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Aug. 8th, 2013 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckThe short version of the vacation is that it was good. We didn't see everybody (one aunt and uncle weren't available, and we missed one cousin and his family by about an hour), but we saw Grandma, and that was good. The rental house was nice and quite clean. The beds were awful for me, very painful to sleep on.
For the long version, check under the cut tags.
Sunday, we got on the road later than we'd planned. First, one of my nephew's DS thingies was missing (we found it in the living room under one of the laundry baskets). Then the car keys were missing. Those turned up in the bucket of legos sitting between the two front seats of the car. We also stopped at McDonald's on the way out of town to get the kids lunch and to get my sister some caffeine.
There was an accident on 23, near Hartland. My sister had a brief moment of panic because one of the cars involved looked a little like our brother's car (I never remember what his car looks like). Once we were past the accident, the roads were pretty much clear, and we got to East Tawas about 3:30.
The rental house turned out to be quite thoroughly clean. We'd all been a bit concerned. Renting online, one never knows exactly what one's getting. We unloaded the car in fairly short order then headed to Oscoda, to my cousin's house.
We only caught the very tail end of the party for our aunt and uncle for their fortieth. The party had started at one, and we arrived after most everybody had left. We missed the chance to see our older cousin who we haven't seen in years, but we did see our aunt and uncle and a few other people. My sister made a nice collage for our aunt and uncle out of reprints of dozens of family photographs. I had a card that I planned to give them, but I left it in Ann Arbor.
We stayed at our cousin's house until about 6:30 then headed back to the rental, stopping for groceries on the way. My sister got overwhelmed in the store (and quite frustrated with the two kids who insisted on following her around and generally getting in the way) and came out without some of the things she'd meant to buy and with way more junk food.
It was nearly eight when we got back to the rental. I had dinner and took my meds while my sister built a fire (our cousin gave us a bunch of firewood). Everybody but me roasted hotdogs. Well, my sister ended up doing most of the roasting. The kids couldn't figure out how to get the hotdogs to the heat and so ended up cooking only the tips (my nephew also kept banging his hotdog against a burnt out log). After the hotdogs, we did marshmallows (we're going to have a bag and a half of marshmallows left when we head home).
There's a telescope at the rental house. My sister hauled that outside and waited for it to get truly dark. That took a lot longer than she expected. She forgets how late it stays light up here. Still, the kids got to see stars with very little light pollution. I don't know that they ever got the telescope working, but I know they lay down on the dock and looked up at the sky.
Monday, once we were all up, we headed into East Tawas to visit Grandma. We stopped at her house for about half an hour then went for a walk downtown. When we reached the beach, the kids took off their shoes and waded. It was too cold for swimming. I don't think it hit 70 all day. My nephew went too deep and got his shorts soaked. He didn't mind at the time, but he wasn't happy walking around wet afterward.
We bought my nephew a change of shorts in one of the shops along Newman Street (main street for East Tawas). I bought Cordelia a hooded sweatshirt with a Detroit Tigers logo. She was cold, and we hadn't seen anything better in any of the shops we tried (we visited several).
After that, we stopped for lunch. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't anything spectacular either. I had a burger with sweet potato fries. The sweet potato fries came with a caramel dipping sauce. I kind of regretted that I didn't have room to eat all of the fries. Cordelia had a salad and ate only a little of it.
Then we went back to Grandma's and stayed for about an hour. She was quite insistent that we take some food with us when we left, so we took a can of baked beans. I don't know what we'll do with it. Maybe, if we haul it back to Ann Arbor, I can donate it to the next can drive at Cordelia's school.
We went back to the rental. My sister looked at the water (the rental is waterfront with a dock out over the water) and ruled that there would be no swimming. The water was too deep and too rough. She was afraid the kids would get knocked off their feet and be unable to reach the ladder to the dock. There's really nowhere else nearby to get out of the water. The anti-erosion walls are too high.
Right about then, our brother left. He had to get back to Kalamazoo to work on Tuesday. Everybody was sorry to see him go. I'm going to see if I can manage to host Thanksgiving at our house so that he will come. I'm not thinking to invite Scott's parents, though, and I'm not sure that's tenable. They're likely to be offended if we don't either have them over or go to their place. I don't know. I'm not sure my brother would come if they were coming. I'm going to try to persuade him to bring the lady he's been dating for the last several years. I'd like to meet her.
Our cousin's wife and their two kids came over. The kids are both about my nephew's age, a boy and a girl. We hung out while the kids played. My sister built another fire, thinking to roast more hotdogs, but it started raining a little. She roasted some hotdogs anyway and heated some others in the oven. They didn't all get eaten, far from it. I fear we'll be abandoning some hotdogs when we go. We've no way to safely transport anything that needs to be kept cold.
