Family visit--i love my family

I promise I won't give you all the play-by-play of what all I do with my family while they are here.  Besides--the only people who read this blog and would care are those here enjoying the fun with me!  But I did want to let you all know everyone arrived here safely and it has been so much fun. 

Mom and Dad and my nieces Emily and Sarah (ages 16 and 14) had driven from Alabama to CA via all kinds of awesome, family nostalgic places like Cement Creek, CO, Mesa Verde National Park, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Yosemite, etc.  If DH had enough time off of work, we would really, really have liked to join them in CO and do all the fun stuff with them.  But as it is, I am content with just having this week with them here, and we will be doing LOTS of fun stuff together!

My older sister Rebecca flew in last night, and I drove up to San Jose with my parents to get her.  Initially when my dad and I had been talking about that plan, he and I agreed that I had too many responsibilities and would not go along (you know, caring and feeding and bedding four little ones).  But then my eldest niece Emily piped up, "We can watch them.  We can even feed them something like cheese sandwiches for dinner."  I swear my brain froze for a minute.  I am so used to working everything around children--what an unexpected gift!  So that's what we did!  DH was working around here and could help, but the two big girls took charge of my brood and they had a "picnic" dinner on the floor while watching Dumbo. 

And that's not all!  They also helped my girls make flower garlands for Happy's Fairies in the Forest Teaparty coming up on Sunday, AND made two batches of sugar cookie dough and rolled out one batch and helped my girls make flower and star cookies.  I AM IN HEAVEN. 

DH has been fantastic too.  Not only is he always so gracious to my family, and patient with things like having to rearrange cars in the driveway all the time, and me telling him he has to get up so we are ready for family stuff, but he took time off of work to be here the past two days, and after all that still spontaneously told me he loves me when I was leaving for the airport.

My sister and her girls are lovely people, and it cracks me up how talkative they and I and Mom and Dad are.  And my children are all talkative, so the noise level in this tiny house was pretty funny last night when we got back from the airport and everyone was so excited to finally be together.  ; )

I am having so much fun.  And I guess I am anticipating lots more fun today, because would you believe I woke up 4 this morning to use the bathroom, and then could NOT go back to sleep?!  Just laid there.  And laid there.  And tried praying.  And finally got up at 6:20.  Remember, in this tiny house there is not much I can do to be productive at that hour of the morning, since I might wake up the rest of my family.  But I can make tea and each breakfast and catch up on my blog reading, and now blog writing! 

The plan today is driving down to hike at Point Lobos, south of Monterey Bay, and then have lunch and spend the afternoon at Carmel-by-the-Sea.  It is so cute, and the beach down there is gorgeous.  I mean, Carmel is where rich and famous people go to visit, sometimes to live, if that tells you anything about how beautiful it is.  Jennifer Anniston and Brad Pitt had a house together there once up on a time.  So did Mel Gibson and his family.  Clint Eastwood still live there, and was the mayor for a few years. 

And Carmel is special in my heart because of a specific moment that happened back in January or February of 2003.  We had just moved from Colorado to Seaside, CA (next to Monterey) a month or so before, and I was still grieving leaving behind the mountains, and all our friends, and specifically my dear Susan.  For some reason I decided to drive to the Carmel beach, which was about 20 minutes away.  I remember how amazingly beautiful the weather was for that time of year--it was in the upper 70's, and so sunny, and I was driving my toddler daughter and realized that we had moved to a place where people spend lots of time and money to come visit.  And maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all. 

Now we are farther north, up next to Santa Cruz and the redwoods, and I love it even more.  So we will be showing my family lots of the best things about our home area this week, but today is driving for an hour so I can share with my sister one of my favorite places in the world.

I hope to show you pics of some of our fun--but who knows when. : ) 

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend too!