Four Generations, Fourth of July Fashions, and Fireworks

I have the hardest time keeping up with this blog!  I can't believe it's already been almost a week since our kids left, after our glorious family vacation week together at Oyster Haven!  And I never even blogged about our Fourth of July festivities, which were pretty sensational this year.

My mom--known as Mimi to her grandkids and great-grandkids--came over to join the chaos one day, and we were able to get this photo of four generations: Mimi, me, my youngest son, and his baby girl. My mom will be 88 years young in September; doesn't she look amazing?

On Independence Day, our whole gang went over to the neighborhood where my husband grew up and where his family still has a house on the lake (it's just a little over three miles down the road from Oyster Haven), to participate in the annual Fourth of July parade.  Many of my husband's siblings and their families were there, too, forming quite a lengthy string of Pearls. Everyone was dressed as patriotically as can be. Here are two of our little granddaughters all gussied up to march in the parade.  They are practically neighbors in VA, two weeks apart in age and besties--and also very much a pair of miniature fashionistas.

My boys are always good for humorous attire on the Fourth--or anytime, actually.  Here are the two youngest, #'s 4 and 5.  I heart them big time.

One of our wee grandsons, all decked out in Stars and Stripes, was pretty worn out from all the excitement before the parade even started.

Our newest star-spangled granddaughter has the same nickname as this great-aunt who's holding her.  This lovely lady is one of my husband's four sisters, who happens to also be the godmother of this sweet baby's daddy.

After the parade, we headed back to Oyster Haven for a hamburger-and-hot dog cookout and more beach time.  And then as the sun set, we got ready to watch the spectacular fireworks show that our neighbors put on every year.  How wonderful that we only have to go to the edge of our yard to see it!

I have been incredibly overtired since our week ended.  I've been taking naps every day--which is so unlike me.  I know part of it is that it was an extremely tiring week.  I mean, we had 26 people staying in a house that sleeps 13 comfortably (13 is the maximum number of guests we allow for our Vrbo renters).  And only 10 of those 26 people were adults.  So there was a lot going on: a lot of noise; a lot of meal preparation, serving, and cleanup; a lot of playing lifeguard down at the water's edge (or in the water!); a lot of getting up early with little peeps.  

So yes, I'm tired.  But I also think I'm just feeling a little low, now that my people are all gone.  I love having them gathered all together so, so much--in spite of the craziness of it.  We look forward to that week at Oyster Haven all year, and it comes and goes so quickly.  I'm sure I'll get over this blah feeling soon, though, once I've really caught up on my rest.

Luckily, my husband and I like each other.  I mean, we really like each other.  And so we'll enjoy the rest of the summer here together, attending daily Mass, saying our Rosaries out on the boat, visiting with my mom and other relatives who are still in the area, enjoying the lake.  And making up the beds on weekend turnover days at Oyster Haven (as well as keeping an eye on the quality of our cleaners' work!  We might be a tad OCD about our beloved lake house...).

Our 3-and-a-half-year old granddaughter who lives near us in VA (the one in the red dress, floppy hat, and sunglasses in the above photo) was sitting with me one day at Oyster Haven, bemoaning the fact that we are going to be at the lake for the rest of the summer.  "When will you go back to your real house, where you belong?" she asked.   Oh my heart!  Isn't it wonderful to be loved and missed like that?

So yes, we do belong in VA.  Most of the time.  But right now, it feels right to be here with just my guy, living the lake life that's in his blood.  We'll be back to our "real house" soon enough.

Lakeside Pearls 2023: It Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This

No time to blog.  So here’s a photo dump.  One picture is worth 1,000 words, after all.  😊

Ready, set, go!

Being here at Oyster Haven for almost two weeks before the kids were due to arrive has been such a HUGE blessing! We’ve never had the luxury of doing so since we bought the house in the fall of 2015 and opened it up as a vacation rental the summer of 2016.  We get our one week each year that we block off for our own family.  But that’s it…until this summer.  Between some burst pipes in the winter that needed repairs and a last-minute late June cancellation, we had the house blocked off the whole month of June, so we were able to move right in as soon as we came north. It has just been wonderful staying here!

We were able to get a number of overdue projects done inside and out, set up all the rooms for everyone, and shop for groceries and other supplies.  I was even able to bake coffee cakes and several batches of family-favorite cookies, which I stashed in the freezer—because otherwise, would there even be any goodies left by the time the kids arrived?!

We will have four out of five boys and their families this year.  Son # 2 and his wife just welcomed a fifth son on June 16, so they will not be joining us.  It’s hard to ever get 100 percent of the clan together for this week, with all the various commitments they have.  (Adulting is hard!)  But we are thrilled to have as many as we can get spending the week under our lake house roof.

As far as sleeping arrangements: it’s cozy…yeah that’s it, cozy.  It reminds me of summer trips to my husband’s parents’ house (the one just down the road, where we stay when we’re not at Oyster Haven), when our boys were growing up.  Very crowded communal living for a week!  That’s how they bonded with their many Pearl cousins, even though they were spread out all over the country. 

