Summer Vacation #2

Last week we made our annual trip to New England to visit my siblings. While I understand that it's nice that I can go there and visit everyone in one shot (and do so every year), it still perturbs me to some extent that my siblings rarely make the trip to visit us. It's about a five hour car ride to get there and we usually end up spending a week visiting everyone and doing some touristy stuff.

Every year we stay at my sister's house. She has the biggest house and two of her three children are now living away from home, so there's lots of room. My brother lives just a mile away and my other sister lives about an hour and a half away. My sister is always after me to come visit and stay with her but when we get there, I always feel like I'm intruding. I don't think she really likes having little kids around....I'm not even sure she likes to have company for extended periods of time! Yet, I don't really have an option. So, whenever we visit, I do my best to stay out of her hair. We always spend some time with her, but most of the time I try to get out of the house early and return after dinner sometime so we're out of her hair. I'm am also constantly trying to make myself useful while there -- cleaning up the kitchen and doing whatever laundry I see that needs to be done...I never get a thank you for any of this, which makes me feel like I'm almost expected to work while staying there....I don't know, maybe she just doesn't know that I'm doing all that work around her house.

Anyway, we spent a day with my sister on her new sailboat. Lots of fun going out, but no wind. Still, it was a nice day. The next day we went on my brother's boat...actually it was not a great day, weather-wise, so we ended up just going up and down the river near his yacht club on his dinghy. The kids had a great time swimming and scooting around on the little boat. So did I. We then spent a few days with sister #2 at her house. She's a lot more laid back and the kids had a lot of fun. Then back to sister #1's house (with a day at Mystic in between!) followed by another day of fun on my brother's boat. This time, a perfect day with lots of swimming, crabbing, and walking on the beach. E even got to do some tubing on the back of the boat.

The last few days were spent in upstate NY for an aunt's funeral. She actually died in March but the ground was too frozen to bury her back then. So, the family decided to wait until the weather got warmer...Where has she been for the last four months, you ask? Well, I wasn't sure either! I thought maybe she was on ice or in a drawer somewhere...but she was on my cousin's mantle. I guess this whole process was good for closure for her (her mom was well into her 90s when she died but lived with my cousin and her husband for the last several years...if not almost my cousin's whole life!). It was also good to see some other cousins that I haven't seen in probably forty years.

After all the driving, though, I'm really glad to be home. Vacation #3 coming up in a couple weeks....then school is back in session!