Long Day's Journey Into Family

Long time passing with no blogging here, due to Life Constantly Happening.  As long as I am tethered to a desktop computer (laptop stolen soon after we moved to ABQ) I can only blog when I'm at home, and at home with nothing else to do, at that. This seems to happen very seldom. Much of August was spent traveling across the country to get to my niece's wedding in Philadelphia, a lot of Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee in between - along with a little Virginia and Maryland.  The wedding was a delightful gathering of the clan, my niece was beautiful, as she always is, my brother and sister-in-law were proud and happy, the groom seems like a really great guy.  Having made the mistake of moving so far away from most of my family, occasions like these are wonderful opportunities to see everyone, watch the kids growing up, meet the newest family members - and, since a big party was involved, dance our butts off.  I have lots of adorable nieces and nephews, as well as a growing number of great-nieces and nephews, and most of them were there in Philadelphia for the wedding.

But, the New England gang wasn't able to come - so, as we were only a day's journey south, when the Philadelphia diaspora happened and everyone packed up to head home, Gail and I headed to Cape Cod, where we met up with my niece Jessica and her two little girls for almost a week of camping at the beach. My nephews, Jess' brother Tom and her partner Steve, were able to come out for the first night and join in our big cookout, so I was able to see everyone I am related to, with the exception of another nephew who wasn't able to get to the Cape, during this big trip East.

We had of course planned this camping excursion well in advance, and I have to say it was just more fun than should be legal - but it ended in a scramble to leave the Cape before Hurricane Irene got close enough to blow us off. Jess and the girlies went back to Rhode Island to get their own digs battened down, and Gail and I took down the tent and spent our last night in the car (it's a Honda Element, so we often sleep in it when camping anyway), got up before dawn and made it off the bridge before the traffic piled up on Rt. 6. This time by the water filled up our ocean-homesick souls, and sent us back to the high desert vowing to immediately start saving for next year's sojourn on the Atlantic coast.