The July 4th Family Reunion

First things first ... I took a shot across my blogging bow from Mike on Sunday because my Cartoon Saturday post was late. Well, you can thank Blogger. I had prepared the Cartoon Saturday post well in advance (we were out of town for the weekend, as you are soon to read about) and set up the "schedule" function so that it would publish at 5:30 AM on Saturday. Needless to say, it didn't. My sister mentioned that she hadn't seen it, and when I discovered what had happened, I used my trusty iPhone to access the Blogger dashboard and brute-force publish the post. You can see it here in case you missed it.

The moral of the story is, don't trust the Blogger schedule function. It's worked for me in the past, but I don't think I can trust it in the future.

But on to today's post!

You may recall my mentioning that we were going to be headed to my home town of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the 4th of July weekend to enjoy a family reunion.  My father, my sister Lisa, and my brother Paul live there, my son Jason and his family were back in the States for a few weeks and staying in Dayton, and so Pittsburgh was a good central location for a get-together ... much to my long-suffering sister's dismay as we all descended on her home.  Here, for those of you who are not connected to me on Facebook, are the details and pictures of a wonderful weekend ...

Most of us drove to Pittsburgh on Wednesday. We arrived late in the afternoon, just in time to meet up with Jason's family and give me my first chance to hold our newest grandchild, Ava ...

On the Fourth, those of us who had arrived all congregated at Lisa's house to get reacquainted and visit with my dad, who got to play the patriarch and enjoy the attention of all his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Here, dad unsuccessfully tries to pretend he doesn't know Lisa, Paul, and I ...

... and this group photo was shot after Lisa found her tripod and I finally figured out how to operate the timer on my camera ... you will notice that Ava petulantly refused to look at the camera ...

My oldest grandaughter, Marcy, had asked me to bring along a selection of gourmet cupcakes from the famous Georgetown Cupcakes shop. I agreed to do so before checking to see how much they cost. I have never before bought (and am unlikely again to buy) cupcakes that required me to take out a second mortgage on the house ...

On Friday, we took all the children to Pittsburgh's famous and historic Kennywood Park for a day of fun. My granddaughter Marcy, son Matt, and I rode the "Bayern Kurve," which is about at my upper limit of speed and stomach churn ...

Granddaughter Elise liked the chain swing, and proved my father's old adage that everything works better if you hold your tongue right ...

And my niece Elena took my granddaughter Leya on the Whip ...

Agnes and I, our daughter Yasmin, and Leya and Elise left the park early (relatively speaking) in a state of near exhaustion, but the others all stayed long enough to watch the fireworks show and take in more of the death-defying rides.

On Saturday, we all packed up and went over to the nursing home where my father lives now, to give him a chance to show off all his grandchildren and great-grandchildren to his friends. We also got to see his famous tomato garden ... dad was once a world-class gardener, renowned around the neighborhood for his tomatoes, and my sister and her husband help him keep up his little garden at the home. The little stone tablet that reads "Bill's Garden" was made a year or so ago by his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who each "signed" it with their thumbprint ...

Dad also got a chance to confer with Ava and pass on some of his hard-earned knowledge ...

Later in the afternoon, back at Lisa's house, we broke out Cousin Eddie's traditional Redneck* Slip'n'Slide ... a marvelous do-it-yourself entertainment extravaganza consisting of a large sheet of plastic, a hose, a large bottle of baby shampoo, and the hill next to Aunt Lisa's house ...

Cousin Eddie not only engineered the whole thing, but he also got Tom Sawyered into letting Leya ride him down the hill ...

It was fun for children of all ages ...

After using the slip'n'slide, we had to wash off all the accumulated baby shampoo ... which was accomplished using Cousin Eddie's Monumental Power Wash. In this picture, my son Matt, grandson Joe, granddaughter Leya, and I take our positions ...

... and then get the full benefit of multiple five-gallon buckets of ice-cold water ...

Later that afternoon, Jason and Tabitha took Marcy, Elena, and Marcy's cousin Valerie to the Taylor Swift Concert at Heinz Field, while Lisa, Matt, and I rotated babysitting duties with Ava ... 

Agnes, of course, got in her Oma cuddling time with Leya and Ava (and all the other grandchildren) ...

On Sunday, before we had to leave to head back to Disneyland-on-the-Potomac, we had an early birthday celebration for our grandson Joe. You may not recognize him in the picture below, in which we were trying to prove that we are, indeed, an odd, yet fun, family.

And there you have it. I hope you had as fun and loving a holiday weekend as we did**. Yee-HAH!

Have a good day. More thoughts on Thursday.

Bilbo

* Rednecks are about the last social/ethnic group you can still talk about without getting sued.

** Except for the part about driving home via the Pennsylvania Turnpike and I-70 and I-270 with every car manufactured in the US for the last 40 years, all crawling at about 5 angstroms per fortnight ... the four-hour drive home took us more than seven hours!