Our oldest son, Josh, came home for Thanksgiving and brought along a friend of his to introduce her to Maine and our family. We had such a wonderful time with them but I’ve been having a more difficult time than normal adjusting to only the seven of us at home. I’m sure it sounds odd to those who have smaller families.
There’s something about having your adult children come home to visit. I don’t know about everyone else, but when one of mine come home we try to squeeze as much fun and living into the small amount of time they’re under our roof again. Sometimes this works out well, sometimes it’s a little crazy, but it always makes for great memories.
I wonder if that feeling will ever go away – the feeling of trying to fit in a year’s worth of life into a week’s worth of visit? My oldest hasn’t lived under our roof for nine years and I still feel that way when she comes home.
And so we did what we could. We made paper snowflakes (folding the paper the proper way to get six-sided snowflakes, just like the real ones), and gingerbread houses (I made 5 or 6 batches of this recipe). There may have been a day or two of target shooting (my apologies to our neighbors for the noise). And we spent a couple of days visiting some of our favorite places.
The day we drove to Bar Harbor was pretty chilly, but we went anyway. We drove up for the day, stopping for sandwiches on the way for picnicking, but it was so cold and windy that we ended up eating in the cars from the top of Cadillac Mountain. The Littles were afraid to get out of the car in the high winds (the forecast said 35 mph, but I’m sure the gusts were much stronger up there). All the others did some exploring until the cold drove them back to the warmth of the cars and we headed back down the mountain to spend the day in Bar Harbor, stopping off in a few shops, playing by the water, and just enjoying each others’ company.
We convinced Josh’s friend to come back next summer to enjoy Maine in the warmer weather. She loved the beauty, but I think she was a little chilly. 🙂
We ended the visit by selecting our Christmas tree from a local tree farm and then the morning before they left we decorated the tree.
You see? Squeezing in as much life as possible in a week, and there were so many things we wanted to do that we never had time for. But, oh! It was so fun!
It is different when our adult kids come home. Only one of mine lives out of our area, she is married with a sweet little girl and a baby on the way. When they come home, they often have friends that she wants to see, and so we do what we can with spending time with them.
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