rules but depending on how serious you are about winning, the strategy to do so can be elusive. Check YouTube for Calico: How to play in five minutes; the short video has great graphics. I really liked this game, mainly because of the visuals. I  enjoyed the process of playing the game. Frank had a difficult time merely playing the game and seeing how things came out. He was very intenst on trying to figure out what a winning strategy should be. We nearly came to blows on the last tile we inserted since I selected what was best for me which turned out to be the absolute worst for him. It was a mute point since Robin and Jeremy tied for the title first place.

Then Frank and I played Kraken Attack! with Autumn and Isaiah, a kids game, suitable for ages 7 and up. It is a cooperative, rather than a competitive game, where the players work together  to keep the kraken from boarding and destroying the ship. Players use various weapons such as swords or cannons, to stop tentacles that are creeping up from both sides of the ship. The dice are rather large, smooth, tactilely appealing, and with various adorable sea creatures instead of numbers on the sides; and kraken is also evilly cute. Check YouTube for a one minute video clip of playing Kraken Attack.  

The kids of course know the rules with all the innuendoes while Frank and I struggle to grasp it all on the go. Autumn and Isaiah assumed we'd learn Kraken Attack! more easily than we did. They were beginning to think their Grandma and Grandpa were rather thick-skulled, especially after watching us scratch our heads as we concentrated to pick up the novelty of the Mafia de Cuba and Calico games. We had fun with the kids, even if they are far better players than teachers. Although it got very intense and fast moving toward the end of the game, our grandparent/grandchild team defeated the kraken and the ship was saved! How's that for the advantages of age and wisdom! Or perhaps it is the superiority of humans over cephalopods?

After dinner, Jeremy broke out the board game of El Dorado. Each player, represented by a board token called a meeple (actually a word in the dictionary), wants to journey across land through jungles or deserts and by water, circumventing rocky mountains or deep chasms, to reach gold at the end of the quest. By choosing his path wisely, as the cards in his hand permit, the player can shorten his route or block another player's progress while building an increasingly powerful deck of cards to control future moves. It was involved but not overly complicated. It is for ages 10 to 99 and takes about an hour to play – once you have learned the rules and figure out what your are doing. We played it several times during our visit and had fun, although we will need more practice to try to learn a strategy.

At the end of the evening, Robin drove us back to Anna's apartment for the night. We watched a bit of TV. We found a show we liked on Netflix called The Good Cop, a ten episode series with Josh Groban and Tony Danza in the cast. Sadly there is no second season, but we really enjoyed the eight shows we did watch in Oklahoma and finished the other two back in Livermore. Netflix described the show as

The Good Cop ... When he's not solving murders, a pathologically honest detective tries to keep an eye on his crooked but kindhearted dad.

Thursday, December 30th

The whole crew of Jeremy, Robin, Autumn, and Isaiah came to pick us up from Anna's in the late morning.  Robin showed us where Anna's game closet was for when we had at an overnight there while she and Jeremy had a date night. Autumn spied the game of Clue and so we all sat around Anna's coffee table for a rousing game. Googling a description of the game yields  

Clue is a classic board game for players ages eight and up [that many folks may remember from their childhood]. The game takes about an hour to play and calls for three to six players to investigate a murder by gathering evidence.

Jeremy pointed out to me that one of the suspects had changed. She was now Dr. Orchid rather than Mrs White. According to the Washington 2016 Post article  

aging housekeeper will be replaced by a much more professionally accomplished character: biologist Dr. Orchid, who holds a PhD in plant toxicology and appears to be of Asian descent.

The change was in response to a petition.

Hasbro should change Mrs. White to Dr. White. By portraying her as a white-coated physician, surgeon, or scientist, it would show support for women in general, and give young girls an everyday image of an accomplished professional who just happens to be a woman. It may not seem like much, but it is these kinds of small gestures and images that subtly combine to make up the impression that young people have of other people and themselves.

