Family craziness

My family is crazy - I know this because: a) they're my family and b) I have had this verified by my friends. Recently, the craziness has become more obvious, my college friends would listen to my stories, but say, "Oh, we love your parents, they're so nice." I didn't say they aren't nice, they're just nuts, which our friends-we-have-made-since-college agree with.

For instance, next month is a heavy travel month for us. Easter weekend we go to St. Louis for my grandfather's 90th birthday (where my family will meet us). The next weekend we go to Houston for a friend's wedding (seeing them, but staying in town so as not to put us in the situation of having a billion dollar cab ride back to the 'burbs). Then the first weekend in May, we head back to Houston for my other grandma's 80th birthday.

Despite all of this family time, my parents are really excited about their 5 hour layover at Newark airport next weekend and want us to come meet them for dinner. My dad is also requesting an Italian restaurant - which I'm pretty sure is the result of some sort of stereotyping, but also extremely ridiculous, as they are on a layover from ROME. Why would they want to compare ROME to NEWARK? Why don't they want tacos (although also not a great choice for Newark), or burgers or a steak?

Yargh. Getting to Newark is a bit of a pain (30 min on the train, plus then getting to the actual restaurant), but I haven't seen the fam in a while, it's nice to have a bit of time to see each other. Dinner at 3:00 in the afternoon when I'm seeing them the next week somehow doesn't seem so urgent.

I know, I know, I'm going anyway.