Many of our boys’ kids are lucky enough to live close to each other year-round; sons #2, 3, and 4 live within striking distance of each other in VA.  But with son #1 about to settle in a new house in WI and son #5 currently living in TN, we have to try to get everyone together as often as we can, 

Are you interested in room arrangements?  Let me show you how we’re fitting 10 adults and 16 children in a house where we only allow 13 guests total when we have renters.  (I won’t show you the master, where my husband and I are sleeping, because it’s a mess!)

Son #4 and his family are getting the Aviation room.  It has a queen and a twin.  We added a queen-sized air mattress, and they’re also bringing a pack ‘n play.  He and his wife have four little ones.

Our youngest son and his wife have one baby girl, four months old, who is currently co-sleeping with Mom and Dad. This little family gets the Little Cherubs Room.  It has a full and a twin, and we’ve pushed the beds together. 

Our oldest son has six kids with #7 on the way.  We converted the basement ping pong room into a bedroom for his family.  We dragged a queen-sized bed from the other makeshift basement  bedroom into this one (it might have been hard for our pregnant daughter-in-law to be comfortable on an air mattress!). Then we added two air mattresses, a king-sized and a queen-sized, and also a pack ‘n play for their youngest.  (After the picture was taken, we added a twin mattress on the floor for their young son.)

Finally, son #3’s family gets the Norman Rockwell Room.  It’s a huge room, which has a queen and two twins already (the second twin is not shown in this picture).  We added two  twin air mattresses. Their four oldest kids will sleep with them in this room.

Their youngest will be sleeping in the walk-in closet in Papa and Grammy’s room.

Oh, and then there’s this, which my husband saw on a Sam’s grocery run and thought we ought to have for the grandkids.

 

Well, before I had a chance to post this, the kids started arriving!  Let the fun begin—we’re ready!

Lakeside Pearls 2023: Let Summer Begin!

We are at our Oyster Haven Vrbo rental!  We got in yesterday afternoon, after the long drive north from VA, and we've already started the exhausting work of spring cleaning the place inside and out, so that it will be ready for the season.  We blocked off the whole month of June, because we needed some work done. There were some pipes that burst during the winter, which fortunately didn't cause any flooding.   But plumbing repairs were needed, and all the ancient baseboard heat covers throughout the first floor had to be replaced.

The work got done and everything looks new and improved.  And the bonus is that for the first time ever, we were able to move into the house early and get it ready for when our own gang comes on July 1 for our week-long Pearl vacation.  That's right, our kids and grandkids are our first "guests" this summer, how awesome is that?!  The only ones who will be missing this year are son #2 and his gang (because his wife JUST had a new baby, and the little guy is not quite ready for long-distance travel yet).  But the other four boys, their wives, and the 16 kids they have between them will be here.  Our oldest son's family hasn't been able to join us for the Oyster Haven week since the summer of 2016, so this will be very special for them. I'm getting so excited!  

I've dreamed of being able to spend more time here than just our one family vacation week (I get a little jealous of our lucky renters).  We stay at my husband's childhood home about 3 miles down the road while we manage our place from mid-June through Labor Day, and it's not too shabby there either.  But I love this property so much.  With its endless back yard and expansive private beach, it is the perfect idyllic retreat. I can hardly wait for everyone to get here.

But in the meantime, my hubby and I are enjoying being here together, just the two of us. This morning we went to an early Mass and when we got home, we sat by the lake in Adirondack chairs and prayed the Divine Office.

Not a bad way to start the day…and the summer.

Introducing—

A new grandson!

This sweet little fella was born yesterday afternoon, on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, and he has stolen his Grammy’s heart already.  Mom and baby are both doing very well.

Papa and I have been staying at his house with his four older brothers, waiting anxiously to meet him.  He and his parents should be home from the hospital by dinnertime.

This precious little boy is his parents’ 5th son, our 10th grandson, and Pearl grandchild #21 (he has so many cousins to play with!).  What a blessing he is to our family!

Our Walls Do Talk

My husband and I are about to leave our VA home for the summer and head to upstate NY, to the town where we grew up and met.  To the place where our story started 50 years ago. 

I’m excited to escape the extreme VA heat and humidity and spend the summer months on the refreshing lake, boating and swimming (when it finally gets warm enough for this old lady to dip her toes in there!), seeing my mom and lots of siblings on both sides, hosting our kids and grandkids for a vacation week in July at our Oyster Haven rental property.  

But I will miss the kids and grandkids who are our “neighbors” down here (not exactly next-door neighbors, but close enough)—three of our married boys and the 13-soon-to-be-14 children they have between them.  I love having so much of my family within striking distance.  (I want them ALL that close, but I’ll take what I can get!!)

I’ll even miss our sweet little house here, though it doesn’t have a lake view out the back windows—and in fact, it doesn’t even have much of a yard at all around it. We make do, as you can see from these photos taken the other day at a playdate with son #4’s wife and four kiddos.

