Off Line and On Again

A week ago, we conspired with my mom to “kidnap” my dad for his birthday weekend. She put an address in the GPS and told him just to drive. The final destination was a large rental cabin in Ohio, where all of us were waiting for them, waving down from the porch. “All of us” being me and my three siblings, our spouses and offspring. Twenty four in all, with number 25, a nephew just about finished in the incubator.

edit: My mom says there are 23 of us, with number 24 in the incubator. She’s right! Sorry about the misinformation.

We have procreated quite well, if I do say so myself. The little cousins are getting old enough to play games and entertain themselves pretty well, with only minor squabbles now and then. My sister suggested that each family be in charge of an activity to occupy the little guys constructively. Here the girls are making flower hair clips and the boys are painting and assembling slightly-more-complicated-than-they-look aircraft.

On Saturday my brother in law, Leon, smoked and grilled a birthday pig for my dad’s sixtieth celebration. Our kids were fascinated and a bit appalled that that is where ham comes from. It was a bit less civilized than the packaged stuff from the deli.

My dad suddenly disappeared on an urgent run to Walmart “to buy milk”. We may have been off the grid in our cabin in the woods, but there was a Walmart just three miles away. 🙂 Always he keeps a supply of fun stuff for the little guys, but this time caught him unprepared. It certainly wasn’t just milk in the bags he hauled in after bedtime. There was enough sugary stuff in the bowl he is holding up to fuel the little guys for the entire weekend.

The song service looks quite calm, doesn’t it? I laughed when I watched my video clips. There were so many varieties of wiggling going on in the middle of some very hearty singing. The last photo is of some of us, just as we were preparing to leave after a wonderful weekend. If you don’t know my family, these are my parents, my brothers, with the little pregnant wife missing, my little sister and her hubby, and my Gabe.

This is the kind of camping for us… a pond nearby to catch frogs, a woods to explore, a long lane away from the public, no internet or schedules,  a nice, solid roof over our heads and a long, long table where everybody has a spot.