Over the 4th of July my father's entire side of the family got together in Santa Cruz, California. (The entire family includes my grandfather, my aunt, my mother and stepfather, my 3 sisters and their husbands and children -7- and myself, my husband, and my 4 children.) There aren't very many of us, relatively speaking. The entire purpose of this vacation was to see our grandfather who is now on hospice care and to attend the Uncle Ole picnic with him. I've mentioned this picnic before. It is a yearly picnic for all the descendants of a group of Norwegians from the Stranda/Liabygda area of Norway and settled roughly in the San Francisco area of California. There is a lot more to the story, but that should suffice for now. My grandfather's mother was one of those immigrants and Uncle Ole was her uncle.
Our trip started on Monday the 1st when my sister Claire and her four children arrived at our house from Colorado. It was fun to have her here. besides my stepsister Heather and my mother and stepfather, she is the only other person in my family to have been to my new house! And after an entire year, I still haven't done a thing to decorate it. oh well. Tuesday we got all the kids in the car and started our first day of driving - 8 hours to Reno. When we got to Reno it was thundering and lightening and pouring down rain. We tried to eat dinner at a buffet in the Grand Sierra Casino (the first Casino I think I've ever been to in my life!) but the price tab for 1 adult and 3 kids was near $60 so we just went back to the hotel and had homemade sandwiches from the food we had brought on the trip.
Day three (?), Wednesday, we got a little late start but finally arrived in Cupertino at my grandfather's apartment. There was a lot of confusion at this point, and I'm not sure the confusion ever ended because the amount of miscommunication on this trip was pretty high. But to keep it short (again) Derek and I ended up taking one of Claire's boys with us to Santa Cruz to check into our hotel while Claire and 3 of her kids went to pick up her husband at the airport in San Jose and Gwen and her husband and daughter picked up grandpa and came to the hotel as well. Derek and I got a little lost getting back to the freeway, but on the bright side, we enjoyed a leisurely drive through fantastic neighborhoods and wineries and beautiful scenery. Whatever road we were on, we came out in downtown historic Saratoga. We decided to get out, grab some ice cream for the kids, and walk around for a bit. It was fun. Except our ice cream turned out to be frozen yoghurt with topping that you pay for by the ounce and we ended up spending about $20 on 4 frozen yoghurts. But the kids enjoyed it.
When we finally got to the hotel it was about dinner time. I knew my grandpa really liked Chinese so I suggested we get Chinese food (there were also a number of Chinese restaurants next to the hotel. But as it turns out two of the 4 families there had had Chinese for lunch. That's kind of a lot of Chinese food (which personally I don't really like that much.) But my mom knew too how much grandpa liked it so she told me to order Chinese anyway. Plus he can't eat wheat so it was easy to meet his needs with rice and meat and veggie dishes. The rest of the family ordered a really large pizza that looked really good. We had a nice meal outside in the courtyard and waited for the rest of the family to trickle in.
We ran the Santa Cruz firecracker on the 4th of July morning and ate their all you can eat pancake breakfast. I ran the 1K with Joshua. Lauren, Blake, Lucy, and Russell ran it as well. Then I ran the 5K and placed 7th in my age group (but there were only 15 of us). My 72 year old stepdad beat me, as well as my brother-in-law who said he hadn't trained at all. But I made it. My sister Catherine and her son ran the 5K as well. Bob and Catherine got first in their age groups. And then my sisters Claire and Gwen ran the 10K and did awesome.
That evening we all met up at my Aunt Duane's house for a BBQ. She has a super cute house and it was lots of fun. We had a group family picture taken. But Derek wasn't there because that afternoon he got really really sick. I think it was something he ate. It was a terribly stressful and disappointing afternoon. My two older sisters were going to the boardwalk so their kids to ride on the rides (my kids were too young for that plus we couldn't afford it) but I really wanted to go to the beach. However, it took almost 2 hours to drive around looking for parking to even get to the beach. And that was just to LOOK for parking. There was no FINDING involved. After bumper to bumper for almost 2 hours with 4 little kids in the car I decided to call it quits and go home. My mom told me my sister Gwen was at the hotel taking a nap with her daughter so I figured at least I could hang out with her when she woke up. It took another two hours (ok, I admit it, I'm kind of slow) to realize they weren't there (I was trying not to wake them up! so I didn't knock on their hotel door, I just figured they would come out when they woke up) and then I was really disappointed because I couldn't go to my hotel room because Derek was sick and one of the hotel managers was giving me dirty looks because my kids were touching the water in the little fountain in the courtyard. I was not a very happy vacationer. Anyway, back to the BBQ. I finally got there and had a good cry to let out all of my frustration. It is really hard to please everyone - when one person says we should all do our own thing and only get together occasionally, and then another one says we should hang out together all the time, and then everyone ends up hanging out together doing things that weren't feasible for me and my family. I had a good time helping out with the BBQ and watching the kids play. The theme of this family vacation was me not getting to spend time with my sisters. So even at the family BBQ when I potentially could have, I was mostly helping my aunt and moving from one crying kid to the other. I wish Derek could have been there to help me.
Anyway, that evening while everyone else went to the fireworks in a different town, I took my kids to the hot tub. Derek stayed in the hotel with Kaleb and the kids and I had a really good time. They were so tired and cranky and I knew for their sakes and for mine the best choice for the little kids was to go to bed at a semi-reasonable hour. I got some flak from unnamed relatives for not going to the fireworks, but my aunt had actually advised me not to go with such little kids and seeing their moods already, I wasn't prepared to deal with 4 very very cranky little ones for the rest of the vacation all by myself if Derek didn't improve. Thankfully he did.
