Over July 4th weekend my entire family (all 8 plus a dog) got together at the beach. That in itself is a miracle since we're all busy and have our own lives. We originally didn't think it would happen but my parents sent the word they were going and anyone could join them. And slowly, we all were able to clear our schedules and meet at Pine Knoll Shores.
My dad's cousin has a winter home there and my family is in charge of keeping it up during the summer-awesome! It's a nice 2 bedroom house in a neighborhood walking distance to the beach. Are you doing the math in your head now? 8 people + 1 dog + 2 bedrooms = craziness. My sister and I are both married so throw in a couple in-laws and I dare anyone to try to blend those different schedules. We all brought blow up mattresses for the loft area and theoretically it would have been a fun slumber party type weekend.
We all learned that we love each other but we could never live together again. I am a super old lady and go to bed early. My brother is a grad student and lives in his lab so he's up until 3 or 4 am and sleeps late. My other sister has normalish hours but is a night person and my youngest sister keeps college hours.
We also learned that lots of alcohol does not lead to "inside voices". In the past we've rented a house on the beach so the loud, excuse me "late-night" people can go sit on the beach and scream so us grandma-types can be snoring away at 10pm. Also, when the grandma-types get up at 8 or 9 we can go to the beach and not wake up the sleeping/hung-over beauties. Apparently my mom loves doing dishes early in the morning which is not what you want to hear after 3 hours sleep.
The Captain is not really a beach person and I was surprised that he agreed to go. He also hurt his knee a couple weeks ago so he's been limping around. (He is scheduling his orthroscopic surgery this week!) So it sucked that he was just kind of laying around the house watching TV. Honestly, it upset me more than him. I was bummed that we weren't spending time together during the day and he is a late night person so we didn't really even share a bed/blow-up mattress that much. I'm dealing with some things regarding the move and relocation that all kind of came to a head but it's pretty much impossible to fight while your entire family is around you at all times. But we had a good talk on the drive home and got a lot of things out in the open.
I feel like I'm making it sound bad which it really wasn't. We haven't all been together in forever so the first night we were all screaming laughing and telling stories about each other. We had some awesome dinners and my brother-in-law made a seafood feast Saturday night. I got to take long walks with my mom and giggle late (ok 10pm) into the night with my sisters. The weather was gorgeous and we didn't get any rain until the last day when we were packing up anyway. We agreed that we can't wait to do it again but next time we all get together we're buying an industrial size pack of ear-plugs and less alcohol.
Of course I'm just kidding about the alcohol.
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