As some of you know, I spent much of the first week of June in Alabama at my sister Nina’s house. Yes, Alabama. It’s probably a state you’ve never thought of visiting. Your loss.

Nina and her family (Husband: Mike; sons: Win and Jack; dog: Petey; cats: Emily and Tux) live in south Alabama outside of Loxley which itself is outside Mobile. It’s a beautiful, flat part of the state in a county which used to be covered in farms but now seems to be slowly getting covered with housing developments.

The reason I went down with my wife and our friends Penny and Bradley and their son (our godson) Eli was to finally attend Nina’s annual crawfish cookout. They’ve held it every year on the first Saturday in June for the last seven or eight years and this year, finally, was the year I could go.

I am so glad I did. First and foremost, getting to spend that much time with my family (including my sister Lisa and her oldest son Ben) was a treat that can’t be described. These two women are my sisters thanks to my father’s first marriage. Because he passed away when I was six, having a connection with Nina and Lisa and their families is extraordinarily important to me.

Second, this was one of the most vacationy vacations I have ever taken. The entire time was fun, relaxing and entertaining. The five of us got along famously, enjoyed sitting on the pure white beaches of the “Redneck Riviera” together and loved tooling around New Orleans as well. We all got to know a bunch of my sisters’ oldest and dearest friends and loved them all. It was just stupendous.

And then there were the crawfish. This annual party is no sedate affair. 100 people. 328 pounds of crawfish. 1 band. Tons of beer. It was unreal and the food was so good. I wish I could have shared a sample with you all. The best I can do is this video. Enjoy.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 9:31 pm and is filed under Life and how I'm doing, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.