The Trip

8-10-15

Back to reality.

All in all, it was a pretty good trip. It could have been all kinds of bad what with the two hour delay on the flight leaving or even the fact that a little kid threw up on the plane before we boarded on the way home. But ultimately, I found myself enjoying just about all of the time I was there.

I could go day by day, but honestly that sounds pretty dull. I thought I would hit on the key points throughout the week.

First and foremost, the boys I can honestly say thought that the hotel was fantastic. Both of them declared housekeeping to be a favorite, which cracked me up. However, the pool was probably the key point of interest, which was occupied by Brenans pretty much every day of the stay. I will tell you, too, it was exhausting! We played many a game of some random version of volleyball which included the boys, Ken and myself, Uncle Andy and Aunt Lyn. Every now and again other hotel guest used the pool, but ultimately we had it to ourselves much of the time. Bobby in particular took advantage of the 10 PM closing time. We would often get back from our daily outings and dinner around 8:30 or 9 which meant a good chunk of time was still available for swimming. It was especially nice since most people vacated the pool by 9 so it was empty. It was also entertaining to test the motion sensors for the lights. They didn’t seem to note activity in the pool so if no one came into the pool room for about 15 minutes, the lights went out, which was super fun for the boys.

There was only one real family drama moment that took place about mid-trip. After several outings in which we were checking out Grandma’s old stomping ground, there was frustration on our end due to the lack of communication. Specifically, we were in two cars. Ken, myself and the boys were in were  in one car, while Ken’s folks and sibs were in the other car. It made for frustrating reminiscing since we were not privy to any of the stories that were being told in the other car. We tried speaker phone, but truly that didn’t do much for the tales. On top of that, Papa Brenan wasn’t exactly good at leading and often we had to race to catch up when he would run through a yellow light making it difficult to know where we were going. This then all turned into anger when dinner time came around that night.

We spent a great deal of time looking up places that were not a normal chain restaurant that we might go to at home. We also all had booze for a criteria what with most places not having any form of spirits. It was actually pretty comical overall. Finally we came across a pizza place that was in downtown. We all set out, ready to eat. We got there and it was a cute little hole in the wall place (with a full bar I might add). It smelled great but Grandma decided she wanted to sit down some place else. We all then walked a couple of blocks worth, looking for something more suitable. Ken, the boys, Lyn and I ended up walking a couple of extra blocks, still unable to find anything that was both boy friendly and oked by the elders. We got word that they opted for Olive Garden, which although didn’t sound great, we were ok with it. That was until we arrived back from our search. They had opted to sit in the bar, which consisted of horrible seating that had our group spread out over 3 tables, which totally defeated the point of the search. Plus, the pizza place was nicer!! Ken was pissed. So he gathered me and the boys and we walked back to the pizza joint.

I gotta say, I was super impressed that he took a stand. Normally I am the one who gets annoyed, but it seemed to be an accumulated lifetime of feeling left out as part of the family. I certainly didn’t mind as the pizza place was going to end up being better for the kids anyway. Nothing more was discussed about the evening aside from Andy feeling really bad. Over the course of the rest of the trip, it was obvious more care was spent to include everyone, which I think helped. I had even considered at one point telling Ken to go ride with his parents and I would follow in the other car. I certainly didn’t mind and I really just wanted him to enjoy the time with his family.

We did have one other outing in multiple cars, which was a full day of driving. It was quite dull overall, but we made the most of it. Lyn rode with us this time and despite the mind numbingly boring driving in a no service zone, the boys were amazing. They really were so incredible considering us grownups were not even impressed.

We went through some little mining town that Papa Brenan had once had his own church in where he was minister. The buildings were cute and quite abandoned, but it was fascinating to see. It would have been nice to have a large passenger van if we ever did another trip like this since I really feel like we didn’t visit as much as we could have.

On one of the days, we went with Andy and Lyn to the Salt Lake island. That was a lot of fun. It was raining, which actually made it more enjoyable in certain ways. We drove around, and went to the visitor’s center which had gobs of these giant spiders. They were awesome. We even walked out to the lake itself and Bobby went in despite the cold. But the water was warm and he loved every minute. We came back a couple days later when it was warm out so we could all go in the water. Dax loved the fact that he could actually float! A kid with his muscle mass doesn’t get to do that all too often. Ha! We also got to eat at the little burger stand on the island that had buffalo burgers on the menu. It had to be the best food we had there, which was not what we expected at all. We also found the large herd of buffalo and even had one pretty dang close.

The reason we went, which was the graduation, was good. It was a fairly short ceremony and a great time for pictures. Holly looked great and you could tell how excited she was that we had all come to celebrate her accomplishment. I also got to see Evie and Daniel, which made me quite happy since I don’t see them in person enough. I made a point of taking a picture of Daniel and Bobby together with their long hair, which was awesome.

The days were long. We usually got up fairly early if only to take advantage of the breakfast the hotel served. I gotta say, although it was a pretty good spread, I tired of it after 6 days of eating it. I was grateful to the one morning in which I was able to eat left over Chinese food from the night before in which we used the evening for down time. We watched Forest Gump and ate delivery while Ken’s folks went to dinner with a couple of old friends who happened to be in town. It was quite awesome.

I thought I had overheard talk of next year’s trip being Scotland, but I can say with great certainty I don’t want to go unless the boys are included. I know I ended up going to Ireland without them, and although I had a fabulous time, I still regret leaving them behind. I am hopeful that this situation doesn’t come up.

I am sure I am forgetting multiple things that took place on the trip. Of course, I am trying to recap while going through all of my work. I did manage to get caught up in only a couple of hours, but I still had a week’s worth of emailing customers I wanted to accomplish before spending too much time on this. I am doing my best to try not to get annoyed at folks around here. I can tell I had a fair amount of downtime since it is much easier than it was just a week ago. That being said, I am thankful that I only have a little over 90 minutes left of my day.

I also had other fantastic goings on that I don’t think I want published. As cool aunt, I like that I got to chit chat with my niece and I don’t want to break that trust. I don’t really think this is a popular read amongst the family, but one doesn’t want to take that chance. Ha!

Ok, time to get back to work. Hopefully I spend some more time this week covering some of the time spent.