Family...

And now this one...

There will be another family(ish) blog but here is the general one.

Trips home are always complicated when it comes to family visits. When people come up here to visit they get our undivided attention. It's just them and us. When we go down there to visit we are dividing time between families. Including when each of our father's died, we made time in the middle of both of those trips for some time with the other family. Scheduling can be tricky and it can lead to cross communication and hurt feelings and drama. All of which I am allergic to....

So anyway, this trip was specifically to make sure we visited with my mother since she doesn't travel. We wanted to make sure she got however much time she wanted with us so when I called her with our travel dates I let her know Saturday afternoon and evening were taken with the reunion (that ended up not happening) but she could have whatever else she wanted. She wanted lunch on Sunday.
"Is that it?"
"Yep, that way everyone can join."
"Okay, but you don't want anything else? We get in Friday afternoon and don't leave until Tuesday morning..."
"Nope, lunch on Sunday will be good."

Ooookay....

Not going to lie, I was more than a little put out. But that's what she wanted so that's what we did. Later my sister texted me and let me know that now Mom wanted lunch on Sunday and then time after for cake. Okay. Is that all? Yes, that's it.  Okay...

So we let Brent's mom know that Saturday afternoon and evening and Sunday were taken but what time did she want? She wanted Friday evening, Saturday morning, Monday all day and Tuesday before the flight...You just have to laugh. We got her talked down to about half of that so we could spend Monday evening with friends as well. Then it ended up that she wasn't feeling well on Saturday so begged off from Biopark adventures after breakfast.

Now I will say it was a lovely visit. We saw Brent's mother's new house. She finally moved out of the place she and Jack had together. I was surprised that it took her as long to do it as it did. The new place is nice. It's in a gated community and has some lovely wrought iron work on the windows (Albuquerque) so she feels much safer than she did out on the West Side. It's closer to her office and the places she likes to go, including a new Sadie's so we had a wonderful dinner there the first night. There are skylights all throughout and she's put up mesh wiring along the fences so the cats can go out in the backyard with her. It's a little bigger than she really needs, but the layout, skylights and price were right for her so she took it.

Breakfast the next day was nice. We hit Weck's for papas and David and Stephen joined us. David was the Mastenbrook family stylist for years and years. I got him in the marriage as well; the man knows hair. He also became a close family friend over all of those years. I felt a little badly for Stephen because he had planned on going on a morning hike and got roped in to breakfast instead but sometime sacrifices are made, right? They are both doing well and it was lovely to see them. The only bad part was, as I said, Ann wasn't feeling well so she went home instead of on to the park with us. Though she probably enjoyed being at home more than she would have enjoyed dot harvesting in the heat with us.

Sunday was lunch with my family at Little Anita's. More New Mexican food, of course, then back to my mom's place for German Chocolate cake. The cake is a big deal to me. It's my very favorite. I've mentioned before that birthdays in my family were always done in bulk. So for August we had my Aunt Lucille, cousin Todd, me, and my brother John. Aunt Lucille's favorite meal was creamed tacos and John's favorite cake was German Chocolate so that's what we had. Along with homemade vanilla ice cream because it's summer and who doesn't love that? But over the years as Ann (sister this time not MIL) would make that cake it became my favorite as well. It's just perfection. She even sent a slab of it to Idaho Falls one year for my birthday. It traveled messily but still tasty! This time around my nephew Brian made his mother's cake so the torch was passed and I ate the rewards. You all know how I am about cake...

The visit was a good one. Only one or two testy moments about politics and differences in opinions but they passed quickly and fairly smoothly. Which is good, I was really worried it would be a tough one this time. With the Supreme Court rulings, the start of the next presidential season, Caitlyn Jenner and the Iran deal there were so many potential land mines that the fact that nobody got blown up is pretty damn impressive. Maybe Mom knew exactly what she was doing by limiting the time of the visit to just a few hours.

When it became apparent that the jet lag was catching up to Brent (he was in Germany last week and would fade for a bit every afternoon as his body thought it was the middle of the night) we said our goodbyes and headed out with no blood no foul. Not bad.

Another quick meal with Brent's mother and that wrapped up the families. No tears. No tone. Or not much tone, maybe a short burst of tone once but it was quick...nobody disowned. Not bad.

Now you are asking where the pictures are? Well let me tell you, I swear I took pictures at lunch with my family. I even moved from one side of the table to the other to make sure I got everyone. And they are not on my camera. Gone. And Brent's mom? I totally forgot. I had planned on taking a picture of all of us at the park and when she didn't go I didn't reset my head to make sure I got a shot of her the next meal we had. Just gone from my brain. But we did see them, even though there are no pictures. Instead here are our stand-ins, butterflies from the Biopark...

There we all are having lunch together...

And here is a lovely shot of Brent's mother showing us how bright the new house is with all of the skylights. 

See? Pretty much exactly the same...