Tail End of Trip #1

We’re coming up on the end of our first trip of the summer. We have three more nights and 2.5 more days in St. Louis. The farm was incredible and I want to write more about what a special experience it is. The location is magic. The people are amazing. Everyone gets along. Everyone has fun. Our kids are old enough and have been enough that we have to do minimal parenting and get to enjoy the other adults who are doing minimal parenting as well. (We of course also help out the adults who are in the thick of it parenting smaller kids during a very intense weekend).

I take a ton of pictures because one of my roles is the “maker of the book.” Every year I put together a photo book and print copies for all the families. I take literally thousands of photos during the weekend, and everyone sends me their best shots, and then I sort through them and put them into a digital photo book. It’s a lot of work but I love making it, and I love knowing it will help the kids remember how amazing the weekend is every year.

We’re only at the farm for four days and three nights, so the rest our trip we’re in St. Louis. We spend some of that time with the same cousins we see at the farm, and other parts of it with cousins on my mom’s side. This year it’s not really working out for us to see the cousins on my mom’s side, which is fine because the cousins we’re closest with – who live in South Carolina and come to town for the farm too – are around the whole time we are.

We’ve been here so many times that we don’t really have anything we’re clamoring to do over the next few days. Tomorrow we may just hang out at my aunt’s and play with the cousins. Friday we want to see the new Thor movie. Saturday we are seeing a cousin on my mom’s side and we may go swimming but then we’d have to pack wet suits on our way home. We swam so much at the farm that my kids might not want to swim again. (Usually we swim a lot in St. Louis because it’s just too cold to swim much in San Francisco.)

It’s been a really great trip, but it’s also a lot to feel pressure to socialize constantly. We’re here mostly to see family so we try to do everything with someone else. I’m hoping our trip to London, where we have way fewer people to see, will be a little less intense.