Cordelia and her cousin were planning to share the third bedroom Monday night, but one of the beds, a fold out cot sort of thing, proved too uncomfortable, so they slept with their parents again. Cordelia could still have slept in the third bedroom on her own, but she didn't want to do that (even though she complained about not liking to share a bed).
My nephew is apparently a really restless sleeper. At home, he has to sleep in a bed with barriers on all sides or he falls out. For sleeping here, my sister has to keep hauling him to safety to keep him from going out head first. She was planning to put down pillows next to the bed he was going to use in the third bedroom and just hope for the best.
I had a bad night for sleep Sunday night. The bed was firm enough to hurt (most beds are). I tried taking one of the pillows and sleeping on that, but it was too hard, too. I was hurting pretty badly by Monday morning. Monday night, however, I poached a couple of pillows from the third bedroom and slept on those. I still had trouble sleeping, but it wasn't (mostly) due to pain. I ended up staying in bed until about nine when everyone else got up about seven-thirty.
We did a couple of loads of laundry, and my sister took the kids to Oscoda to go swimming. It was still pretty cold for swimming, but the kids didn't care in the least. Our cousin's wife and kids met them at the beach while I stayed at the rental to relax and monitor the laundry. They were gone for a couple of hours. According to my sister, the waves were pretty high.
After they got back, the kids watched part of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. My sister and her son had never seen it even though they'd seen both parts of The Deathly Hallows. My sister kept commenting that she didn't remember certain things from the book, and Cordelia and I would tell her that those things weren't in the book.
Around five, we went to Grandma's again. My cousin and his wife picked up pizza for everyone, and my aunt and uncle came, too. I couldn't eat the pizza (and I needed to wait to eat at the right time to take my meds). The four kids were more interested in running around than they were in the pizza, I think.
At seven, there was music in the street in downtown East Tawas. There was a band playing rock. I recognized most of the songs, so they were playing stuff from the 80s and earlier. Cordelia and my cousin's two kids danced. They even attempted some line dancing with a group of adults who were doing it. My nephew wasn't interested in dancing. Instead, he dragged his mother clothing shopping. He bought another shirt. I got a hamburger to go from one of the restaurants on Newman Street. The music continued after eight o'clock, but we were ready to pack it in. My cousin has to be up at five-thirty most mornings.
We said goodbye to Grandma which was hard. We don't know when or if we'll see her again. She's so frail now, and she lives alone. She does still walk for half an hour a day, and she seems reasonably sharp. The things she's forgetting aren't the important things. Why should she remember what a nuclear power plant is called? Grandma did insist on giving me and my sister both some money. I think she gave my sister more since Grandma was trying to help out with the trip costs, and my sister had paid for considerably more than I did (I tried to help out with the house rental, but my sister refused to let me).
Cordelia and her cousin were considering sharing a bed for the night, the bed my sister and her son had been sharing. My nephew, however, got worried that he'd knock Cordelia out of bed, and my sister admitted that that was a very real possibility, so we ended up keeping our established sleeping arrangements. There was a thunderstorm about five or six in the morning. Cordelia slept through it, but it woke the rest of us.
Wednesday morning, we started packing. We had to be out of there by eleven, and there were a lot of bits and pieces to be gathered up. The kids spent some time playing outside, throwing rocks off the dock, while my sister and I packed. This time, nothing got lost (well, I suspect I left a pair of socks behind, but that's survivable). We were in the car and on the road about ten forty-five.
We stopped in downtown East Tawas so that I could pick up some chocolate for Scott and so that my sister and her son could pick something out for her husband (they settled on a Red Wings cap). It was kind of hard being so close to Grandma's house (about four blocks away) while not going to visit her. If my sister had taken a little longer shopping, I might have given in to impulse and walked to Grandma's house.
We stopped for lunch at an A&W in Standish. At least, I think it was Standish. It was before we got back on the expressway, anyway. It was overpriced and kind of mediocre food, but A&W has nostalgia value for me and my sister. Our father used to take us to a drive in A&W fairly frequently.
We reach Ann Arbor about three. My sister came in to make a hotel reservation for their overnight in Cincinnati. She was very frustrated by the website she was using because it wouldn't sort by her criteria. She couldn't limit it to hotels near the highway or to hotels with a pool. She's also not used to using a laptop. The trackpad really threw her. She's used to either a touch screen or a mouse.
My sister and her son left a bit before four. Scott got home around four thirty. We had no food ready to prepare for dinner, so we got Chinese carry out. They messed up our order. The food we got was okay, but it wasn't what we ordered. Spending the evening with Scott and sleeping in my own bed were both welcome changes. Cordelia was a bit cranky at being forced to go to bed at nine instead of being allowed to stay up until ten the way she was on vacation.
