Family Reunion

17 June: Grandma Suzy arrives. Grandma Olson's house (where she's staying) has been cleaned and is prepared. It is about the only thing that is.

23 June: The rest of the Florida relatives (namely, Uncle Victor, Aunt Joanne, Julia, and Grandpa Bob) arrive. Jessica and I appear on the scene rather late as they were working. We feel rather grungy.

24 June: Jessica and I stay up late waiting for Frannie and her two kids to arrive. Their plane is delayed, so they don't get to our house until 1 am. Jessica has fallen asleep, but my subconscious alerts me and I drag my half-asleep self off the couch, arouse Jess, and let them in. Then we go to bed, because tomorrow is a Big Day.

25 June: We wake up at various points and go through our various morning-time routines. These consist mostly of preparing to be presentable in public and eating. Then, all relatives congregate at our house while we prepare to head on up to Niagara Falls. ("All relatives" consists of: my entire family, Grandpa Bob, Grandma Suzy, Aunt Joanne, Uncle Victor, Julia, Uncle Wayne, Aunt Valerie, Nolan, Justin, Frannie, Ben, and Elsa.) Estimated time of departure is 0800. [We shall now break down into greater detail.]

0800: We are still preparing for liftoff.

0810: We are still preparing for liftoff.

0820: We are still preparing for liftoff.

0825: We have liftoff. We split up betwixt 4 vehicles. I land in Grandpa Bob and Grandma Suzy's car. With me are my sister Annetta and my cousin Nolan, who's 13.

0900: We are still driving. Nolan and Annetta are prank calling their cousins and organizing other prank callings of their cousins, and being prank called by their cousins. It is an amusing saga of our journey.

0930: We are still driving.

1000: We arrive, and as is customary procedure for all travelers throughout the ages (including Christopher Columbus), we swarm to the public restrooms.

1015: We acquire tickets, and by acquire, I of course mean that we grabbed other tourists's tickets when they weren't looking.

1020: And thus our Niagara Falls adventure begins. We stroll over to where the Maid of the Mist takes off and don our light blue ponchos. These ponchos are, in fact, a deliberate ploy on the part of the Niagara Falls Department of Ways To Make People Look Absolutely Goofy Without Realizing it.

1030: We are on the Maid of the Mist. This is actually a misnomer -- it would correctly be called the Maid of the Drench. Its namer was apparently a water-dweller, such as a duck or manatee.

1100: We slosh off the Maid of the "Mist" and discard our ponchos. Then, the insane among us decide to climb a staircase that is built very close to the Falls. There should be a sign posted about halfway up that says: "Warning: Fish Only!" As we see, there is no sign, and we take our waterlogged selves back down to where the wetness is much less intrusive.

1200: We find ourselves in need of lunch, and head back to where our picnic foods are calling us. We take our coolers to a flat, grassy area and commence consuming eatables such as turkey subs, yogurt, cookies, and juice. Then revived, we are ready to continue with the proceedings.

1330: We start off on a walk that takes us along side the Niagara River. Along the way, we see a smooth, flat place near the water's edge. Naturally, we dangle our feet in. Then we were informed by a park ranger that we are about five seconds upstream from the falls. So we get out.

1430: At this point, there are some of our number who need to get back to our house to get ready for work/sleep/prepare for the reunion, so we split up and a vehicle heads back. The rest of us hold a meeting in which we decide that some of us wish to go onto the Cave of the Winds deck (and when I say "we" and "us" I really mean "them.")

1500: We take a hike to Horseshoe Falls, gaze at it for a while, and then hike back to our vehicles. Once there, we split back up into our vehicles and head for home.

2000: This is our estimated time of departure for going down to Uncle Emery's for supper.

2015: This is when we actually leave. We sit around a campfire, talking, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows.

2215: We get home, talk for a bit about the next day, and then go to bed.

26 June

0800: It's safe to say that at this point, most of us are cognizant and eating breakfast, because today is another Big Day.

1200: At this time, we are hastily putting together the last little things, because the reunion starts in an hour.

1300: Folks arrive. We eat. We talk. We take photographs. They leave. We clean up.

2100: We have a bonfire for the ones who are staying here, and the close relatives. Then we go to bed.

Our Sunday basically consists of saying goodbye to Frannie and Ben and Elsa, and then church. Then we hung out at home. Monday was VBS, and Tuesday (today) the rest of the relatives left. It was great seeing everyone, and I hope we can see them all again! Oh, pictures...yes, I took a lot. I debated for about 3 seconds with myself: should I blog with pictures, or do a separate blog post with pictures? Th answer should be obvious: choice B. So I leave you with this wordy post, with a promise to get some pictures up at a later date!

