The Meandering McMurdos

Why does my family always expect us to travel to them? Seriously. There have been a few times when they have come to us, like special occasions or when we have begged. But it's always been on their terms, not ours. Heck even Aislin's blessing occurred on their terms more or less. We had planned on doing it on Memorial Day weekend, but my mom randomly decided to get the first weekend in June off without consulting us, so we changed it and missed the blessing of our very best friends' daughter who was born 2 weeks after Aislin. I was less than thrilled.

And now I'm getting "Oh, I have these days off so why don't you just pop on up here" 8+ hours away to Billings, Montana. Rifle season for deer starts that week. What? Family is more important than hunting? Sure, hunting season happens to be a family affair for us, and it's also a pretty big deal. We get ALL our meat for the year then. Yah, I could go to the store and buy meat, but I would prefer to feed my family meat that hasn't been grown on hormones. Yuck. I'm not a fan of preparing our meat for use, but it is well worth it.

Back on the topic of traveling, it's not that easy with little kids that don't understand why they've been strapped in a seat and why Mumma can't just pick them up when they're hungry or sad. But more of it is that if you want us to visit, why not plan some things to do? Sitting and talking can only get you so far until we just want to pull our hair out and run away to wander Walmart. And about that: it's hilarious that you use, "But go can go shopping" or "There's no sales tax here" to try to bribe us up there. Really? We have a Walmart 1.5 hours away and the Cabella's in Lehi, UT is much closer and much much bigger and much more awesome. Oh and the cost of driving for over 16 hours up and back pretty much trumps sales tax. It's only 5 cents by the way.

I move we have a scheduled family reunion every year complete with planned activities. Yes, even though you're divorced you can still tolerate each other for a couple days. You don't have to stay in the same accommodations after all. I'll even plan the first one.

 Christmas 2011
(summer)
Christchurch NZ

We'll have a barbecue on the beach.

Oh, that's right, you don't want to travel 12+ hours.