Cabin Fever

If you follow regularly you may get the impression that my wife and I are insane. It's true. We are. After spending last week in Cancun we came home for a few days, spent one night on our new bed and then packed everybody up and went to the mountains. My step-dad's parents own a cabin in the local mountains and Gina and I have been going there for years. It's a perfect little cabin in a nice quiet, secluded spot, and it's great for getting away to unwind (or "pre-kids" having a crazy party weekend with 15 of our closest friends. ... my how times change). Not only did we take our girls and fat dog, we also borrowed Gina's little sisters and brought them along for the ride. I've been around my sister-in-laws since they were in grade school (and since the youngest was in potty training. ... she made a great first impression on me) so sometimes it feels like they're my own. That statement fluctuates from my own sisters to my own kids. Weird feeling to think of a 16 year old as your own kid, but there's moments where that's how attached to them I feel. For example, the middle one (16) went off on a morning walk by herself on Saturday. About 30 minutes in to it she's not back and Gina's feeling nervous so I start feeling nervous and I spend the next 45 minutes hiking the mountain (in a sleeveless undershirt/35 degrees) looking for her. ... she'd returned home about 5 minutes after I left. I was so in "dad" mode that I even followed a shady looking van that drove by me on the road - by all accounts he's probably a wonderful old grandfather who retired to the mountains to enjoy nature - just to make sure he wasn't unloading a body. ... looked more like take out breakfast from a restaurant in town. ... but I still have my suspicions. Or when we were cleaning the place up before leaving I felt like I should be teaching life lessons of some kind like my father used to do with me - although his life lessons were extremely over zealous and kind of made me think he was slightly derainged. Then there was Rosemarie's Baby. ... yes, the horror movie. The girls wanted to watch a scary movie so Gina (cause we're not about to let them watch a modern gore movie) went and rented this one for the trip. Every scene I'm asking myself "should they be watching this?" And "are they going to have nightmares?" Meanwhile I'm the one who dreams about being impregnated by satan. My (real) girls had a blast, though. My sister-in-laws are young enough that they still get down on the ground and "play" like kids so the girls basically had a three day play date. Can't beat that. We also found a little bit of road side snow that hadn't turned gross in the 2 weeks since the last snow fall and the girls got a chance to slip and slide on that. Arianna kept sitting down because she thought it was a slide (slippery) so she had a cold, wet butt by the end of it. Genevieve just wanted to eat it. It's nice to see a part of Gina and my history (our youthful history) transition in to a part of our daughters history. Just like most things in our life, we are still able to do the same old things, just in a new way. A more exciting way. A more exhausting way. A more magical way.