I Heart NY!

I am slowly crawling toward normalcy (at least as normal as my normal can get.) Yep, the laundry is done. Nope, I didn't find that missing debit card. But I must have breathed in too many suntan lotion fumes because I'm having a hard time caring.

No one wants to hear about the incredible weather, the powder sugar sand, the warm turquoise ocean or the endless sleeping with black out curtains.

Let's cut to the good stuff: We were able to "share" our vacation with 5 families from New York. Not just New York, New York but BROOKLYN. For some wonderful reason, New York schools were our last week.

The women were beautiful and the men were handsome and between them, they had 3,000 children. I don't know ANY of the adults names but the kids were: Evelyn, Katie, Edmund, Rachel, Victor, Daniel, Rose, Lisa, Eliza, Nicholas, Raymond.....and miscellaneous others.

Raymond might have been one of the dads. I don't really know. All I know is that I know all the kids' names because they were yelled loudly thousands of times a day. The mom's only knew one tone of voice - MAD and LOUD. Even their hissed, "Be QUIET. The baby is sleeping. Do NOT wake the baby." was loud enough to be heard five palapas over. While the mom's ruled with iron lungs, the dad's were exceptionally quiet..............and absent.

While never formally introduced to the group, it wasn't long before I learned that

1) "We hate Katie"

2) Victor owns ever shovel and bucket.

3) "The Nintendo DS' were bought for the plane and were not to be brought to the pool ever again."

4) One DS was broken.

5) "Evelyn is Momma's baby."

6) Rose needs to watch Katie in the hot tub.

7)"We came all this way, put down that DS and go swim."

8) "Has anyone seen Edmund's DS?" (it's blue.)

9) The father's had been kidnapped. "WHERE is your father?"

10) Apparently, lots of people from this group were kidnapped. "Evelyn, go find Edmund!" "Daniel, where is Rose?" "Victor, where have you been?" "Has anybody seen Rachel?"

All of this was communicated with a Jewish/Puerto Rican/New York accent.

But, we DID get to celebrate Evelyn's 9th birthday. After they sang to her three times over the course of 6 hours AND broke a pinata poolside, they went inside. We felt so lucky that they chose a lounge area right outside our room to 1) sing again 2) serve ice cream and cake and 3) yell at the children to BE QUIET.

It was really sad when they left. I didn't even get to exchange email addresses with them!