Memorial Day Shenanigans

Memorial Day weekend was a blast.  I took advantage of the fact that my adviser was out of town, and also decided that since I worked Memorial Day and Labor Day last year, that I would not work Memorial Day this year. So I didn't.  And apparently, neither did anybody else in my lab.  So that was good. 

It started with my dad sending me a text about 2 weeks prior that read something along the lines of, "You're coming to the Bay House for your Mother's surprise party, right?"  Um.  Dad.  I think you forgot to invite me to the surprise party.  But whatever, I rolled with it and decided that, since it was a 3-day weekend, I didn't mind making the 5.5 hour drive up north to celebrate my Momma's 50th birthday.  On my next birthday, I will be half her age :-).  Which means that she was my age when I was born.  But we won't get into that.  

For those who aren't familiar with my family history, the "Bay House" is a really old house on the Sandusky Bay in Ohio that my grandparents own.  We went there a lot for vacation when I was a kid with the family of my mom's best high school friend, who has 4 girls that are about the same ages as me and my sisters (of course the 9 of us became the best of friends growing up together, and terrorized our fathers who were 2 men surrounded by 11 women in that house).  Most summers we would spend at least a week there.  It was the first place that introduced me to Lake Erie (since I wouldn't move to Erie until I was 12, and I was coming to the Bay House since I was born).  The backyard is the waterfront, and you can see Cedar Point across the bay.  Lots of my favorite childhood memories took place in this house, it's a wonderful place. It's also yellow. 

It was great to see family and friends.  Audrey was off of her crutches (yay!), and I got to see all the cousins/aunts/uncles that were in town (and some that came from really far away! Aunt Lisa came in from San Francisco.  Talk about dedication).  Also, 3 of the 4 girls that would play with my sisters and I during our Bay House summer visits were there, so we got to see them!  The one that was missing (the oldest...the one that's just barely older than me) lives in Colorado with her husband and teaches Preschool.  

Other than surprising my Momma, my favorite part was that I got to see my childhood best friend, Erica.  We were inseparable between 1994 and 1999, Erica and I were.  And after I moved to Erie, we wrote each other almost every week for years and visited each other about every six months through the beginning of high school.  I last saw her at her wedding 2 years ago, and before that it had been a really long time since we had seen each other.  So much fun to catch up! Also I got to actually have some conversations with her husband (hard to catch them on the wedding day...), and he's a really cool guy.  We also made tentative plans for future summer visits, so hopefully that will pan out!  It's amazing that we still have so much in common even 13 years after I moved away. 

 

Another highlight of the trip was paying a Memorial Day weekend visit to the graves of my grandparents, both of whom served in the Army/Marines in WWII/Korea, respectively.  This was the first time since their funerals in 2009 and 2010 that I had been out to see them.  That was pretty sweet. 

Here's one last picture.  Aren't my sisters getting so big?  Weird, since I remember when they were BORN.