One Big, Happy Family

This past weekend, I spent the entire weekend with my family. From early Friday evening until I left a little after 8 on Monday morning. That's a seriously long time. I forgot the camera, so no pictures. I rarely remember to take them anyways.

Friday night it was my sister, my mom, and I as my father worked until 6. We made burritos and then headed off to see Hutchinson Community Theater's production of Bye Bye Birdie. It was pretty good, especially for community theater. Much better than the production of State Fair we saw there two years ago. The sound had sucked (still a little bit of an issue with this production but much improved). They had mainly focused on the dancing so the blocking, acting, and some of the singing had been off. There were some outfits that mysteriously included gauchos and I saw little to no gingham. The Iowa State Fair of the 1930's and gingham go hand in hand. As I said, this years production was very good. I would say their Conrad Birdie was a bit weak on the singing but the other casting was great. Gorgeous singing and Albert and Rose were amazing all around. Good full pit orchestra, too.

Saturday was a family reunion of sorts at my dad's cousin's house near Cambridge. Yes, I went west just to come back east and return west in about 24 hours. This was my biological grandfather's family and since he left when my dad was two my dad had lost touch with them and hadn't met many until this weekend. It was nice to meet about a forth of my extended family that I had known little about.

Sunday was the reason I ended up staying until Monday morning. My aunt and uncle have a Swedish exchange student that arrived this past week plus five of my cousins and my sister are starting or returning to college this year; of course, my grandma felt this meant we needed to have a picnic. It was at my parent's house, my dad grilled, there were salads, tortilla roll-ups (mmm), sweet corn, and more deserts than were really necessary. There were many pictures taken (I swear, my cheeks still hurt from all of the smiling), and I was sent off to the new Wal-Mart for supplies beforehand.

A Wal-Mart in my hometown is rather surreal for me. We've always had a Pamida but this Wal-Mart is new and imposing. I felt like I stepped into a wormhole and was far, far away from my nice small town. I would have rather gotten ice and pickles at the grocery store, thank you very much.