A couple of weekends ago I was able to hop a ride with my cousins to Carlsbad, NM to see some family. We have not all been together since last July when our Ita died and we all gathered for her funeral. An aunt and uncle were coming from California and some cousins were coming from Las Cruces and I decided I just couldn't miss this chance to see everyone. So, Thursday evening around 6:30 we headed out. The ride was long, but we had a chance to visit and catch up on things we don't usually get to talk about ... we did have 8 hours after all. We rolled into town around 3:00 on Friday morning and went straight to bed!
One of the main purposes for our visit was to support my Aunt Linda who had organized The Relay for Life for the town of Carlsbad. The Relay was scheduled for Friday night from 6pm to 8 am Saturday and everyone was busy preparing. The Relay was going to be at "the beach" .... a park that stretches the length of the river that goes through town. We woke up after about 4 hours of sleep, had a cup of coffee, and headed out to say our hellos and see what we could do to help. We figured we could organize lunch so no one had to think about that and they could just come get food and go back to work. So, we picked up the best tacos in the world from Church Street Grill and brought them home to wait for everyone. Well, no one showed up so we ate and spent the rest of the afternoon delivering tacos to various family members around town! After hitting one of the local hotspots .... WALMART .... we headed to the beach for the relay. It was amazing to see all the support and all the hard work that Linda had done to pull this together. There was live music until about 11 and there was a constant flow of people walking all night. It was touching to see all of the luminarias lit for people who had survived or been lost to cancer. We had a great time being together as a family and helping Linda with various tasks that came up during the night. We were all exhausted when we rolled into bed around 1 that night and although we were scheduled to meet for breakfast for the next morning we all slept in and missed it.
That night we gathered again for a big family BBQ before embarking on the newest Palma family tradition ... a drive-in movie in the RV. We packed as many Mexicans as we could find into the RV and off we went.
We spent the entire next day eating ourselves into oblivion. Tia made everyone's favorite ... Albondigas soup!!!!! Despite the 100 degree temperatures outside, we all had several bowls!! YUM!!!!!! This was our final day together. Some of the family was headed home that afternoon. After we filled up on the best soup in the world, we again packed as many Mexicans as we could find into the RV and went to get ice cream cones! We spent the rest of the day visiting and headed home the next day. What a great little vacation!! And so good to see family!!
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