Just returned from the Annual Raskin Family Vacay.
This year we went to Luray (Loo-Ray) Virginia, a beautiful-slash-funky spot in the Shenandoah Valley. There are now somewhere around 25 of us and we overflowed from the Big House into a cluster of surrounding cottages. The separate quarters were an interesting concept since personal space is pretty foreign to most of us.
Baby Gray joined the raucous crowd for the first time. He is starting to talk so the rest of us spent hours slowly enunciating our names — and spiking the ball whenever he followed suit. My lips are actually a tad sore from saying Pop-py thousands of time. (Poppy is my substitute for the word that rhymes with Fanny.) He said it!
We tag teamed cutthroat games of Spades, Cornhole and Catan, taking over for one another during long-postponed bathroom breaks. I was the reigning Spades champion. (The other games were dumb.)
This year our evening activity was the Democratic Convention. There were many tears during the speeches. All of us were blown away by Michelle, Barack and Hillary. Well, almost all of us. It seems that one of the significant others of the next generation is A Republican. He is, however, very sweet.
And very brave.
Speaking of brave, we all went out for dinner one night. The poor waitress.
A group of us went tubing. It was a great deal of fun although when we were checking in I felt like we had a little glimpse of what a Trump presidency (God forbid) would be like. The guy running the outfit told us that a couple brought their 14 month old baby to ride down the river in an inner-tube.
“I said I didn’t recommend it,” he drawled. “But I wasn’t going to tell them what to do.”
Um, maybe Don’t Tread On Me shouldn’t include intentional endangerment.
Anyway, summer vacation is over. Time to start planning Thanksgiving.