(with cameos from Indiana and North Carolina)

We headed back to Ohio on Labor Day weekend. It’s a lesson you’d think we’d have learned by now, but it never seems to quite sink in: no matter how much time you have at a place, it never feels like enough. We had eight weeks scheduled in Findlay which seemed like it would be more than enough time to rest, relax, work, spend time with Mike’s parents, and visit all of his relates: grandparents, uncles/aunts, cousins, and kids (of which there are almost fifty). But, of course, as soon as we got there, we remembered again that time flies by in a heartbeat.

Working full-time during the week means we only really get a few hours on weekday evenings to hang out. There are so many members of the extended family that we filled up every weekend trying to visit as many of them as we could, but it still felt like we barely got time with any of them.

Our first weekday outing was to Dublin, Ohio, where, along with his aunts and uncle, we attended a high school football game in which Mike’s cousin’s son was playing. The theme of the game was red white and blue. We ate stadium food, and cheered, and it felt like one of the most American things I’ve ever done in my life.

Our first out -of-town weekend was to Lansing, Michigan. Two of Mike’s uncles live there with their families. The first night, we parked the RV in the first family’s driveway. We spent the evening hanging out around a fire talking, and then slept in the RV. After that, we spent a couple of nights at an RV park down the road that his aunt owns, which felt like a special treat. We even went shooting! Because their families are in Michigan, I hadn’t been able to spend much time with most of them before our visit, so it was really great to be able to go to them and get to know everyone individually.

The following weekend, we drove to Columbus, Indiana with a different aunt to visit Mike’s cousin and her family. All of their kids are really into sports, so we got to attend a sixth grade football game (with the nine year old daughter as cheerleader), and then we all dressed up in red and watched the Ohio State football game on TV. (Go Buckeyes!)

The weekend after that, we flew to Raleigh, North Carolina, and met up with three of his aunts, one uncle, and his 90 year old Granny to celebrate the 100th birthday of Great Aunt Louise, whom we had visited a few months earlier when she was a mere 99 years old.

We spent a final night away in Ashland, Ohio, and played laser tag inside the house with another cousin’s kids.

When we weren’t out of town, we were in Findlay, hanging out with all the rest of the family! Another nice thing about Findlay was that we also had friends. We did a few escape rooms with our California friends who live in Granny’s old house. And we also, unexpectedly, became fast friends with Mike’s sister-in-law’s parents, with whom we have a roaringly fun time every time.

After all that, the time felt like it had slipped through our fingers. Too many people, not enough time.

It was a lovely opportunity to spend so much time getting to know Mike’s wonderful parents. In my mind, we were fairly close already, but obviously getting to spend such a big chunk of time with people can make a huge difference in how well you know each other. By the end, I think we were all able to understand each other even better than before. It feels like a rare privilege to be able to have that sort of relationship with your (soon-to-be) parents-in-law. It’s also always nice to hear the stories of Mike as a kid, see where he got some traits from, and visit all the places from his childhood. We had some great quality time all together. I think the biggest blessing of all was being able to spend time with his grandparents. Both of my grandfathers passed away before I was born, one grandmother passed when I was four, and I was never close with my other grandmother, who passed away when I was in college. I never really got the full grandparent experience, and not only am I grateful that Mike is able to have so many grandparents around this far into adulthood, but I am very glad to have the opportunity to adopt them as my own.

Somehow, we got to spend time (though never enough time) with practically every member of his family, except for a couple of the little kids. All of them welcomed me in and made me feel so comfortable and accepted. How lucky we are to get to know each other’s families so well and make such awesome memories with everybody, and right before our wedding! It’s going to be a blast. And a real meaningful one.

Let’s see, where did we leave off…

After our whirlwind May, we spent a few days in San Francisco, mostly working and running San Francisco errands.

Then we got back to New York. I’d like to say things settled down a bit then -- and they did, a little -- but it was still a non-stop go-go-go that was hard to keep up with.

Mike’s brother and sister in law, Zac and Jess, were amazingly kind and let us crash in their New York-sized apartment for a while. We wanted to keep our footprint as small as possible, so I ended up signing up for a coworking space for the month we were in town so we could get out of their hair a little bit while working and not have our stuff explode all over their space.

Nights and weekends we’d hang out together and explore the city. Days, we would all go to work, and Mike and I frequented a local pizza joint enough that we started to feel like locals. And I met up with an old friend from law school whom I hadn’t seen in years, which was an extra treat!

