The Fam

It’s been a terribly busy week, and my in-laws are in town. Unlike the general stereotype, I happen to love my in-laws dearly. I know, I know, I’m supposed to hate my mother-in-law. But she persists on being the most pleasant and funny person, and it’s terribly hard to hate people like that. The nerve of that woman, really. So she’s just plain hilarious, and I swear she isn’t old enough to have been The Redhead’s mother. More like older cousin or something. So my relationship with my mother-in-law is abnormally good. I’m not quite sure why we get along so swimmingly. The first photo she ever saw of me (back when The Redhead and I first dated) was me being an immature clown and sticking my tongue out at the camera. She looked at it and said, “Yeah, this guy is right for my daughter.” Hmm, that probably says something about The Redhead, too.

I’m sure in a few days I’ll have more entertaining stories about the in-laws, but I’m barely recovering from my family being in town on Saturday. They were going to come a few weeks ago but something came up, so we got a back-to-back double dose of family, with some small overlap in between. Our families are astonishingly similar. Even down to dads that like to crack corny jokes. *shudder* We really could be related, but I’m very glad we’re not, for obvious reasons.

The Redhead and I took my family on a walking tour of Washington. We did the memorials, including the FDR, the WWII, the Vietnam, and the Jefferson. They had already seen the Lincoln and the Washington has been closed for several months now. (Dumb ol’ security stuff.) We saw bits of the American History Museum and the Natural History Museum. I had to repent a little bit about my comments on the American History Museum, because we saw some stuff that wasn’t as dumbed down as the exhibits we had seen previously. The Natural History Museum was coolness incarnate, though. Man, I will never get tired of seeing dinosaurs. (In my mind I say it like the audio-visual presentation they watch in Jurassic Park, in which “saur” rhymes with “car”.) We spent about an hour and a half there and barely scratched the surface.

But some of the best parts were being with my family. One of my brothers is at BYU right now and another one is on his mission in Brazil, so there were only four siblings plus The Redhead. It’s funny to see my family without the brothers that are closest to my age. And the little sibs have REALLY grown up. The Youngest had long hair like The Beatles and had a Trogdor sweatshirt on. (Sadly, I think I was the one that got them hooked on Homestar, so it’s my fault.) The Sister is all grown up, and the Brother In-between is going to be taller than me soon. That’s pretty depressing. My sibs spent much of the day whining about how they were tired and wanted to watch an IMAX movie or stop and rest. There case would have been more convincing if they hadn’t been sprinting from bench to bench as we walked around the Tidal Basin. “Mom, I’m tired. Hey, beat you to the next bench!” And off they went.

I guess the thought I took away from the day was that I love my family and all their quirks. Goodness knows I have plenty myself. But there’s something about family that just makes me completely comfortable. That’s why I like my in-laws. I’m completely comfortable around them. Within 5 minutes of meeting The Redhead’s brother I was giving him a huge wedgie and playing video games with him. It’s nice to fit in. So we’re going to be spending the next several days with her family. We’ll see if they still like me after this week. :-)