Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Family Reunion Part 1 (Through Friday)

Every year my mother's family gets together for our annual family reunion. We have been doing this EVERY YEAR since 1979. That's 33 years of reunions... And this year we very nearly canceled. I take that back. We did cancel. Then we changed our mind, and the location.


I was so excited to have been part of the planning this year, and my mother and I spent months last year planning, searching, and nailing down the details for the campground, activities, etc. Reunion was only going to be 3 hours away from my house, and that alone had me thrilled! I usually have to travel more like 12 hours to get to reunion. Everything was going well until 2 1/2 weeks before reunion when my grandparent's (the patriarch and matriarch of the family) came into town to talk to my mother and her sister. The next morning, my mother called me and tearfully explained that her mom had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Family Reunion was called off. Grandma can't travel and is not allowed to be that far from her doctors (12 1/2 hours).

I was pretty shocked. And I had a bad couple days. I will admit, I am pretty close to my Grandma. She was my employer for 3 years, and I learned a lot from her. She was an integral part of my life during the bleak 4 plus months when my father was in the hospital and after he had died. She is strong and silent and amazing. And I am sad. But that's for a different post. So... two weeks later (a mere 4 days before reunion was supposed to occur) we got a call from my aunt (mom's other sister) saying reunion is back on. But we are moving it to Grandma's and Grandpa's hometown (also my hometown).

Um... Okay... ACK!

Joe had originally taken time off work for reunion. When it was canceled he rescinded the request. And now he had to ask for it off again! Which, thankfully, he got off. Mom was not so lucky. She had to work one of her original days off. BUT- she made up for it by taking an extra couple days AFTER reunion off as well. To make a REALLY long and frustrating few days short it worked out like this:

Joe and I (and kids) would drive down Thursday.

Mom would fly in Friday.

Joe would drive back with my brother on Sunday (gotta work).

I would drive back with my mom (and our kids) on Tuesday. (I wanted a few extra days to visit family and friends)

So we drove for 12 1/2 hours on Thursday. And got into town with very little incidents. Okay, okay, Matthew took a bath in yogurt (not my idea- Lacey loves to share), and Lacey kinda didn't make it to the potty in time (so she had to sit in a wet seat for a couple hours), but there could have been worse things...

{Que doomed suspense-like music now} Dun Dun DUNNNNN....

We were staying at my cousin's house during the reunion, and so we unloaded our two youngest into the bathtub and commandeered their washing machine and dryer to clean their car seat covers first thing.

Friday went well. We woke up at 6:30 (darn Alarm clock- his name is Matthew). We ate some breakfast took our time getting ready, and headed into town for a fantastic lunch at a local eatery we HAVE to go to when we get into town. We then, had a blast hanging out at my aunt's house for a few hours, and eventually met up with EVERYONE at a local (mini golf/laser tag/arcade/bumper cars and other such activities) FUN center. It was mostly okay most of the time. Matthew gave us some grief, but that's what one year old's do, so it was not too big a deal. We got to visit with most of my out of town aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was nice. But Grandma was tired, so we didn't see her that first day.


1 comments:

Diane Conn said...

Which local eatery?