The next morning we went to the Redwoods. A few months ago I had sent out an email to everyone and we were all going to go together but that day my sisters decided they'd rather go spend the day at the Boardwalk instead (again, not a little kid friendly - or budget friendly - place to be) This was another one of those miscommunications I think. Because I found out later that they were actually on the beach the entire day playing in the sand which was what I really really wanted to do. I was so disappointed and then I got flak again for "not hanging out" with everyone. But the Redwoods was a great choice for our little kids. It was beautiful and I enjoyed every minute of it. The kids had so much fun. After that we headed to the old historic Mission in Santa Cruz, which my mom and Derek really wanted to see. And then to the Lighthouse State Park which my stepdad really wanted to see. After that my mom watched my kids so that Derek and I could run to a bookstore real quick. We ended up in downtown Santa Cruz with is so cute and fun. But we had to hurry home. My major goal was to get to the beach finally (I'd only been trying all vacation!) so in the evening Derek and I finally got parking at Natural Bridges state park and for about an hour the kids got to run in the water and play in the sand. Like I said, I was so disappointed I didn't know my sisters were at the beach the entire day otherwise my kids might have gotten to spend more time in the water. They loved it. I loved it. Next time we go I am spending an entire day at the beach and no one is stopping me - except maybe parking.
 |
| Derek saw this clump of trees and the first thing that came out of his mouth was something about trying to get a stump grinder big enough and capable of tackling that thing. he he. That is typical Mock for you. |
Ok, moving on. (And this was supposed to be the condensed version!) Friday night I went to hang out in my mom's hotel room with my sisters but then my mom and sister left and my other sister's husband called (he had gone back home that morning) to tell her about his trip home, which sounded like a doozy. My kids were so tired from the day that sooner than later I had to go put them to bed. I had to get up early and pack up all our stuff so I couldn't stay up too late. Plus it was already 9:00 or so, which was really 10:00 pm for my kids.
The next morning after showering and getting all our stuff packed my sisters showed up at my hotel room door seeing if I wanted to go running with them. I didn't have any time. But it was probably good I wasn't able to go anyway because they ran about 5 miles and I am not a good runner and don't particularly enjoy running. They wouldn't have gotten to run as far or as fast if I had been with them, so I'm sure they had a better time without me. But I was sad that I couldn't be with them again.
Our first stop was Cupertino, where we met up with my grandpa and tackled the job of strapping my grandmother's grandmother's desk up to the top of our minivan. I should have taken a picture of it. Then it was off to the Uncle Ole picnic. Our GPS gizmo had a hard time finding Henrik Ibsen Park off of Skyline Drive so we kind of got lost. Actually we just ended up taking the long way to the park, but ended up getting their just a little later than everyone else anyway. The food was fantastic and it was a lot of fun. The kids loved playing with their cousins, all except Lukas. He was very very tired and acting a little out of sorts. I had promised my kids we could go swimming (I had remembered this from 3 years ago when we went to the picnic and all of us sisters and kids went in the pool) but this year I was the only one with my kids to get wet. My sisters sat at the poolside and visited and I swam around with my kids in the water. Lukas got out and fell asleep in Catherine's lap. Derek let me know it was time to go - we still had to drive to Reno that night - so I was rushing to get us dressed and say our goodbye's to grandpa, figuring it was the last time, when Lukas threw up all over right in front of the changing rooms. Once I found Derek he was so helpful and he cleaned up everything. It was such a blessing to have him there with me. That may sound funny but originally he wasn't going to be able to come on this trip and seeing now how things went, I have no idea how I would have done any of it without him. Just the 12 hours he was so sick my entire vacation fell apart and I burst into tears. Anyway, he was so fantastic and tried to do everything he could to help me, even when I wasn't getting as much time with my family as I wanted. He was very supportive.
Eventually we said goodbye to grandpa and hit the road again. Our route took us through San Francisco and Berkeley, and that was kind of fun. I didn't find out until the next morning about that horrible plane crash in San Francisco. Terrible. That is absolutely horrible. Lukas and Abigail and Kaleb fell asleep pretty quick, and eventually Joshua nodded off also. But before we hit Sacramento they were all awake again and Lukas was crying and crying and crying. About an hour before Reno he threw up again all over himself. Yuck. We pulled off at the next exit and tried to clean up as best we could. We finally got to Reno about 9:30 and in bed around 10:30 maybe. It was a tricky night. All the nights actually were kind of tricky. It's hard to get a 7 month old, a 2 year old, a 4 and a 5 year old - plus a 31 and a 35 year old to fall asleep in one room at the same time. We got up the next morning as early as we could - well, about 6 or so and ate breakfast and got on the road for home. We stopped in Elko for church - just an hour. It was a rush against the clock to get there in time for the sacrament. But we made it. I got to attend sacrament meeting for about 15 minutes and it was so awesome and uplifting, then I waited outside the primary and nursury rooms with Kaleb. Joshua and Lukas requested to go to class instead of sitting in Sacrament meeting and we figured that was a good place for them to be too. Then back on the road.
At the Nevada Utah border we hit ridiculous thunder and rain storms. Like sideways rain pouring so hard we couldn't see the road or the cars/semis around us. Terrifying. And that poor antique desk on the top of our van! At that point, we were just worrying about making it out alive.
And eventually we got home and were exhausted and went to bed. Lukas had a fever, but other than that he recovered well from his stomach bug. I kind of think he was just so exhausted and eating a bunch of food he wasn't used to.
So in a way my vacation was really fun and exciting. And in other ways it was kind of disappointing. Nobody wants to spend over a thousand dollars to go visit family and then not be able to see them. When my kids are a little old and more self-sufficient I will probably be able to spend more time with the adults. Except I have to say, I probably wont be going on the sister's runs. I'm fairly good at a number of things but running is not one of them.
