Rare Family Vacation



My Mom and Aunt Patsy
We miss Aunt Nori very much.



When a family lives on a farm time away together is rare.  This past weekend my extended family celebrated a family reunion and the life of my Aunt Nori who passed away last year. 

It takes time and money to plan time away. Dogs need to be boarded; someone needs to feed the chickens and cats.  Weeding, watering, snow plowing, mowing, planting, keeping pipes from freezing, painting, pruning, canning, and on and on. For these reasons Rick and I don’t usually leave home at the same time. We only go to our parent’s for Christmas when there aren’t as many chores to be done. 

For this special occasion we managed to all get away for the weekend. We arrived in the Dells at different times: Leander and I on Friday, Maggie arrived on Sat morning and Rick on Saturday afternoon. We arranged for one of Leander’s friends to let the dogs out Saturday night and Sunday morning. Rick fed and watered the cats and chickens before he left and Kenzie just had to put everyone in for the night.  Our neighbor across the street kept an eye on the place for us. 

The reunion was awesome! I hadn’t seen many of my cousins in years.  As my sister Cathy said, “How did everyone grow up and I stayed the same age?”  It seems only yesterday that we had our first family reunion when Leander, Claudia, Matthew and Kevin weren’t even a year old.  Now they are getting their drivers licenses and thinking about college. 

Ande, Maggie, Aunt Patsy, Jan and Gloria
I think that is David on guitar behind Ande.

We have several musicians in the family and they brought instruments and amplifiers. After dinner and a beautiful tribute to Aunt Nori on Saturday night, the “boys” began to play. Every so often someone would get up to sing. Primarily, my brother Chris, daughter Maggie and my cousin’s son, David sang and of course we all sang along when we knew the words.  Leander and Maggie performed a beautiful rendition of Amazing Grace. I even got up and sang with Maggie- John Cougar’s Pink Houses.  We forgot a verse but Chris kept us on task.   I don’t sing well but had the greatest time.

Another first was playing at the water park.  I have never been to the Dells and I have vertigo and a fear of heights, but I was bound and determined to overcome my anxiety.  I started very slow by simply meandering on the Lazy River assessing all of the water slides. I began at kiddie slide with Leander, Maddie and Ellie cheering me on.  Leander was very supportive and helped me pick a big slide to try. She grabbed a two person inner-tube and we walked up the many, many, many stairs.  We decided on the Emerald River. I carefully got onto the tube behind Leander- my legs under her arms. I begged her to not push us out of the shoot too fast. But we got stuck and the young man monitoring the ride pushed us down the slide!  We turned left and right, went up and dropped down.   I have no memory of saying anything but Leander swears I pulled up my legs up and said, “I can’t do this.”  Where would I go? There’s no way out.  Surely if people died they wouldn’t have this ride.  As we splashed into the wading pool at the end I could not stop smiling, it was a blast.  I am so glad I did it. 

I was happy to get back to the farm and to my own bed. But I miss everyone. We set up a Facebook page and I am spending a lot of time checking for new photos and updates.

Back to feeding the chickens, weeding the garden and mowing the lawn.

We clean up pretty nice for counrty folk!