It's Much Too Quiet In The Aftermath Of All The Commotion

The party is over. It is very quiet here. After 4 days of extended family togetherness, we have retreated to our separate corners. My husband has hit the road--on our anniversary, no less! In other words, life is back to its normal routine.

We had a great time--despite some snippiness during an outdoor family photo session. (In our defense, it was extremely hot and humid.) There was more food than I care to see for a long time. Our favorites were potato salad, monkey bread, sausage and egg casserole, lasagna, more fresh fruit than you can imagine, birthday cupcakes, and sundaes in a jar. Those were just our favorites. That list doesn't even contain the food that we deemed really good. What I'm sayin' is that we did some eatin', my friends. I don't think I need to eat for at least a week. Anyone seen my elastic waistband pants??? Gah!

There was also a lot of celebrating our country's independence by blowin' thangs up. Or watching things "explodiate" as my 8 year old says. When did he start channeling George Bush and making up his own words? In fact, we spent a very long time after a very long walk standing on a very hot bridge with at least 5 bajillion strangers to watch a fireworks display that was good, but not good enough to be worth the hassle of at least three very tired young children nearly melting down into salty pools of their own sweat and tears and then being forced to march a "death march" in the dark to where we parked our cars--about a mile away--only to have to sit in our cars in crazy traffic. At least our vehicles had air conditioning. By the way, all of this took place a mile from our house. If there had been decent sidewalks to get us from our house to the bridge, we would have walked, but we didn't really want to risk our lives walking alongside the hilly road busy with holiday traffic.

Somehow, the air conditioning revived one of my very tired, very sweaty children and he pitched a royal fit when he found out that it was too late once we arrived home from the fireworks display to light off our own fireworks. How does the old adage go? "It's not a holiday until your offspring tells you that you are the meanest mother ever?" No wait. That doesn't sound right...

There was also swimming. It was crowded, but refreshing. And is there anything--anything--better than the smell of sunscreen and chlorine on your children? No, no there is not. Totally worth effort of suiting up and rubbing sunscreen on wiggling young children who do not wish to be sunscreened and rounding up enough towels for 15 people. I truly believe that the whole sunscreen/chlorine smell would be marketable. You can bet that I would buy it in the dead of winter when summer is but a memory.

And then there were games. There were several rousing games of SCAT with its betting of nickels, and card golf, with its horrible parallels with real golf (in scoring, I played this game much as I would "real" golf. In short: I sucked.) There was the shared agony of watching the Cubs on the telly. And there was the World Cup. I started out knowing nothing about it, but after watching with my brother, I rather came to enjoy it. And finally, bocce. Because no family get-together is complete without an utter schooling from my parents in this game. I don't think I had enough to drink. I always play better after a glass or two of wine. Or, maybe I just care less...hmmm....something to ponder.

The cousins all had so much fun being together again and getting reacquainted after a year apart. They had a great time playing with Thomas, the youngest member of the clan, who at this time last year made his presence known by making my sister-in-law feel horribly nauseated and tired. We like him much better in person. Heh. They played capture the flag and ghost in the graveyard. They goofed around and stayed up late talking. And several of them spent time playing two Coldplay songs on the piano. As much as I enjoy Coldplay, by the end of the visit, I was ready to declare a moratorium on any and all Coldplay songs.

There was also this phrase: "Keep your pantalones on, Erik Estrada!" Every time someone said it, everyone else cracked up.

See these people? I love them all.


We managed to get ourselves all together for a photo using the timer on my camera. We are all jumbled together, not standing as separate families. That feels right to me.

It was a good weekend that went by much too fast. I am already looking forward to next year but it just seems too far away.