Vacation mid-point

First things first:

Visiting family does not equal vacation.

I see it as more of an obligation than a vacation. Vacation, to me, is going someplace really exciting (New York! Hawaii! Graceland in Memphis!) or somewhere lovely and relaxing (the beach) or someplace just fun (skiiing). Yet every year, we must make the trek to visit Gary's family in Missouri. This we do because ... well, because it is what one must do. Family harmony and all that.

So we did. And I am here to say we survived. But I am getting ahead of myself. First things first: We toured Graceland! I should clarify: I am not that big an Elvis fan. I mean, who doesn't find the '68 Comeback Special Elvis hot? (In that black leather get up? Exactly.) And you have to love his early stuff: That's All Right. Heartbreak Hotel. He's Elvis, right? So Graceland was just fun. (Though you see neither the television he shot at nor the toilet where he, um, expired. Too bad ...

And to make the day even more meaningful, we also visited the National Civil Rights Museum, which is housed in the actual Lorraine Hotel, site of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Very moving - I am so glad we took the girls. They saw the footage of fire hoses being turned on school-age children in the south, a replica of the Woolworth's lunch counter (saw the original in the Smithsonian), buses that told the story of Rosa Parks and that were firebombed when the Freedom Riders used them.

Wow. And Sylvia's response? "That's just mean."

Insightful comments from my 8-year-old. Funny that some adults don't see that.

Then came family time. Three days in DeSoto, MO, with Gary's family. The girls enjoyed seeing their grandparents, two great-grandmothers. It was nice to see them, and the girls enjoyed going out on the boat. One of Gary's cousins has a 17-month-old daughter, and the girls had fun with her. (Though the parenting skills I saw displayed were disturbing, to say the least - I'm not big on deception, as in: Eat your dinner or we'll get rid of the fish in the aquarium. Also not big on the need to "use my hand" on a 17-month-old. Nor on describing a not-quite 2-year-old as "horrible." She's just a little girl. Sigh.)

Three days with the Muellers didn't feel like enough punishment: We topped that with three days of Gerlachs, meeting my parents and brothers et al in St. Louis. For me, that actually is fun; my brothers are pretty entertaining to be with. John and Barb are actually quite fun to just hang out and play games with - Yahtzee, Taboo, Scrabble. We got to indoctrinate Andy, Jim and Emily into the competitive fray (my parents did not seem to have the stomach for it ...)

I could try to describe our somewhat unique way of playing Yahtzee. The party that was Shankfest 2007. Norm the Beer Gnome. But I'm pretty sure you had to be there.

To paraphrase a friend, every family has its own level of disfunction; those who say their family doesn't is just lying. It is so true - I saw every bit of it firsthand over the past week. But it's what you deal with. And in the case of my family, it just adds to the ... well, we'll just say "character" or "color" of the group.

Never the less, I'm glad we all got together. They're the people who understand us the best. That's the important thing.

Just don't confuse it with my vacation.