If you are wondering why I was so quiet this week-end, well I was in Boston for a family reunion :) My mom's aunt (my maternal grandmother's SIL) turned 80 years old earlier this year and we had a party. It's been already 2 years since we last visited them and they are not getting any younger... My mom's uncle is actually 89 y.o. this year... so when we got the invitation, my dad said that we definitively had to visit them before something happened to them ^_^; For this reason, my uncle of Quebec and his family also did the trip... and let me tell you, that is rare... extremely rare... So it was a great family reunion :P
The whole trip was great :) From my house to the grandparents' house, it's ~500km/300miles. It took us only 5h15m to make it to Boston and that included 1 restroom break and a stop at the liquor store in NH :P The scenery was gorgeous, with the leaves changing colors - red, yellow and orange... and the weather was sooo nice.
Basically, we spent the whole time with the family. The grandparents have 3 sons and 1 daughter. Only one son and the daughter are married and have kids (4 total) and so I have 4 cousins. The oldest is married and has a 3 y.o. boy and 11-months daughter and the three others are sisters and younger than me: 20, 18 and 16 y.o. respectively. Plus my 21 y.o. sister and 18 y.o. cousin from Quebec City :P Yes, girls power!!! LOL :) So at different times, we were hanging out with different cousins... but we pretty much spent the whole time together and that was cool. I've always wanted to be closer to my relatives, but we all live so far from each other :(
Besides eating, we went apple picking (the apples were HUGE!!) and went to the Quincy Market, plus shopping and of course, book shopping :) My cousins must think I'm crazy, but I always try to squeeze in the book shopping. Also, it's great because now, the cousins are old enough to drive, so I don't have to rely on the parents, aunts and uncles. My cousin from Quebec City was really excited about shopping, so I'm glad it fit in the schedule :)The party was nice :) There was a slide show of pictures, covering the grandmother's life. It was fun, because there were a lot of my family's pictures in there too. Loved the ones with my maternal grandparents... Funniest moment of the party is when one of my uncles did a speech. It was very sweet, short and to the point. Then, grandmother said a few words which was okay... and then, grandfather stood up and said he wanted to add a few words... and he started recounting some stories of the past... and it lasted a long, long time. Everyone was gathered on
the veranda and the funny part is that all the family members started sneaking back into the kitchen LOL It was hilarious, because one after the other, we showed up in the kitchen. The speech-giving uncle then said grandpa never knew when to stop :P We were looking for a way to interrupt him politely... perhaps by bringing the cake out... My dad suggested to cut the cake and have the younger ones give out pieces of cake... LOL, my aunt and my mom were like: Are you crazy? Grandma is going to be really mad!! (what can we say, she likes to be the center of attention). Then, we noticed that one of the old men has nodded off! LMAO!! Speech-giving uncle finally had to go out and made a signal :P Actually, I think one of the guests said something like: It's enough for today... we'll continue another time ^_^;So yeah, lots of fun and laughs :P and I totally scored at the bookstore!! Here are the books I remember buying:
- Addicted to Love by Lori Wilde (been looking for that one!!!)
- Razor Girl by Marianne Mancusi (that one too!!)
- Broken Wings by Judith James (guess why I got it LOL)
- Small Favor by Jim Butcher (I'm almost all caught up in the Dresden Files series)
- Deep in the Heart by Sharon Sala
- Second Chances by Sharon Sala
- Head Over Heel by Susan Andersen
- All Shook Up by Susan Andersen
- Lola Carlyle Reveals All by Rachel Gibson
- The Descent by Jeff Long
- Year Zero by Jeff Long (these two are gifts for a friend. I was supposed to order them in my last online order, but I forgot ^_^; So I'm glad I could find them. Save me time and $$)
There is one more book that I got, but I can't remember which ^_^; I'll have to get ho
me and check. I was very excited with the books I got because some of them are backlist books of my favorite authors and very difficult to find in Montreal. In addition, most of those books came out when the CDN$ was very weak, so there's a 3$ different btw the US and CDN price... So hey, I did save up lots of money!!! In addition to the books, I bought three book journals. These are meant to be book journals :P I got tired of looking for cute notebooks to make them into book journals, so i just decided why not buy those that are designed for it!So yep, a lot of reading ahead and I'm definitively excited for it!! :)