Work and Family Reunion

It's beginning. The relatives are arriving, and pretty soon, they'll all be here and it will culminate in a large family reunion. Grandma Suzy came last week, and the rest of the Florida relatives acme today. They were here when Jessica and I came home from work. Even though Jessica got another job at a restaurant, she was off today so she came with me to tie blueberries at the local fruit farm. A couple weeks ago, I got called to go to work and weed the raspberries. After working a few days, I made some calculations and decided that if I were working alone, it would take me until roughly Labor Day to finish. So I recruited Jessica, and we continued weeding raspberries. After a couple days, we did some calculations and concluded that it would take us until roughly mid-August to finish. So we called our friends, Rachel and her brother Aaron, and they came. After a few days, we did some calculations and concluded that it would take us until roughly the Fourth of July to finish. So we called our other friends, Logan and Clayton, and between all of us, we finished tying the blueberries today. Having friends along turned it into something fun, with the fellowship, talking, laughing, motivation, and competition, even in the 80 degree, muggy weather!

At any rate, that was a tangent about work. Tomorrow night, the rest of the out-of-state relatives (those that are staying longer than just for the party) will be arriving. On Friday, a horde of us are heading up to Niagara Falls, and then Saturday we'll be having the reunion.

To go back to ancient history, on Sunday (Father's Day), we went mini-golfing. It was really fun. To close, here are some pictures! And I need to get up and clean up the kitchen/clean my room/do laundry/do schoolwork/etc.

The bloggie crickets are keeping me awake, so here I am :)

So, what's been going on with you? Life? School? Work? Family and/or friends? Yeah, me too. You know it's bad when you have to look at your own blog because you can't remember what you blogged about. *looks at blog* Oh...that was titled Trip Part One, implying that I should blog an indefinite number of Trip Follow-up posts. Here, how's this: I wrap the trip up really fast and then zip through random life stuff till we get caught up, 'k? 'K!

Last time, the exciting adventurers had just left their friends home and were heading to IN to be with their friend at her graduation party. We rode to her house with her grandparents, who live in Nashville, and stayed with Emily's family until Monday morning. We went to her graduation ceremony, which was the state-wide homeschool graduation ceremony and was really cool because there were tons of homeschoolers all in one place and the parking lot was full of 15 passenger vans! The next day, after church, she had her open house, and we enjoyed playing volleyball with her friends. I had fun taking pictures too...Emily has a way cool camera and let me play with it :)

Then, Monday morning, we arose at some very early point in the morning to head to the airport. Our flights back home went smoothly, and we were picked up by Daddy and Joanna.

Now we get to the part where I try to think of what it has been that's been keeping me so busy that this blog post has been in drafts for days. I could start with two weekends ago...the Hamburg airshow. only it wasn't an airshow...it was a pancake breakfast. Another squadron was hosting it, and we went up to lend a helping hand. A contingent of 6 of us went up Friday evening, set up our tents, and hung out with the other cadets. We watched a movie, and when I say "watched" I mean watched, not listened to. I think that between downpours of rain, I was able to catch the basic gist of the movie Mr. Holland's Opus. The downpour didn't end with the movie, unfortunately; it kept up pretty steadily throughout the night. I'm glad for waterproof tents. I slept a couple hours, all comfy atop the large rock that my tent was positioned above (that was sarcasm for those of you who actually thought that I might have been comfy sleeping on a rock). In the morning, we arose bright and early (more of the early than of the bright) and commenced setting up for the pancake breakfast. We parked cars, took pictures, made food, served food, cleaned tables, unparked cars, and cleaned up.

After that excitement, I was picked up by my family and we went to Matt's graduation party. He just graduated from highschool and is heading into the Army. We enjoyed being with friends there, and playing an awesome game of kickball. At first, the kickball game only had about six kids. But Jordan the optimist kept saying, "If we play, they will come!" and sure enough, kids trickled in and we had a fun game. Of course, what really made it fun was the fact that my team won...

So since then, I've basically been doing schoolwork, work at a local fruit farm, CAP, friends, and other random stuff. Grandma Suzy flew up today from FL. the rest of the FL relatives are coming up next week, as well as a bunch of other relatives, and we'll be having a family reunion next weekend. So that'll be busy and fun. But in order to enjoy all these doings properly, I must have sleep, so I regret to say that I must sign off here and I'll see you all later!