{"id":531,"date":"2009-11-24T20:31:34","date_gmt":"2009-11-25T03:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/?p=531"},"modified":"2009-12-09T11:07:42","modified_gmt":"2009-12-09T18:07:42","slug":"redding-reunion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/2009\/11\/24\/redding-reunion\/","title":{"rendered":"Redding Reunion"},"content":{"rendered":"

My uncle (Mom’s oldest brother) and his family have lived in Tennessee for as long as I can remember. It was always a special time when they came out to California for a visit – girl-cousin time! My cousin A is 3 years older than me and M is 3 years younger. When we got together it was as if we’d never been apart. When I was 17 I got to fly to TN by myself and visit them during the summer. M and I were BFFs during that time and A drove us around, mature college student that she was.<\/p>\n

Uncle D and cousin M came on various visits since then, but I hadn’t seen Aunt N or cousin A in 14 years! This year they all came to CA, including A’s husband and 3 year old son. At first it seemed that I wouldn’t be able to see them, since they were coming the week before our Thanksgiving traveling. But the stars (my job, our travel plans, and Amtrak) aligned and I got to go down to Redding and catch them while they were visiting my other uncle, aunt, and cousins.<\/p>\n

I took the train. The only drawback (besides 9 hours in a moving vehicle) was that it arrived in Redding at 2 am. My Saint, I mean Aunt, picked me up at the station and I crawled into cousin M’s bed, just like old times when we were teens.<\/p>\n

It was a great visit.<\/p>\n

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On Friday the ladies went Junkin.’ My Aunt N is a professional antique store treasure-hunter and her daughters are right up there with her. We browsed vintage lingerie and antique glassware and had a great time. That night we filled an entire section of high school gym bleachers to cheer for my cousin DR (my uncle’s namesake) in his basketball game\/fundraiser night.<\/p>\n

On Saturday we drove to Burney Falls. It was beautiful day, and a lovely drive, minus a bit of carsickness for the 3 of us girls in the back of the big rental van. My Uncle P was also with us, visiting from San Francisco, and it was fun to see the 3 brothers together.<\/p>\n

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On Saturday night Aunt M’s sister hosted all of us for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner. Apparently gracious hospitality runs in their family! It was a lovely party and it included a magic show provided by PW, cousin A’s husband.<\/p>\n

I had such a great time, re-connecting with my cousins and meeting the added members of their bunch. It made me wish we all lived in the same city and could be together all the time.<\/p>\n

What a great-looking family, huh?<\/p>\n

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After the Tennessee folks had departed, I stayed 3 more days with J & M and their kids. That was such a nice, relaxing visit. They have a beautiful home outside of Redding, with spreading oaks and horse ranches nearby. It’s soooooo quiet there. BN arrived on Tuesday night, and we drove to Tahoe on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

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My uncle (Mom’s oldest brother) and his family have lived in Tennessee for as long as I can remember. It …<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sparkledesign.net\/fidget\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}