Family Vacation 2024: Postscript

— पांच हजार छह सौ उनतालीस — Boy, did I post a lot more entries in this blog over the course of my time off than I initially anticipated! I should have known to expect it, though. My last Daily Lunch Update was a week ago, Wednesday last week. Since then, I have shared posts for: Wilcox Family Farms Tour (about Thursday 8/15; posted Friday) Celebrating Danielle's 48th birthday) (about and posted on Friday, 8/16) Return to Jetty Island, Everett with Lynn and Zephyr, Shobhit also joining (about and posted on Saturday, 8/17) Third Biannual Family Vacation 2024: Tokeland, WA (about Sunday-Tuesday, August 18-20; posted on Tuesday, August 20) I'd have loved to include even more detail than I managed to share on the Family Vacation, but there just wasn't time; that was the only one for which I adapted from the requisite email travelogue I sent out last night—which actually included a shot or two from each of the previously listed events above, but I did not adapt those for yesterday's post since I had already posted about them all here. In any case, yesterday's post still included by far the most detail, even with a whole lot of it left out. I'd love to provide more detail in photo captions for the whole trip, but with how busy my social life remains, that doesn't seem super likely. I will reiterate this much: I had a fantastic time. All of the families got informally surveyed yesterday morning, asking if we thought it better to return to this hotel in Tokeland on the coast when we reconvene for the next Family Vacation in 2026, or return to Leavenworth, where this event had occurred in both 2020 and 2022. The unanimous vote was to stick with Tokeland. It's just easier this way for a lot of reasons—the worse weather notwithstanding (the Leavenworth years were both held in September, the weather was plenty warm most years, no rain, although last time we did have wildfire smoke; on the Washington Coast, we could have predicted the likelihood of rain). Staying in a hotel where each individual family gets their own unit is a lot easier than cramming us all into one huge house where there is one booking and everyone pays separately. Gina coordinated the booking at the hotel too, so that was actually similar, but if any family has to back out (as Alex did) then canceling the reservation is a lot simpler. As it happened, this year there were 25 people—counting both parents and children—who made it, among them booking 10 of the rooms. The totwl has a total of 18 units, 9 on the ground floor and 9 on the second floor; seven of the ground floor units, all of them in a row, were taken by us, and three of them on the second floor. This was how it shook out: Ground floor unit #3: Angel
#4: David, Georgia and Emmy (plus one dog, Coco) (Jackie could not make it as she had to work)
#5: Gina and Beth
#6: Nikki, TJ, Cheyanna and Elijah
#7: Brandi, Nick, Jaycee, Gianni and Enzo
#8: Wendy
#9: Britni and Carlos (plus two dogs, Taz and Lola) then, second floor unit #11: Matthew and Shobhit
#12: Dad and Sherri
#17: Ricky, Raiden and Ruby I even whipped up a family tree that I created in Excel, to indicate how everyone is related; and which 25 of the people on it actually made it to this Family Vacation. There was another 12 on the family tree who could theoretically have been a part of it, except that neither Christopher nor any of his kids have ever come before this year, and this was Nikki and TJ's first year—they only learned about it when people talked about it at Dad and Sherri's 40th anniversary party back in March. The only family that has come before but did not come this year was Alex and his family; besides Nikki and TJ, the only newcomer this year was Wendy, Sherri's sister. In any event, this means about 2/3 of the entire family tree did make it, which isn't bad actually. Between my three siblings, Dad and Sherri have a solid 12 great grandchildren—two more, now, than their 10 grandchildren. Any of those great grandchildren who are not siblings would be second cousins—all those on line 13 of the family tree. None of the 12 (three quarters) were at the vacation getaway this year, and they seemed to all get along swimmingly. Cheyanna and Elijah, Nikki and TJ's kids, particularly seemed to enjoy playing with "the cousins" they had never really known before this, because they live in Spokane. These "great grandchildren" are my grandnieces and grandnephews, by the way. I am old. These kids, who ranged in age from maybe 2 or 3 to 15, were definitely Sherri's favorite thing about the trip. She loves being surrounded by the small children, now that most of the grandkids have grown up enough themselves to start popping out babies. This actually just hit me as I was writing this, too: in years past I might have been annoyed by all the kids, but now even I find them charming and adorable. It helped that none of them were terrible or badly behaved; they all seem to be pretty great kids. — पांच हजार छह सौ उनतालीस — — पांच हजार छह सौ उनतालीस — Anyway, Sherri declared that she didn't think she'd want an upper floor unit by the next