Poking around on the internet I learned more about other changes and evolutions in Clue from a history.com website about the game

[Anthony Pratt] who worked in a local munitions factory during the war, invented the suspects and weapons between 1943 and 1945, as a way to pass the long nights stuck indoors during air-raid blackouts.... Pratt’s original patent, which included 10 characters and additional weapons such as the shillelagh (an Irish walking stick) and hypodermic syringe, was streamlined for efficiency; in the released version of Clue, only six characters and six weapons remained. Of those weapons, the rope token has since been updated from an actual piece of string to a plastic facsimile. And the lead pipe token, made from a piece of actual (poisonous) lead in the original version of Clue, was updated to steel in 1965, then to pewter. A baseball bat and gun with silencer have since been added.

After we returned to home base at Robin and Jeremy's house we launched into some non-sedentary activities. All right ... not all of us. Frank and I remained spectators for the spectacular pillow fight amongst the family of four. Autumn really was involved, too. Her foot is visible peeking out from the brown recliner. She is just losing the battle at the moment.

After dinner we all snuggled in on the couch and watch the new Disney's 2021 animated movie Encanto. The peppy music is really get-up-and-dance good and the brightly-colored animation is visually stunning. Each character has a unique power that is extremely well portrayed in their actions, mannerisms, and body language. I was slow to pick up the plot line, but I was enjoying the experience without needed it to be logical.

Friday December 31st
The pillow fight the night before convinced Robin that Autumn and Isaiah needed to burn off some energy in more physical activities. The weather cooperated so, in the afternoon, off we went to a local park. Frank was proud he had managed to rotate all the cylinders in correct numerical sequence on the play structure.

He then challenged me to a game of tic-tac-toe, but I jumped up and turned three cylinders to X's before he even had a chance to respond with his turn and find some O's. Victory was mine!

I wanted a photo with Frank, Robin, and the kids but this was a far up the ladder as I would let him climb.

In the evening it began to rain. The reflection of the Christmas lights led to mental reflection as Frank sat outdoors until – to paraphrase the classic Grinch book

... he got an idea. An awful idea. The Frank had a wonderful, awful idea.

How fun it would be to splash in the puddles. Isaiah got all suited up in his rain gear. Frank did not. They went out to the curb at the base of the driveway and Frank demonstrated to Isaiah how to stomp in the puddles at just the right angle so the water splashes up on the other person. Most important is the war cry simultaneously shouted with the forceful stomp.

Hondo... pow.... ling... tau! STOMP!

Isaiah was well outfitted for the activity but Frank was cold and wet. I draped a blanket over his shoulders so there would be no stop in the action and he fearlessly but wearily stomped on.

At one point he called me out to the street to show me something. I naively went toward him and then he stomped a huge puddle on innocent defenseless me. I yelled, "You rat fink!". But he got me so good and he enjoyed it so much I could not help laughing along.

Autumn had been up in her room engrossed in a book when she heard the ruckus by the front door. She came down to investigate. When she learned what all the activity had been she said mournfully, "You were splashing and you didn't call me...?". "Well suit up and we'll go out now," Frank told her. This time Frank took the time to put on a jacket himself. As it turns out, Autumn excels at splashing and tired out her Grandpa. I think that night was a highlight of our visit; though Frank will attest that his poor hip was quite sore for a couple days thereafter from the repeated impact.

After taking off her rain gear, Autumn and her mom showed off that they had matching Tee shirts sporting the phrase CLEVER GIRL.

After the splashing episode, Jeremy's sister August, her husband Evan, and their three sons, 3-year Wyatt and 4-month old twins Tavish and Roderick, arrived for New Year's Eve dinner. Jeremy made his special spaghetti sauce and Frank and I got to hold the twins. Awww. Aren't they so cute?

For dessert we had Robin's incredible, freshly-baked, huge chocolate chip cookies. She told me her hint that she uses whole wheat flour for about one-third of the flour because it controls the spread of the cookies better. She also uses a #20 (2 oz) scoop for portioning them on the cookie sheet.

It was New Year's Eve so Frank and I headed back to Anna's about 10:00 pm, before any inebriated party goers would be on the roads. We did not watch any New Year specials on TV, no falling apples or descending crystal balls or glasses of Cold Duck for us. Instead we listening to the Roku trivia quiz on television with the accompanying Roku animated countdown and then flopped into bed. This concludes Part 1 of our 2021-2022 Christmas trip to OKC. The next blog post will be about Part 2 which happened in 2022.