vacation notes and such

well, we survived a very nice family reunion. As nice as it was, we've decided it was our last. The family is now so far removed and we all tend to just hang out with each other anyways. We stayed at the dorms at Northwestern University in St. Paul -- it was so fun as Mom, the girls, and Joe, Nora, and I all shared a quad which means we shared our living room and kitchen. Nora had a blast being with her 'famiwee' all the time. What we can take from all of this is that we vacation well together and should do so in the future.

We had a main rec room at the college where there were family pictures, snacks, games and such. In the evenings, the family would hang out there. Joe and I played Scrabble a couple of times. One night, he opened the game with the word 'dildo'. About halfway through the game, an elderly woman (who must be a distant relative as I did not know her) came over to observe. She perused the board and then said, "What does this word mean?" My chilvalrous husband said, "Sarah?" I said, "Joe?" While Joe and I stammered, she said things like, 'if you play a word, you have to know what it is' and 'if it's Spanish, that's not normally allowed' and on and on. Finally I said that Joe wasn't very good at the game and had played slang. You would think the lesson would have been learned, but our next game started with 'orgy.'
The Mall of America was nowhere as bad as I had imagined it to be. The kids all had a blast shopping and riding rides. Nora even got her first American Girl Bitty Baby Doll. Originally, she was getting the baby only and the accessories later when her baby sister arrives. However, between her and her aunts, she somehow opened it all. We explained to her that she could name her baby any name in the whole wide world and then gave her examples of names. Nora wisely named her, "Baby Nora" The 'baby' title is helpful in differentiating between the two of them.

Nora picks up all sorts of phrases from her aunts. The one that sticks out to me from this trip is what we heard while driving home on the highway: "Wook at dose wims on dat twuck!" I'm pretty sure she doesn't even know what rims are -other than as a new interest of her Aunty Nisey. Some other funny things she has said to me lately are, "Spitting is happy manners!" and shoot... I can't remember another right now. I always {incorrectly} think it will be impossible to forget.

On the way home, we stopped overnight at a hotel with an indoor waterpark. The girls had a wonderful time. They had a really big area for littler ones, so even Nora had a blast. The older girls mostly hung out in the hot tub.