Not My Family's Reunion

This past weekend I went to my sister-in-law, Jennifer's, family reunion.  I know it seems weird to go to family reunions that aren't mine.  But it isn't the first time I've been to her family's reunion. 

The first time I went was because her and my brother lived in San Francisco and the reunion was in Texas.  So it was just convenience of seeing them.

This time, Jennifer was the president of her family for the year, and it was right down the road from me, at Canyon Lake and I told her I would come to help out.

Another note about last time, there may have been this whole thing about where I TOTALLY fell for her cousin, he moved from Missouri to Texas to be with me, we dated for over a year and then we broke up.  He then hooked up with his ex, knocked her up, they got married and as of July 4th of this year they celebrated their son's first birthday.

That pretty much covers it.

But you see where this time around it makes things "interesting."

To say the least.

Yes, I have seen my ex and his wife and kid several times (and blogged about it).  We are all actually on good terms and are very cordial together.

But after this weekend, I honestly considered (but haven't yet) asking his wife, Michelle, to be my friend on Facebook. I think it was mostly due to the fact that it wasn't my family and her first time with them, and therefore, we bonded.

So things went well I'd say.

To set the scene of the main plot line, we stayed at the Canyon Lake Cabins and Cottages.  And no, I would not recommend it.  I mean, if your goal is just to float the river and don't mind sharing tight quarters with people, fine.  But all of us agreed it wasn't the nicest place.  

And to keep it short, when I saw we were staying in one of these tiny places, I got scared.

When I saw the inside looks like this, and I pulled this picture from their website, I really panicked thinking I was back on the cruise ship.  Ours was not decorated at all, and had bedding that was stamped with a hospitals name, huh.  So this picture is an upscale to what we had!

And that's where I stayed with my brothers family.  Can we say tight quarters?

The first day we went to Gruene, Texas to hang out.  We ate lunch and then walked around to all the shops.  I took this picture of Grey, I swear, when I first glanced at it, I saw a young woman.  Look how beautiful she is! 

This is both Grey and Elle being silly.

Shoppin' around.

Of course, we had to go to Gruene Hall, Texas' oldest dance hall.

And, of course, the kids had to dance.  I even took a pic of the ex and his son, Ryder.  Seriously, because Ryder is the cutest "little" (I'd use that term loosely) guy I've seen in a while.

That night we did some family stuff, blah blah blah. 

But the next day we did something I swore people should never do:  Float the river with kids.

I thought I would be ashamed, but in actuality, I am not.  See, it was a slow progression to the actual moment where we floated with my nieces, and I would be hard pressed to call it a true float.

It started with we were just going to sit next to the river.  Then you had to buy a tube to park, then my brother bargained three tubes from the company at a great rate.  Then we saw other people with kayaks/canoes and kids floating, so we thought we'd do that.  So we went and talked to the lady at the nearest rental place.  She advised not floating with the kids, not because of safety or vulgarity (which was why I was scared) but because of how kids are and two hours into a float: they are bored.

So she advised renting more tubes but just not allowing ourselves to float down the river.  Just stay in the area where you get in.  Which after she said it, it totally made sense, because I remember spending a ridiculous amount of time at the beginning of the Horseshoe float (where we were) and feeling like we weren't getting anywhere.  That's exactly what we wanted for kids!

So we found a spot on the hill for our stuff, we'd get in as far back as we could, and we would float back to our stuff.  It would seriously take us 30-45 minutes to do that.  And it was perfect!

Oh, and the girls LOVED it!  There was never a time where they wined or cried about being in the river (well...besides the fact that the Horseshoe feels like you are floating on a just melted iceberg).  But they would get in the tubes with us and just bounce around from tube to tube of ours.  I think they liked mine the best because I had the cooler and they could sit on it and therefore not touch the freezing water, haha!

Oh, oh, and me and my soon to be BFF (Michelle) tied our tubes together.  It's either because we are friends now or because she follows the saying, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

Here's my brother in the river with the girls:

Here's our spot on the hill.  From back left: Jennifer's brother- Jeff, Ryan, Michelle, Jennifer, Grey and Brad.



And before this picture was taken, was when my brother and I walked to the gas station to buy this pizza.  He and I may have had a few drinks, I may have spit my drink out all spit-take like along the way when I choked on the drink. 

But while we waited for our pizza to cook, we took this awesome picture:

We questioned the weirdness of his sister egging him on for this photo.  But not very long, because as you might remember, I did have enough drinks already to actually choke on it while walking there.  And hey, me taking a picture saved $5 and the fact that he would have to throw it away shortly after showing people because it's just not something that you want your kids to accidently whip out during their next play date.

So don't question the sister taking the picture: Enjoy it for what it is.

A disgusting hat that people slightly more drunk than us buy for a good laugh.

And then we did more family stuff, blah blah blah. 

(Oh, and Chelsea, I do apologize for not taking the picture of Jennifer with the gavel.  See, my reason for being there was to help, and during the family meeting, run full on old-english/sorority style, I had the job of entertaining my nieces - or just preventing a melt-down in front of the entire family- is more like it.  But trust me, it happened, and she later told me that someone in her family got onto her for not "waiting for a motion before asking for someone to second it," how ridiculous right?  I mean, in her words, "we're family, can't we just talk like human beings saying what we want and don't want like normal human beings talk these days?")

(For the record, I agree.  I never understood why we made it complicated in the sorority with talking in a style no one currently understands.)

Me and my BFF actually took a car ride, just us, together to get more stuff for dinner.  I just thought you'd like to know.

There's other things that happened, but I feel I have dragged this on long enough.  Kinda like how I felt after I woke up the final day this past weekend in that tiny room on a futon, it's been long enough...