For the long version, check under the cut tags.
Sunday, we got on the road later than we'd planned. First, one of my nephew's DS thingies was missing (we found it in the living room under one of the laundry baskets). Then the car keys were missing. Those turned up in the bucket of legos sitting between the two front seats of the car. We also stopped at McDonald's on the way out of town to get the kids lunch and to get my sister some caffeine.
There was an accident on 23, near Hartland. My sister had a brief moment of panic because one of the cars involved looked a little like our brother's car (I never remember what his car looks like). Once we were past the accident, the roads were pretty much clear, and we got to East Tawas about 3:30.
The rental house turned out to be quite thoroughly clean. We'd all been a bit concerned. Renting online, one never knows exactly what one's getting. We unloaded the car in fairly short order then headed to Oscoda, to my cousin's house.
We only caught the very tail end of the party for our aunt and uncle for their fortieth. The party had started at one, and we arrived after most everybody had left. We missed the chance to see our older cousin who we haven't seen in years, but we did see our aunt and uncle and a few other people. My sister made a nice collage for our aunt and uncle out of reprints of dozens of family photographs. I had a card that I planned to give them, but I left it in Ann Arbor.
We stayed at our cousin's house until about 6:30 then headed back to the rental, stopping for groceries on the way. My sister got overwhelmed in the store (and quite frustrated with the two kids who insisted on following her around and generally getting in the way) and came out without some of the things she'd meant to buy and with way more junk food.
It was nearly eight when we got back to the rental. I had dinner and took my meds while my sister built a fire (our cousin gave us a bunch of firewood). Everybody but me roasted hotdogs. Well, my sister ended up doing most of the roasting. The kids couldn't figure out how to get the hotdogs to the heat and so ended up cooking only the tips (my nephew also kept banging his hotdog against a burnt out log). After the hotdogs, we did marshmallows (we're going to have a bag and a half of marshmallows left when we head home).
There's a telescope at the rental house. My sister hauled that outside and waited for it to get truly dark. That took a lot longer than she expected. She forgets how late it stays light up here. Still, the kids got to see stars with very little light pollution. I don't know that they ever got the telescope working, but I know they lay down on the dock and looked up at the sky.
Monday, once we were all up, we headed into East Tawas to visit Grandma. We stopped at her house for about half an hour then went for a walk downtown. When we reached the beach, the kids took off their shoes and waded. It was too cold for swimming. I don't think it hit 70 all day. My nephew went too deep and got his shorts soaked. He didn't mind at the time, but he wasn't happy walking around wet afterward.
We bought my nephew a change of shorts in one of the shops along Newman Street (main street for East Tawas). I bought Cordelia a hooded sweatshirt with a Detroit Tigers logo. She was cold, and we hadn't seen anything better in any of the shops we tried (we visited several).
After that, we stopped for lunch. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't anything spectacular either. I had a burger with sweet potato fries. The sweet potato fries came with a caramel dipping sauce. I kind of regretted that I didn't have room to eat all of the fries. Cordelia had a salad and ate only a little of it.
Then we went back to Grandma's and stayed for about an hour. She was quite insistent that we take some food with us when we left, so we took a can of baked beans. I don't know what we'll do with it. Maybe, if we haul it back to Ann Arbor, I can donate it to the next can drive at Cordelia's school.
We went back to the rental. My sister looked at the water (the rental is waterfront with a dock out over the water) and ruled that there would be no swimming. The water was too deep and too rough. She was afraid the kids would get knocked off their feet and be unable to reach the ladder to the dock. There's really nowhere else nearby to get out of the water. The anti-erosion walls are too high.
Right about then, our brother left. He had to get back to Kalamazoo to work on Tuesday. Everybody was sorry to see him go. I'm going to see if I can manage to host Thanksgiving at our house so that he will come. I'm not thinking to invite Scott's parents, though, and I'm not sure that's tenable. They're likely to be offended if we don't either have them over or go to their place. I don't know. I'm not sure my brother would come if they were coming. I'm going to try to persuade him to bring the lady he's been dating for the last several years. I'd like to meet her.
Our cousin's wife and their two kids came over. The kids are both about my nephew's age, a boy and a girl. We hung out while the kids played. My sister built another fire, thinking to roast more hotdogs, but it started raining a little. She roasted some hotdogs anyway and heated some others in the oven. They didn't all get eaten, far from it. I fear we'll be abandoning some hotdogs when we go. We've no way to safely transport anything that needs to be kept cold.