Most of the walls in my house are gallery walls, eclectic groupings of artwork and memorabilia that “command attention and showcase our fondest family memories” (that’s what the Internet says these sorts of walls are supposed to do, and that description seems to fit!).  My walls look randomly designed (and they are constantly evolving and changing); but they are tied together by the fact that everything I hang up on them has special meaning.  Every piece has a story behind it, and all together, our crowded walls tell the story of our life.

This little section of wall in my kitchen is one of my favorites.

This wall includes canvas photo copies of the pigs I'd painted onto the kitchen walls of our NH house over 30 years ago.  I had to roll a nice neutral gray-colored paint over my precious pigs to make things fresh for the new owners when we moved away in 2017, but I made sure to take pictures before I started that sad task.  And those canvases were among the first items I hung up when we got to our new house.  Notice also the two cartoon drawings son #4 (a very talented artist) did for us as gifts, one of our five boys and the other of my husband and me.  There's the Bigfoot sign I painted for my dad years ago as a Christmas gift ("Bigfoot" was the name his grandkids all called him, per his request!).  That little sign came back to me when he died in 2016.  There's a clock I had made with an image of the cover of Finding Grace (you can do just about anything with photos these days, can't you?). The tiny embroidery piece was handcrafted by one of my twin granddaughters, who is 12 now, as a gift for me a few years ago.  (The little wooden frame?  It originally held a tiny oil painting that I made for my own grandmother many decades ago, a gift that came back to me when she died. Talk about history repeating itself!)  See that small framed print of an old brick building? That's the high school where my husband and I met as freshmen, way back in 1972.  It's since been torn down and I'm so glad to have this image of it!  The small wooden cross with the beautiful scroll work on it was given as a favor at a wedding we attended about a year ago at our parish here in VA.  (We have friends!  We're making connections, when I never thought we would do that after our big move to a new town--and a new state-- at a relatively late stage of life!). And finally, the cutting board is a gift from our youngest son.  It is engraved with our last name and these words: "Together is our favorite place to be."  Truer words were never spoken.  (And my boys are the sweetest, most thoughtful gift-givers.)

Can you see why I love that gallery wall so much?  Since it's in the room where I spend the bulk of my time each day, I look at it often.  It always makes me happy.

I have a passion for collecting transferware and vintage souvenir plates, so many of my walls have plates hanging on them.  But they can't just be pretty; they have to be meaningful to me as well, as these two in the family room most definitely are.  The top one is a souvenir from a Bavarian town where our youngest son lived for three years when he was in the Army.  While he was stationed there, I was able to stay for a prolonged visit with him at his apartment, located right in the center of town, and I fell in love with that area of Germany.  The other plate shows a map of another place near and dear to my heart, of course: the state of NH, where we lived for more than a quarter of a century and did most of the raising of our sons.

On the table: a picture from our trip to Rome in March of 2019, standing 
in front of the Spanish Steps.

The other neat thing on that wall is the framed map of Lake Champlain.  We grew up near that lake and we spend our summers there, so my husband and I love having this reminder hanging on a wall of our VA home.  And of course, there's the requisite nod to Irish culture, the Claddagh wall hanging.

The man of the house has a recliner chair on one side of the room, and this is what the wall next to that chair looks like.  I don't really have to tell you why I love it so much, do I?  I mean, is there anything better than family photos? This wall also has the sweet sign our middle son's wife made for us one Christmas--it might have been the first Christmas we celebrated in VA.  It says, "Papa & Grammy's House, WHERE COUSINS BECOME FRIENDS."  That pretty much sums up why we moved here in the first place and what we hope this house will accomplish!  (Please note the clock, too, a gift I gave my husband: it's an Irish pub clock that says, "DANCING, SINGING, CARRYING ON--CLOSED DURNG MASS."  That was a must-have because we love all things Irish, and that includes Notre Dame football.) 

Over on the other side of the room, where I have a big overstuffed chair and ottoman, this is what my wall looks like. Pictures of our boys, pictures of them with their wives on their wedding days...it doesn't get much better than that.

The best wall of all is in our living room, though: that is where we showcase the ever-expanding gallery of canvas portraits of our beloved grandchildren.  Each little person's adorable mug is added when he or she turns one (a favorite age of ours), so only 19 of the 20 (almost 21!) are up there so far.

We do have some lovely religious artwork in our house as well (a subject for a future post, perhaps?), and a few other pieces of art that speak to me in a special way.  But family photos and memorabilia take up most of the wall space.

I'll be missing these busy but comforting walls, and the tales they tell about our life together, when we're away for the next few months.  But I'm also looking forward to spending most of the summer (when we're not at our Oyster Haven house) surrounded by the walls of my husband's beloved childhood home, where we spent so much of our time when we were young and just starting out.  Those walls do a lot of talking, too, and they've got some great stories to tell.  

We should be packed up and on the road to NY by Sunday or Monday.  But first, some babysitting!  We are going over to the house of son #2 tonight for a sleepover, to be there for their four boys when Mom and Dad leave tomorrow morning to have their new baby.  Our daughter-in-law is scheduled to be induced rather early.  Any prayers you could offer up would be appreciated!  And I'll let you know how it all went, and whether we've got a new granddaughter or a new grandson!