time we come back. Dad likes the view better up there just like Shobhit and I do, but he can just walk up the stairs to get a look, I guess. She had asked the manager if we could book the entire row of 9 units on the ground floor, but I think that may be harder if we all take Gina's advice of getting a player's club card at the Shoalwater Bay Casino, which can be used to get a 10% discount on the booking—but only if we book individually. We may still be able to coordinate with the hotel manager. Of course, if we still need 10 units next time, at least one of us will still have to book upstairs. Which Shobhit and I will definitely still want to do. I'm sure Sherri would be happy as long as all the families with kids are on the ground floor with her and Dad anyway, which doesn't include us! As for yesterday, we all left around mid-morning. I had made chai to share on Monday, and a surprising number of people happily accepted the offer of some (both Ricky and David separately said something along the lines of, "That sounds really good actually), so the full batch I made that day got easily used up, without having to make more. There was no need to make the same amount yesterday though, so I made some just for Shobhit and me, which we drank while hanging out with family in the morning, most of the rest of them having coffee. The problem with this, we discovered, was that Shobhit and I had to pee multipe times on the way home. We both had to go really bad once we were headed into Olympia, so I told him we could just stop at Dad and Sherri's house and use the bathroom there. They were well behind us, and Shobhit was a little nervous about using the house without telling them. I was like, I have a key! I still texted them after we left, because Shobhit was afraid we'd freak them out if they saw a wet footprint in the house or something. And of course they were fine with it. Our next stop was Federal Way, where we stopped at the Costco for gas. Shobhit loves stopping there because that gas station consistebtly has the cheapest gas in the state. (Why this would be the case, I haven't a clue.) By then we both really had to pee again, so it was nice to have another stop already planned. We still had another stop after that, grocery shopping at DK Market, the Asian grocery store in Renton. It was right after leaving there that I nearly lost all my keys, then miraculously Shobhit found them stuck between the back window and the drunk when we were all of three blocks from home. Jill, who used to work here at PCC, responded to my cross-post about this on Threads. She has 530 followers, a whole lot of whom must have seen her response and thus my post, because I have never had such a massive response to anything I have posted: my post has now been seen more than 14,000 times, and it currently has 43 replies and counting—most of them recounting similar stories of things they either lost by leaving on the top of their car and driving away, or similarly finding it miraculously still on their car once they got wherever they were going. It's actually been really fun to read though. A positive byproduct of a very stressful situation! Which also ended with massive relief. Until Shobhit found the keys righ there, we were going to unload the groceries and drive all the way back to Renton to look for the keys, which seemed unlikely we would find since I know we heard them slide off the roof while accelerating down a nearby arterial—it's not like we could just look where we had parked. I was kind of despairing because I knew how unlikely it was that we'd find them at all, and then Shobhit found them still on the car! After that, the rest of the day was spent either working on my photos, or my email travelogue, or watching the Democratic National Convention, or watching the Convention at the same time I did those things. Shobhit had also spent a lot of time watching from our hotel room on Monday night, during which I got asked several times where he was, and I told them. This was the closest we ever got to any political conversation with the family, thank God. Britni and TJ got into it a little bit but only about whether it was pathetic or not that Kid Rock had been a guest at the Republican Convention (Britni felt it was pathetic, TJ disagreed). Talk about Former President Fuckwit was minimal, and I think that was how everyone preferred it. I did tell the group on Monday night, when this came up while playing Cards Against Humanity, that regardless of party, the national convention is basically just a big circle jerk. This is basically true, but I should really note that many of the speeches last night, including Doug Emhoff and especially both Michelle and Barack Obama, were genuinely inspiring. I can only hope it actually helps keep up the momentum to make the difference in November. When the day's convention events were over, we watched Sunday night's episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, a real uplifting (that's sarcasm) episode about fraud in U.S. hospice care. Fun! Then I went to bed. — पांच हजार छह सौ उनतालीस — [posted 12:32 pm]