Family Time Is the Best Time

I eat this pizza every year at the fair, not even kidding

I really wanted to get these pics on my blog this month...because it happened THIS MONTH. Lately, it's a big ask to get my  blog updated in the same month in which it occurs, but I've done it. Only three weeks late.

Aim high.

My entire family descended upon San Diego for the fourth of July and it was pretty awesome. My parents drove in from Vegas on Friday, my older sister and my nephew flew in from North Carolina on Sunday, and on Tuesday little sister, brother in law and my niece flew in from San Francisco.

That's when things got super busy for me, but also really fun. I originally planned to do this wonky thing where I worked on Monday and Friday only that week. Thank you July 4th for being on a Wednesday. In the end, I basically said to hell with it, and worked a partial day on Tuesday and then took the rest of the week off. It took me a long time to learn this, but sometimes that's just what you have to do. Never mind that I'd just come back from two weeks off for medical reasons. My family was all here. I wanted to spend time with them.

We went to the fair on Tuesday. That was pretty much our only plan for the week. Oh that, and operation big sister gets a tattoo. She always gets a new tattoo when she travels so we took care of that on Friday. Or was it Saturday? It took us like four hours to do anything or get anywhere, and one day just blurred right on into the next. We also spent about two hours looking at model homes on Thursday. You'd never guess it, but looking at model homes is extremely exhausting. Probably because there were twelve. Twelve! We went into every single one of them too. The main reason is because we've been house hunting and want one for ourselves, and the other reason is because my whole family is pretty crazy about model homes. I guess it's genetic.

I find this pic utterly hilarious and I love it

This was our first time hosting that many people, and I tell you, it was pretty crazy. Just the month before I was living all by myself in that house, and now I had a house full of people talking, coming, going, and hanging out. My Dad alone is like a force of nature with his booming voice and big personality. Throw in an extremely adorable temperamental toddler, and a rambunctious 7 year old and it starts to feel a little bit wild. We did a simple BBQ on the fourth of July and I don't remember sitting down for more than about 30 minutes at a time between grocery shopping, food preparation, clean up, and extra runs to the grocery store for things forgotten. In the middle of all of that I enlisted the help of my mom and sisters for closet cleansing duty. My older sister did not hold back. There were more than a few of my most treasured items met with what's that? so it was a successful mission overall. I got rid of bags and bags of stuff. It was long overdue.

That night we walked out towards the parking lot near our house to see fireworks. We had the time wrong and we missed it, but nobody really cared that much. We turned around, went back in the house and commenced to hanging out.

We went out downtown on Thursday night, the couples plus big sister. Most mornings we walked. My mom makes sure of that. Another day four of us made two separate trips in two separate cars to Cold Stone Creamery, kind of at the same time. My sister and I were actually looking for my husband and nephew, but we must have just missed them. Let's call it a communication failure, as is typical among the chaos of groups. We were all trying to beat the heat. It's been so hot here.

We really didn't do a whole lot, but at the same time it felt like we did and the week was so full. Our time together was even more bitter sweet than usual because my younger sister is moving to Hawaii. Yes. Hawaii!!  Which means it'll be a great excuse to come see her, but also that our future family gatherings are a bit more uncertain. We've been so good about meeting up, usually in Vegas, at least once per year. That may or may not be possible anymore, which is sad, but I'm excited for my little sister as she embarks on this new adventure.

So this is the part where I go ahead and hit publish without spending days agonizing over every word. What, doesn't every blogger do that? It's a wonder I get anything posted at all, but this particular post is going up in July and that's that.