8.31.2011

Rhode Island and Learning about Families


Jenna as she dropped me off at the airport to fly back to WV. We had quite an adventure on the way to the airport with the mattress tied to the top of her car. Her dad tied it on there in a hurry so that I would not be late to my flight, and we didn't make it 50 yards down the road before I knew we it needed to be fixed. The result was us pulling over multiple times to tighten the rope, and going 40 mph on the freeway with everyone staring at us :)


Quahoging - clamming for little necks. Of course we forgot the bag so were do we put them? In our bathing suit of course!



Jenna's dad and her nephew Aiden on her dad's boat


Jenna and her niece Lilly out on her dad's boat.

I never did get around to posting any pictures from my trip to Rhode Island, so here we go. The purpose of my trip was to spend some last minute freedom from my good friend Jenna who was about to start Medical School in Vermont. Her parents hosted us at their lovely home in Briston, RI where they live right on the water. We had such a blast going out on her dad's boat with her little nephew, eating and cooking amazing food, going quahoging (Rhode Islandese for clamming for little necks), going out on her neighbors big fancy boat and tubing, visiting the amazing Christmas Tree Store, seeing Newport, and eating more amazing food.

Her parents threw a party for her in celebration of this next phase of her life and her brother was a gigantic pot of chowder, it was sooo good and there was sooo much leftover! So I decided to freeze 5 quart size bags and put them in my carry on and check my carry on. I figured that much home made chowder was worth the twenty dollars. I was nervous that it wouldn't stay frozen since I flew home on such a hot day, but when I got in that evening they were still solid....yea!

It is always a new experience when you spend time with another person's family. Seeing the way that the family members relate to one another, communicate with each other, and how their actions/moods affect everyone else. When Clay and I were dating and I was getting to know his family there were things that I thought were absolutely crazy, just because I hadn't been exposed to it in my family (like how they talk more about their dogs than anything else!) Now as Clay and I are starting our own family which will hopefully grow down the road, I realize how important it is to set a precedence on what our family dynamics will be like. Will we be quiet and reserved and not overly affectionate? Or will we be loud and touchy and not afraid to yell at each other? Will we tell our family every day that we love them, or will be just assume they already know that? Clay and I both come from pretty similar families as far as how our parents treated us, communicated with us, and expected of us. Being around Jenna's family, I saw people that truly love each other, but express it much differently. They don't hesitate to get involved in each others business or yell at each other to let it be known that they are upset. I myself being raised in a much more quiet/non confrontational household, it felt someone unsettling/akward at times, until I realized that this was how they function as a family. And while there may be more or less constructive ways for families to operate, I think it is all in how you were raised, are familiar with, and what you want your own family to be. So I guess the whole point of my rambling is to realize that there may not be any one right way for a family to work, and probably no one has it perfectly figured out. But as we start our own families, we need to set a standard (as parents) for how we want our family members to interact.




8.02.2011

I returned Sunday from a wonderful long weekend in Rhode Island with my wonderful friend Jenna Arruda who was a roommate of mine at Cal Poly in SLO.   I will post more about that trip later as I have been sick since my return and just have a couple of photos I wanted to share.  Clay is out in Illinois doing bat surveys.  I never know how long he is going to be gone for, because if they happen to catch an Indiana Bat they have to radio tag it and follow it to its roost due to it being an endangered species.  Monday night was their first night out and of course they caught several.  So now their return has been pushed back from this Saturday to next Thursday....that is of course assuming they don't catch any more before they finish the rest of the survey.

While I was gone Clay worked more on the bathroom floor...


And last week I made a yummy pizza with veggies from the garden (red onion, broccoli, zucchini)