My favorite weekend of summer would have to be Fourth of July. Sure the fireworks are cool, but it's the best for a different reason. Every year we go up to my uncle Jimmy’s farm. It’s about an hour away in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin. Once you’re about 20 minutes away you lose your cellphone reception and won’t get it back until you leave at the end of the weekend. Losing cell reception also means losing a GPS. This isn’t a problem because my mom, and all of her five siblings, know how to get there by heart. I can’t remember the last time we used a GPS. My mom’s family all know how to get there because before it was my uncle’s farm, it was my grandfathers. They went up all the time as kids and now I get to do the same thing. Once you get to the farm, you drive down a long gravel driveway.  To the left is a small little white house on the top of a hill with a porch wrapping around three of the four sides and to the right is a big barn and a small shed that has a big dent in the side from when my cousin, Claire, ran a go-kart into it. From riding ATVs, to the Fourth of July parade there's something for everyone to enjoy.

You can’t go a day without something funny happening. With over 30 people crammed in a small little house, something is bound to go wrong. The basement of the house has to be my favorite part. It’s two big rooms separated by wall with a door shaped hole in it. In one room is a TV that doesn’t get any stations, but you can watch movies on it, and an air hockey table. In the other room is five beds: one bunk bed, on twin bed, one queen size bed, and a small little mattress we call the ‘cow bed’. Even though this room should only sleep about 6 or 7 people, we manage to fit about 11 or 12. Sure, it’s cramped, but we always have so much fun laughing and telling dumb stories.

My favorite trip to the farm was three years ago, I was about 13. It was almost 80 degrees and we were really hot, considering the house has no air conditioning. We decided that the best way to cool off would be a pool. When we started to put up a very old, very small blow-up pool, the whole bottom part ripped in half. We decided the only other option we had was to make it into a slip-n-slide. We took an old tarp from the shed and the ripped up pool and laid them down the side of a hill. Not only was this one of the best ideas we’ve ever had, it was probably the most dangerous as well. Sure, in theory, it was a good idea, but at the end of our makeshift slip-n-slide was the gravel driveway. When my older cousin, Mikey, went down he went right over the end of the slide and into the gravel driveway. He had cuts all over his arms and stomach and they would not stop bleeding. Even though we were all scared to try it after that, we all eventually did and had a great time. None of us even made it close to the driveway considering we were all a lot smaller than my 23 year old cousin. We spent all day throwing ourselves down the slip-n-slide and chasing each other around with the hose and a few squirt guns we found in the basement. We didn’t need a lot of fancy things to have fun, we just needed to be together.

The following day, my older cousins, Jack and Joe, found out that my younger cousin, Annie, was terrified of the deer skulls that my uncle kept in the barn. They thought it would be funny if they hid them somewhere in the house and waited until she found them. My aunt told them to put them in her car and she would ask Annie to go get a bag out of the car. So after my cousins put the deer skulls in the back seat my aunt asked Annie to go get her purse out of the car. My cousins and I all waited on the back porch so we could see her reaction. When she opened the door, she screamed so loud I thought you’d be able to hear it a mile away. After her loud shriek stopped, tears started flowing out of her eyes. She was terrified. She ran around the wrap around porch looking for Jack and Joe, she knew exactly who did it. Even though she was really mad at our older cousins, we could not stop laughing. We still laugh about it to this day.

Our favorite thing to do at the farm is to go to the cemetery at night. It’s a big tradition and if you don’t go you’ll probably get made fun of by everyone who did go. It’s really close to the house and we all walk there together at night. My older cousin, Joe, thought it would be funny if he left a few minutes earlier than everyone and hide in the bushes in the cemetery and scare us all as we came in. Keep in mind, he’s not very smart and not a very good listener. I mean, he picked what college he was going to because he forgot his password to the University of Kansas website and said, “Whatever, I’ll just go to Loras”. So when he asked for directions, my mom said, “At the end of the driveway you turn left, walk for about five minutes, and it’ll be on your left”.  After he left, the rest of us were waiting for the younger kids to put their shoes on. Right when we were about the leave Joe came back into the house soaking wet. His pants were dripping wet and his shoes were completely ruined. He explained that instead of turning left at the end of the driveway, he turned right, and fell right into the stream that ran along the side of the rode. He insisted that he has followed the directions my mom had given him, but we all knew that he definitely did not.

Being at the farm has not only taught me a lot, but it has given me memories that will last a lifetime. Being in the middle of nowhere for 4 days really makes you appreciate the little things. I find myself happier when I’m there, no matter what’s going on back home. You tend to realize what really matters when you’re surrounded by the people who care about you most.