Take me home country road.

This weekend our family visited one of my most favorite places in the whole wide world. It was opening weekend at our family trailer. We made the 2 1/2 hour drive north to help our extended family clean & repair our beloved vacation spot. This is a place where my grandparents stayed every summer, we would go and visit them at least one week every year, usually much more often than that. I can tell we're there even if I'm blindfolded-I never forget the welcoming smell of woods and river that greets us as soon as we turn off the highway and into the trailer park.

This year was interesting, as we shared the trailer with my sister and her family. We had 5 kids and 4 adults under one roof and it was raining most of the time while we were there. Even with those odds, we managed to have a great time. My father and step-mother got a room at the local hotel, so after the majority of our work was done yesterday we headed over the hotel pool. EVERYBODY swam and had a great time-even my grandmother had a part in the fun. After swimming (and putting kids directly in to jammies-we're no dummies), Dad bought pizza for the whole lot of us and we ate in the loft/balcony lounge that overlooks the pool area. After supper, it was time for bed for the kiddies (like you didn't see that one coming)-we took the kids back the trailer and they were out with minimal struggle (only my little guy was difficult).

The grown-ups had a couple of beers and watched bad TV as the trailer doesn't get a lot of stations in. Sis and I had a lot of fun making fun of the bad 80's martial arts movie that the big guys were watching. It was so much fun to just hang out and relax-I always feel relaxed when I'm there.

As I unpacked today, I realized that I didn't even have to get into the emergency cache of activities I packed for our rainy weekend. The kids knew that this place is home, and they took full advantage of that fact-no major meltdowns or blow-ups from any of them.

The only time there was any stress was probably when it was time to go. We were trying to clean the trailer, keep it clean and keep the kids from going into the cleaned areas while loading the cars and getting kids out the door-You parents out there know what that's like! So we said goodbye to the spruced up trailer. And we look to the next time when we can get back to our little mobile home.