Sunday morning, all my friends left early because believe it or not we all had baby-sitting jobs that day. Myriah checked the record book before everyone left. Karen was sitting at her dad's house for Emily Michelle and Andrew, Nina was sitting for her own sister, Myriah was sitting for her sisters, and Jenny was sitting for her sister!
Wanna know a secret about me? There are generally two reasons I hate being the youngest Pike. One reason is that hardly anyone's around anymore. Just one more year and Vanessa's gone, then Nicky, and then Margo and then...that's it. I guess it might be nice when I'm the only one left but, I already told you I love being part of a big family. The other reason I hate being the youngest is, well being the youngest means you have no siblings to look after. People look after you. You know? I felt pretty down in the dumps when all my friends had younger siblings for sitting charges. But one thing really made me happy that afternoon, it was around lunchtime actually.
Lunch is a pretty hectic meal as well as dinner usually. Sunday we were having a smorgasbord. Lunch happens like that quite often in the Pike household. Ask any of us. Mom and Dad were home for lunch too and as soon as we all had our pick of the food that was spread out on our long kitchen table, we were ready to eat. The table seemed a little empty now with the absence of four kids, but I dealt with it. We all dug in except mom. She tapped on her glass with a spoon to get our attention.
"Kids, please listen up. As you all very well know, every summer we go on our usual trip to Sea City, New Jersey. This year I-"
"Please! I wanna go!" I cried suddenly. I had the horrible feeling mom was gonna cancel our usual trip. This year we didn't need baby-sitters anyway. Also, just because Mallory and the Triplets were gone didn't mean we still couldn't go on the annual trip. Right? Mom set down the spoon.
"Claire please let me talk." she said.
"Okay."
"What I was going to say was we are still going to Sea City this summer. This month in fact. I know how badly you all want to go. Is that okay?"
Heck yeah it was okay! Vanessa, Nicky, Margo, and I began talking about it excitedly.
"I can't wait to collect more shells. I could probably make some jewelry out of them." said Margo, who has a very large sea shell collection from past summers in Sea City.
"Can I drive my car there?" asked Nicky excitedly.
"Maybe I'll write a whole book of poems on family vacations and then comprise it into a sort of picture diary..." Vanessa trailed off, in her own world.
"I can't wait to do some shopping, and golfing, and swimming, and-"
"Claire, slow down." laughed my mother. I couldn't slow down, I was going to Sea City again! Mom announced that we were leaving in about a week, next Saturday was the day we would be leaving. I couldn't wait to tell all my friends, maybe I could invite one or two of them to come with me! I was just too, too happy.