Home Again, Home Again

HOME. Finally.

What a great trip, even though it was a LOT of driving. We made Nashville on Wednesday night with a bit of low flying (5 hours, even though google maps said it'd take 6...), and we were in the mountains by 2pm on Thursday. The group of friends on this trip are all friends from our Houston time, even though only one of the five families still lives in Houston. But we've known most of these folks for nearly 10 years, some of them for longer, so we've got some pretty good history with them, and lots of good memories.

So. A total of five families made this trip, making 10 adults and 8 kids, aged 6 years to 4 months. It was a FULL house, but for some reason it seemed to work ok. The house was three levels, and noisy as hell, meaning that if anyone was on the main level (kitchen, main room, etc.), you heard them both upstairs and down. Mostly wood floors and wood ceilings through the entire house, and I don't think there was any insulation between floors, so just walking across a floor was noisy. Our kids were older, so we probably had the best end of the deal - no babies waking up, and ours are a breeze to put to bed. I'm pretty sure it was not as easy for everyone else with younger kids, though.

But once the kiddos were in bed at night, everyone that was still awake trooped out to the deck (which was huge), turned on the baby monitors, cranked up the blender for margaritas, and sat outside in the nice mountain air, shooting the shit, reminiscing, and generally having a fantastic time. There was an outdoor fireplace that one of the guys got going each night for s'mores and a bit of heat, 'cause it was quite a bit cooler at night than it is in AR. It was awesome.

The last night we were there, we finally managed to get all ten of the adults on the deck at the same time. One of the crew hadn't ever seen a shooting star (she called herself a "shooting star virgin"), and it was the first really clear night we'd had, so we all spent about an hour craning our necks at the stars and counting satellites, airplanes, and finally, shooting stars. To give you a flavor of the evening conversation, she "popped her shooting star cherry." There were many worse jokes than that, especially as the margaritas got stronger and the bottle of jack emptied. At some point, we even cranked up the 80s music (I'm sort of embarrased to admit that one). And of course, it was completely dark on the deck, so hilarity ensued when folks tried to move around (see: glasses kicked, things dropped, and lots of laughing). Stories were told, lots of bad jokes were made, and we eventually realized this was the first vacation we'd managed to get all five couples (well, now it's families I suppose) together. That was pretty amazing, considering how many trips the crew has taken over the years.

Plans were definitely tossed around for the next trip like this one...we'll see what happens. Getting 18 people together in the same place at the same time was a feat that I think every person expressed surprised at pulling off. Everyone was waiting to see who would back out of this one, but no one did. I'm guessing no one wanted to deal with the shit that would be thrown if they were the couple that backed out ... He he he. But yeah. Five different cities, four different states, and we managed to pull it off better than we did when we all lived in one city. Fingers crossed the next time works out just as well...