Family: It's About Time
In the six-odd years Mark and I have been married, we have found that there are two truths about family trips: When we visit my parents, we will do something outdoorsy; and when we visit his parents, we will play hand-and-foot canasta. It is guarantees like these that make it possible for me to avoid planning activities until we get there. It also makes it so that anything else that we do feels like a bonus. Low expectations = high satisfaction. Or something like that. For example, the visit to my parents overlapped my youngest brother's visit to the parents by 3.25 days. Which means we got to coo over our nieces...and include Jaron and Liz in the obligatory outdoors activity. Bonus. Also, I went on a second outdoors activity with my dad on e-mountain bikes. Two hour ride, over approximately 26 miles, with only one crash (which was me). And we had been so close to making it all the way without incident! Unfortunately, there was a rock chunk in the path, and I saw it in time to a