Van Buren and the return home

When our time was up in Washington DC, we spent a lovely day with some friends in Wilmington, Delaware whom we had not seen in a long time. We really appreciated their hospitality and wish we had more opportunities to spend time with them.

Then we were off to western New York, place of so many of my wonderful childhood summer memories, my parents' roots, and old friends and family. As we arrived after a day of winding across Pennsylvania, I put on Dar William's ode to the region that always hits me just right and captures the essence of the place. It definitely got me in the mood.

We spent a really nice nine days there. Some mornings we played tennis with the kids before heading down to the beach for the afternoon.

 

The fourth of July was a whopper of a day. After church in the morning, the boys got ready for the neighborhood bicycle parade followed by a pancake breakfast.

 

Then we headed to the annual Zaccari reunion for all the descendants of my great great grandparents. A hundred or two people still come every year, and there is a nice familiarity in it. There is a jump house for the kids, and they alternated between jumping and eating desserts for a few hours until they were completely worn out.

 

We headed home where, against all odds, I actually got all kids to take a nap before heading to our third party of the day at the home of an old family friend. They served us some delicious dinner, we got to catch up with old friends, and it concluded with an absolutely extraordinary fireworks show over the lake followed by a bonfire, s'mores and hot dogs. Whew.

My Mom and her sister Lynn together own my grandparents' old cottage on Lake Erie. For a few days both of their families were all at the lake, and it was great to catch up with my cousins. We especially appreciated how generous Lynn was with her motorboat; Joseph and Caleb got to take lots of rides in it and go tubing, and Nephi got to water ski.

 

The lake has some of the loveliest sunsets you could imagine, and this year each night seemed to be amazing. One calm evening we had a stone skipping contest between Joseph, my sister Laura, and my parents. After an impressive showing by my Mom, my Dad managed to edge her out for the win.

 

 

It was especially lovely to have a few days to spend with my amazing and beautiful sister. I loved catching up with her on where she is in her life right now, and where she's going. This summer she's spending a few weeks in Tibet as part of her study of Tibetan medicine.

 

We also got to spend time with my Grandma. I really can't overstate how much we all love her. And she loves us all, and especially the boys, so much.

 

Her Alzheimer's is slowly progressing, although she is still able to function quite well on her own in most respects. But many associations she makes are automatic, and every time we came over she would see the boys and immediately want to make cut out sugar cookies. Once we tried to just bake the break-apart premade cookie dough cookies, and she said we were ruining everything. "I want to see little boys covered in flour!!" she insisted. So we made cookies pretty much every day, and really, what is there to complain about?

We also spent a terrific day with my parents at Midway park, had a nice reunion with my Mom's cousins, and hosted our traditional kids' tea party on the beach. Overall it was one of the nicest years we've spent at Van Buren, and really appreciate all the work my Mom and Lynn put in to make it such a special place.

On our way back to Colorado, we spent a really wonderful two days in Dayton. We got to see a few friends there, had a barbecue with our old neighborhood, enjoyed the amazing playgrounds and parks that are everywhere in that city, and also hit up some of the city's thrift stores in between. I have no idea what magical mix of thrift and wealth cosmically combine in Dayton to make it the thrift store capitol of the universe, but those stores are incredible. I miss our friends in Dayton, but those stores are a close second.

And then it was drive, drive, drive until we arrived back home to discover everything well. And the trip was over. Lots of amazing memories, 4700 miles, no real catastrophes. Success.