NY trip

I thought my blog had eaten my long post about vacation, so I rewrote the whole thing only to find that it tried to eat it but could apparently only manage the title. I think I like the list version better. In a nutshell, here's Upstate NY (which is its own entity separate from the city but just as crazy):

-huge dinners required three+ tables to fit everyone and all the food
-lots of people coming and going at my aunt and uncles house
-everyone's always talking and laughing
-there are a lot of people!
-family is really important
-no urban sprawl
-visiting Auburn is always fun... so much family history!
-wish we hadn't lost so much culture (like the language) when my mom's crowd was growing up in the effort to homogenize and become "American"
-Ny accents are fun to pick up
-my cousin Michelle is one wild gal!
-despite my brother driving my [publicly] up a succession of walls, it's good to feel I belong
-my Great Aunt Josie talks about my grandmother and I desperately wish I knew more about where I came from
-my mom's cousin now lives in the house my mom grew up in. while remodeling, she found some old clothes of my mom's, uncle's and grandmother's IN THE WALL. we brought said wall clothes home
-bass pro stores are awesome (think cabela's with a 22,000 gallon tank of natural lake fish)
-you can do a lot with paint, like paint literally every square inch of your house
-miss family, almost wish I lived in NY (real estate cheaper)
-little cousins stomping on floor above my head at 7am make-a me sad!
-"vacation" is the key word for exhausting, not relaxing, but in that good way