The Little Trailer Project: Crazy Family Fun

By: Kat

Each summer for the last nine years my family has gathered at my parent’s house in our home town of Spring Grove, PA for a week of family fun. My parents live on a small manmade lake that is connected to the town paper mill, P.H. Glatfelter Co. It’s because of this connection the lake was given the name Lake PaHaGaCo. So we dubbed our family week, Camp PaHaGaCo. A few years ago they found seepage on the lake’s dam. The discovery precipitated the lowering of the lake’s water level and what used to be lake front property became near to lake property; still a fabulous location but a little less convenient as far as water access and swimming goes. This year it was decided it would make more sense to use Julie and Mike’s (my sister and her husband) newly purchased house on the eastern shore as a home base for camp. Their house sits right on the edge of a small inlet directly across from the marina where my parents keep their 40’Catalina sailboat. The house has an amazing deck for dinners for 20 but can’t accommodate that many for sleeping. Hence the previously mentioned creative sleeping arrangements.

This year was is my father’s seventieth birthday. Tuesday night was the chosen date for our celebration. Plans had been in the works for a few weeks and involved an epic 72 email thread. The night included a presentation of his gifts, and a lobster dinner at the local Austrian / Chesapeake Bay style restaurant. Yup, we enjoyed a fabulous lobster dinner amidst lovely murals of Austrian scenes. Awesome.

The grand kids got dressed up for the occasion. The girls are all wearing dresses that Grand Mar made them

We gifted Popov with a custom pelican case complete with personalized etched bottles containing rum and vodka, Tervis tumblers, a very impressive bar tool, a small cutting board, lime container, and V8 cans. He was also presented with 70 wrapped beers cans decorated by the grand kids, this was a nod to what we did for his 40th birthday.

The next day we all headed out for a cruise on the two boats. We split up 10 on my parent’s boat Brunelle, and 10 on the charter boat Blessed. Despite Brunelle having a few engine issues and a slightly uneven distribution of food and drinks we managed to pull off a quick anchor raft to even out provisions and then enjoyed a gorgeous sail for the rest of the afternoon.

Flint was psyched to be on a boat. He sent this selfie to the Haywire Group

From the deck of Blessed

Ben keeps a look out for any issues on the water

Zoë, Alice and Grace strike a pose on the bow

Jess and Brandi with Captain Sam at the helm.

Kinsey jumping from Brunelle's hardtop

Grandmar observes the jumpers from the dingy while the younger crew watches

Zoë is not so sure she's a fan of swimming in the bay

She warmed up to it enough to take a jump from the top.

Ben, Clare and Kinsey on the bow of Blessed

Some much deserved rest for Ry

just because she's cute

this is Sam's serious captain face

We even managed to get a group shot, minus Grand Mar who was doing the picture taking.

Thursday was our trip to D.C. Our girls have never been to Washington D.C. and since we are on a cross country trip we felt that a visit to the nation’s capital was in order. I had my brother John look up the closest metro station, he’s the man for quick efficient web searches, and it was determined we would drive to the New Carrollton station and take the metro into the Smithsonian station. We were joined by my three older nieces, Alice, Grace and Clare. We needed a larger vehicle to transport five kids so we borrowed my sister’s van. She also hooked us up with 7 smart passes for the metro ride. Despite my ridiculous inability to get through public transportation turnstiles, a whole lot of walking and an inordinate number of bathroom stops, 6 to be exact, we managed to have an awesome day.

At the metro ready to start our day

The girl's Worry Eaters came with us

Betti, Polli, Enno, and Bill were impressed with the Natural History Museum

So were the girls, it was very crowded so we didn't stay long, but there was a lot of cool stuff to see

Italian Ice, yum!

And the required photo ops with the Washington Monument...

Because these girls cartwheel everywhere

This was as close as we got to the Lincoln Memorial, we ran out of steam and time.

Still smiling at the end of the day.

Each year I make T-Shirts for our camp week which I screen print in my basement. This year's shirts were white so that we could tie-dye them. Friday was the day picked for this messy activity. We set up a table in the yard and go to it.

That evening it was our night for cooking. As you can imagine keeping 20 people fed for a week can be a Herculean task. In an attempt to even out the work and cost each family is assigned a night to make dinner. Over the years our camp dinners have been some of the best food I ever had. We love to cook in our family and the result is all kinds of good stuff. In the past Ry and I have tried to be ambitious with our meals but we needed something a bit more manageable this year so we decided to borrow from one of his Italian grandmother’s regulars, Aglio et Olio, which means garlic and oil. We made 3 lbs. of spaghetti and laid out a multitude of toppings to spice it up. For the record, 3lbs is not enough for 20 people. After dinner we planned to head out in the boats to watch the Rock Hall fireworks. As we cleaned up from dinner the kids headed out to play. We were close to leaving when my Dad stuck his head in and said “Tell Kat Zoë cut her hand.” Not sure what I’d find I grabbed a paper towel and headed outside. I was met by Zoë surrounded by anxious cousins, with a paper towel already pressed onto her hand. It was red with blood. At this point she burst out in tears and I hustled her inside to find Mike. Let me say it’s really nice to have a pediatrician for a brother in law. I had to hand Zoë off to Ry and Mike because I was finding myself a bit emotional about the whole thing and knew I would be useless. It turns out she had tried to pull a reed out and had sliced two of her fingers. In half an hour and quite a few tortured sobs later they had managed to get the hand cuts clean. It was decided a trip to a medical clinic was not needed and we all headed over to the boats where my mother had a more extensive medical kit that was used to bandage and splint Zoë’s fingers. While all this was going on Brandi, John’s wife had hustled the other worried kids out of the house and taken them to the local grocery store and told them they could get whatever candy they wanted. They were thrilled. In the end we all managed to make it out in time to see the fireworks.

Nerds make everything better

waiting for the fireworks to start

Saturday the 4th was our 13th anniversary. So I started the day with a kiss from Ry and a shared "Happy Anniversary" with our anniversary buddies Danny and Natasha and headed off to run a 5 mile race with my sisters. Now, I haven't run over 3 miles since I was 17, so whether or not I would be able to do this was a bit of an unknown. One of my sisters, Natasha is a marathon runner so she rocked it and was the first woman to finish. Brandi is a runner as well and was close behind in fourth, I think. Julie, also quite fit, was second for her class. Oh, and speaking of class, Natasha, Brandi and Jess were all in the Women's Open Class, Julie and I were Sub Masters. That's right the almost old people group, dang. Anyhoo, Jess and I are sometimes runners so we kept each other company at the back. Our goal was to finish in under an hour, even if it meant walking some. We made it though, jogging at a fairly steady pace and even managed not to be last. I believe I was 97 out of 109 runners.

After the road race most of us hung around town for the Rock Hall 4th of July Parade. Which involved a whole lot of Fire trucks and even one community marching band. That evening was a combined effort on a dinner of burgers and dogs and then the obligatory whole camp and family photos.

When I get a copy of the whole camp photo I'll post it here but for now here a are few pics that followed.