We had a family reunion this past weekend at the Dixie Star, which is Grandma and GrandBuddy's place on Lake Cherokee. The Williams' came in from Texas, Colorado and Pennsylvania. Good group. Good times.
Getting there almost sent me over the edge, though. We thought we were doing great by leaving Stella around 2:00. It is about 2.5-3 hr to Dixie Star from our place, but at 4:10, we were still sitting at the Dallas Tollway and 635. Insert your favorite cuss here.
We did manage to get there eventually, and to make up for the frustration we went to an all you can eat catfish place. While it was nice to eat french fries, fried catfish and hushpuppies, Kids #2 and #3 were not ready for a sit down dinner, and they took to romping that room. Mama and I were too tired to put up much of a fight. It was funny/sad to watch Aidan get the strong arm from his Mommy and Daddy while we let our little ones run wild. We've been the ones to keep ours prim and proper while hell broke loose around us, so I felt their pain. Not enough to do soemthing about my kids right then, but I still felt it.
The next day was the actual reunion. We set up the bouncy slide, got the waverunner working, blew up a row boat thing, got the paddle boat in the water, put the trampoline float thing in the water, borrowed the neighbor's party boat (GrandBuddy's boat is sick) and got food stuffs out. Visited with cousins, aunts, uncles, inlaws, outlaws and so forth. Like I said, Good group. Good times.
We ate lots of desserts because that is what we do best, but we also had some Bodacious barbeque to keep things proper.
Just before dark, we piled as many Williams's into the party boat as we could, and set out to the middle of the lake. The Lake Cherokee community does an annual fireworks thing, and since it is a lake community, everyone goes out on the lake to watch it. Those of us who didn't squeeze onto the boat enjoyed the show from the yard, since the Dixie Star has one of the best views of the show anyway.
And that was that for Saturday.
Sunday was spent cleaning up a little, being lazy a little, and then riding the waverunner big. Since I couldn't throw off Kid #1, we enlisted the help of some friendly Aggies (Robert and Karen) from across the lake, and they took Cami and Noah out to dump them. Mission accomplished, I believe. We also swam and paddled and pedaled the paddle boat and jumped on the trampoline out in the water. Then we slept soundily. Soundly? Soundily? Whatever.
Monday morning came, and I had to talk Noah into going on a ride, but once we got rolling, he figured out why I made him take his bike. The curvy and hilly roads around the lake are just plain fun to ride. We visited a bit more, then loaded up and head home.
We stopped near Tyler so I could get a DQ Country Fried Steak Sandwich. Sandwhich? Sandwich? Whatever. DQ just happened to be next to a fireworks stand, so we did that too.
Once we finally got home, we put the Bouncy Slide out and played some more just to try to squeeze as much as we possibly could out of the weekend. Once it got dark, we remembered that our house is in the absolute perfect spot for catching firework shows. By sitting at the end of our driveway by the gate to the pasture, we have PERFECT seats for the firework shows from Flower Mound, Grapevine and what was either a Roanoke or Texas Motor Speedway show.
We made a good effort at a show with our own fireworks, but Reanie (Kid #2) wasn't so much into that, so we cut it short. Didn't really feel like a loss though, because we had a very full and long weekend.
Woke up the next morning, piled the kids in the trailer, rode with Noah to swim practice and then rode the little ones to their school. Raced like hell to get home as three people called me in that seven miles to tell me that I was about to be in the middle of a serious storm. I was home about two minutes when it hit. It was a good one, and this is one time I was glad to not be riding in the rain.
I turned on the computer, saw that it was 60 messages, then the power went out, so I took a nap.
Prolly left something out, but I didn't mean to.
2 comments:
I must agree that it was a good weekend all in all. Tons of family, tons of food, tons of games and entertainment--what more could anyone ask for? As for the fish place and kid behavior... poor Aidan did get the short end of the discipline stick that night, but we didn't have to deal with it again all weekend. Being a hard a** sometimes pays off!
Shaun
ps
THANK YOU for bringing the slide!!
Remember how much of a hard ass we were with Noah? That paid off.
We're still firm with the little ones, but we've also learned to only apply that strictness when the kids are able to make choices.
If we really expected them to behave to the letter, we wouldn't have put them in that situation after that drive, way past meal time, with all those people, etc. Since we were in that back room and with family, we decided to pick our battles. Those kids hadn't been out of a car seat for more than 10 minutes in the 5 hours leading to dinner.
16 months and you'll have two rugrats who are vocal AND mobile too!
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