Cordelia and her cousin were planning to share the third bedroom Monday night, but one of the beds, a fold out cot sort of thing, proved too uncomfortable, so they slept with their parents again. Cordelia could still have slept in the third bedroom on her own, but she didn't want to do that (even though she complained about not liking to share a bed).
My nephew is apparently a really restless sleeper. At home, he has to sleep in a bed with barriers on all sides or he falls out. For sleeping here, my sister has to keep hauling him to safety to keep him from going out head first. She was planning to put down pillows next to the bed he was going to use in the third bedroom and just hope for the best.
I had a bad night for sleep Sunday night. The bed was firm enough to hurt (most beds are). I tried taking one of the pillows and sleeping on that, but it was too hard, too. I was hurting pretty badly by Monday morning. Monday night, however, I poached a couple of pillows from the third bedroom and slept on those. I still had trouble sleeping, but it wasn't (mostly) due to pain. I ended up staying in bed until about nine when everyone else got up about seven-thirty.
We did a couple of loads of laundry, and my sister took the kids to Oscoda to go swimming. It was still pretty cold for swimming, but the kids didn't care in the least. Our cousin's wife and kids met them at the beach while I stayed at the rental to relax and monitor the laundry. They were gone for a couple of hours. According to my sister, the waves were pretty high.
After they got back, the kids watched part of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. My sister and her son had never seen it even though they'd seen both parts of The Deathly Hallows. My sister kept commenting that she didn't remember certain things from the book, and Cordelia and I would tell her that those things weren't in the book.
Around five, we went to Grandma's again. My cousin and his wife picked up pizza for everyone, and my aunt and uncle came, too. I couldn't eat the pizza (and I needed to wait to eat at the right time to take my meds). The four kids were more interested in running around than they were in the pizza, I think.
At seven, there was music in the street in downtown East Tawas. There was a band playing rock. I recognized most of the songs, so they were playing stuff from the 80s and earlier. Cordelia and my cousin's two kids danced. They even attempted some line dancing with a group of adults who were doing it. My nephew wasn't interested in dancing. Instead, he dragged his mother clothing shopping. He bought another shirt. I got a hamburger to go from one of the restaurants on Newman Street. The music continued after eight o'clock, but we were ready to pack it in. My cousin has to be up at five-thirty most mornings.
We said goodbye to Grandma which was hard. We don't know when or if we'll see her again. She's so frail now, and she lives alone. She does still walk for half an hour a day, and she seems reasonably sharp. The things she's forgetting aren't the important things. Why should she remember what a nuclear power plant is called? Grandma did insist on giving me and my sister both some money. I think she gave my sister more since Grandma was trying to help out with the trip costs, and my sister had paid for considerably more than I did (I tried to help out with the house rental, but my sister refused to let me).
Cordelia and her cousin were considering sharing a bed for the night, the bed my sister and her son had been sharing. My nephew, however, got worried that he'd knock Cordelia out of bed, and my sister admitted that that was a very real possibility, so we ended up keeping our established sleeping arrangements. There was a thunderstorm about five or six in the morning. Cordelia slept through it, but it woke the rest of us.
Wednesday morning, we started packing. We had to be out of there by eleven, and there were a lot of bits and pieces to be gathered up. The kids spent some time playing outside, throwing rocks off the dock, while my sister and I packed. This time, nothing got lost (well, I suspect I left a pair of socks behind, but that's survivable). We were in the car and on the road about ten forty-five.
We stopped in downtown East Tawas so that I could pick up some chocolate for Scott and so that my sister and her son could pick something out for her husband (they settled on a Red Wings cap). It was kind of hard being so close to Grandma's house (about four blocks away) while not going to visit her. If my sister had taken a little longer shopping, I might have given in to impulse and walked to Grandma's house.
We stopped for lunch at an A&W in Standish. At least, I think it was Standish. It was before we got back on the expressway, anyway. It was overpriced and kind of mediocre food, but A&W has nostalgia value for me and my sister. Our father used to take us to a drive in A&W fairly frequently.
We reach Ann Arbor about three. My sister came in to make a hotel reservation for their overnight in Cincinnati. She was very frustrated by the website she was using because it wouldn't sort by her criteria. She couldn't limit it to hotels near the highway or to hotels with a pool. She's also not used to using a laptop. The trackpad really threw her. She's used to either a touch screen or a mouse.
My sister and her son left a bit before four. Scott got home around four thirty. We had no food ready to prepare for dinner, so we got Chinese carry out. They messed up our order. The food we got was okay, but it wasn't what we ordered. Spending the evening with Scott and sleeping in my own bed were both welcome changes. Cordelia was a bit cranky at being forced to go to bed at nine instead of being allowed to stay up until ten the way she was on vacation.