The first-half-of-NY adventures included: a trip to MOMA, hot dogs, pickles, amazing Italian pizza at Santa Panza, bagels, Chinese food, vegan baked goods, getting lost on public transit, highlight dinner at Brooklyn Crab, the Artists and Fleas market, Smorgasburg, and watching Isle of Dogs at the Alamo.

After only a week and half in Brooklyn, we had to sever our New York time for some more travel.

Mike flew to Ohio to help build a dock and un-winterize his family’s cabin for the summer. I took the opportunity to fly down to New Orleans, where I met up with my amazing friend Andrea, so we could check out wedding venues for a few days. (Like seriously, who flies across the country to look at wedding venues with you? Amazing.) We, of course, also made a fun trip of it, and I gave her no choice but to let me drag her around town making her eat all the things and listen to all the music. After that, I flew back to Atlanta for a few days to hang out with my brother’s family.

Mike and I met back up in Baltimore, to pick up the RV, which is when we discovered it had been broken into (which you’ve already read about). We spent a fun day exploring Philadelphia on our way back to New York. (TL;DR: The liberty bell was underwhelming; the philly cheesesteaks were good but not amazing; the Mutter museum was a highlight and surprisingly creepy; the general feel of the city was neat.)

To spare Zac and Jess a multi-week Burden of Us (and to not have to figure out what to do with an RV in New York), we booked a really nice RV park right on the waterfront in New Jersey, and camped out there for another week and a half. We’d go into Brooklyn to hang out, and we all had a really fun day in Manhattan, eating Katz’s deli, hanging out at the park, and seeing Avenue Q. Another highlight was a wacky adventure getting hot pot and rolled ice cream in Chinatown.

One highlight of our time there was a day trip to Rockaway, NJ, to visit my aunt, uncle, and cousin whom I hadn’t seen in a really long time. I hadn’t even met my cousin’s kids before that! It was amazing how quickly we all just felt so comfortable, and how much fun we had for every moment we were together. They really embraced Mike into the family, which gave me the serious warm fuzzies. And the highlight was probably picking up the kids from school with the RV without them knowing in advance, and then taking them all for rides around the neighborhood. A definite highlight of the whole trip! And, yet again, another very meaningful reminder of what this trip is giving us.

New York itself was an adventure. Of course, the highlight was just getting to spend so much time with Zac and Jess. Normally, we get to see them hours at a time for holidays. It’s a funny thing, and a special privilege, to be able to spend time with family members as an adult. Once you grow up and move away, it can be hard to shed the shadows of who you were before, and it can be hard to update the old rules of your relationship to fit the people each of you turned into. It was neat to see the brothers get to spend a bunch of time together. And of course it was also really enjoyable for me to be the outsider coming in and finally getting a chance to really know my future brother and sister in law.

They did an awesome job of showing us around New York. Though I do have to admit that, while fun and interesting to visit, Mike and I agreed that it wasn’t a place we’d want to live. There are just so many people, and it takes forever to get anywhere, and everyone sounds angry even when they’re not. That said, it was a cool experience to be there for three weeks, knowing that we probably wouldn’t have spent such a chunk of time there any other time in our lives.

As always, our time in New York felt too short, and we felt like we could have used so much more time to hang out and bond. But alas, we had to keep moving.

Our next big stop is the family cabin, but on our way, we stopped in:

Hamden, Connecticut: to spend a couple of days with another cousin I hadn’t seen in years. Again, this ended up being one of the surprise highlights of our trip. We had a blast! Our first visit with a family with teenage kids, we got to try on that lifestyle for a moment, and it was really fun and loving and hilarious.

Boston, Massachusetts: to meet up with Mike’s high school friend, Harper, and successfully beat the record time at a local escape room together. He also took us on a whirlwind walking tour of the city which was super fun.

Rochester, New York: to visit one of my best friends from law school whom I hadn’t seen in six years. Rochester was adorable, his daughter was even more adorable, and it’s so fun to catch up with their whole family. If we hadn’t had the opportunity to stop there, who knows the next time I would have been able to see them.

Findlay, Ohio: to stay with Mike’s parents for two weeks, and attend Granny’s 90th birthday! Most of Mike’s family was in town, so we got to reconnect with them all and I got to meet some of them for the first time. A good precursor to our longer visits with each of them, coming up soon.

Once we hit Findlay, things finally start to settle back into normal. At least, “normal” for us these days!