Family Visit

It;s rare that I would be up early on a Monday morning. My work week typically starts at 3pm on Monday afternoon, so there is no need to get up with the sun (or slightly before as is the case today).

However, this weekend we have been blessed with a visit from Aaron and Jenny and our traditional send off is to have breakfast out with both of their families. Hannah and Daniel have opted out of the early morning send-off and said their goodbyes at dinner last night.

I really am so blessed with a grand family!

The times that we get to spend together are so few. I was very happy that Aaron and Jenny went out to lunch with Hannah and Daniel yesterday (and a little jealous that parents were not invited!). It's been interesting to watch as Aaron and Hannah have grown through the buddy stage, the bugging each other stage, and back to being good friends as adults. Sometimes I suspect it may be an alliance against their parents as much as a real sibling friendship, but I do think that they actually like each other most of the time. Having everybody together for a couple of days was great!

I hope that we get to see Aaron and Jenny more often in retirement than we have in the recent past and fear that we will see less of Hannah as she makes her transition into living as a completely dependent adult woman. I guess that is the way of things in our mobile society. I suppose that it is difficult to complain too much as I am one of six siblings, soon to be back to living in six different states!

I enjoyed watching the fights with Aaron on Saturday night. It has been a long time since we've been able to watch them together. We often watch from our own homes and tweet or text back and forth during them but this was way better! I know that Chris sometimes feels that she doesn't get to spend as much time with her boy as I do, but I think that she understands the father/son thing, too. Weekend visits are tough on everybody as both families want to spend as much time as possible with the kids. I'm afraid that we put a lot of pressure on the kids to be more places than is possible in just a couple of days.

I imagine that they are happy to be on their way home and back to their normal routine, sans parents!

We are also back to our normal, unexciting routine.
Work, household chores, a little exercise...you know, not exactly boring, but far from exciting.
All-in-all, it's a good life.

I hope that yours is also a good life.

John <><