When I told people this past week that we were heading out of town for a week at the beach, I got lots of oohs and aahs about how fun it would be, and lots of sighs of envy. But then when I went into the details and dropped in the bit about how we were going to a family reunion and would be staying in a beach house with seven other families, everyone I talked to shrank back, holding their hands in front of them in horror (or as if they were warding off some evil force).

A family reunion?

On Friday I wrote about how amazing it was going to be to have a weekend with the carry-over of the glorious 80-degree weather we'd had that day. In reality, though, the temperatures plummeted some 40 degrees and both Saturday AND Sunday were cold and rainy and blustery. We even lit a fire on Sunday--long after we'd thought we wouldn't be doing that again for months and months to come. But Scott brought in armloads of wood and the kids gathered around, jumping up and down as they watched the flames leaping up into the chimney.

I don't get much one-on-one time with my son anymore, despite often superhuman efforts to make this happen. Before T. was born he was my buddy; I took him everywhere, even to classes with me sometimes when he had a day off preschool, or wasn't feeling well enough to go to school. He always sat quietly in the back of the class, drawing on paper, or listening to me even  while students snuck amused glances at him and tried hard to win his attention. The last really special walk we had together was the day I went into labor with T., who arrived ten days early.