This past weekend I flew home to New Hampshire for my Dad's burial. It was bittersweet and we had a fun time in spite of the sad occasion. Dad would have loved it.
My flight into Chicago was uneventful, but then I was delayed about an hour because of lightening. My brother-in-law, Andy, picked me up in New Hampshire and we drove the 2 hours to my hometown. Aren't the views gorgeous!
We got to the house, just as Mom was heading off to her quiet hotel room. My sisters planned it well. The house was a little to crazy and loud for her so they booked a room for her to retreat to. It was perfect.
I planned to meet friends at a local bar for drinks that night and three of my brothers came along. We had a great time. I don't have any pictures from that evening (didn't want any dubious photos of me showing up), but I got home around midnight. We laughed and it was great to see everyone.
The service the next day was perfect. My sister, Mary Kay, gave a great eulogy. It wasn't too sappy and it also did not make my Dad out to be a saint. We laughed and she shared who our Dad was to us with townsfolk and friends that came.
Then they had the grave side service, where my Dad received full military honors, a naval officer was there to present my mother with the flag, they played taps and guns where fired. It was perfect.
Later we went back to the church and shared food and fun stories with everyone.
After we got together back at the house. The guy in front of the white window, Charles, my nieces boyfriend, is a professional photographer. He took over 1200 photos and will be sharing them with us. The photos that follow are just some of the ones I managed to snap.
Whenever my family gets together there is a lot of food, a lot of drink and....
...many conversations going on at once.
It was super humid, so we went down to the local river, Ladies Bathtub, and swam for awhile.
These are rock formations that I saw across the stream.
The cousins all get along so well. They love hanging out together.
My brothers were working on building up the dam they started earlier in the week.
I was way down stream, but tried to focus in on it as much as I could.
While building the dam, my brother John, slammed his finger between two rocks and it swelled up so much he had to go to the hospital and have his wedding ring cut off.
My Mother had a ball listening to all the stories and visiting with everyone.
Here are a bunch of the cousins having a great time sharing stories too.
Then my sister, Karen, designed a quiz for all the cousins to take to see how well they've been listening over the years to all the stories from the siblings. They had to match up the sibling with the crazy story of anecdote about them.
It's like they were back in college taking a final. We gave them about 15 minutes and then Mom read the questions and we had great laughs as they all tried to figure out which of the 8 siblings the crazy anecdote matched with.
Here are a few of the tame ones:
* I could only cook fudge when I got married.
* I walked at 9 months.
* I was sprayed by a skunk while delivering papers.
* As a teenager, I slept with orange juice cans on my head as rollers.
* At three years of age I was chased down the street naked by Mom after I threw all my clothes in the burn barrel.
On Sunday we had a photo shoot with Grandma. Here are a bunch of the grandkids.
Here are the grandkids, in black, and the great grandkids in blue.
We did shots with all the siblings too, but I only got pictures of my brothers. I can't wait to see the pictures that everyone else got!
A great time was had by all!
No comments:
Post a Comment