Levie Men and Lamb Legs...

My parents came up to Davis this past weekend for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, my cousin, his wife, and their darling baby boy were in the Sacramento area for the long weekend to visit with my aunt and uncle. None of us had met Conrad, the baby, yet. Second, my dad also wanted to get over to Woodland to buy about 200 pounds of urea for his very woody compost and to purchase a 325 gallon water tank. Third, my mom wanted us to (finally) celebrate my dad's 59th birthday, which was a month before.

On Saturday morning (while my mom was at a wedding) I dragged Dave and my dad over to the Farmer's Market to buy all the goodies I needed to my graduate group's wine and cheese party. While there we ran into my favorite undergrad professor, Carla. I bought oranges, pears, olives (which I actually forgot to even take to the party after all that--oops, I guess I'll have to eat them myself!), and LOTS of cheese. YUM. With only an hour before the fertilizer store was due to close, we loaded up into to Cliff (my dad's Big Red Truck) and shot down the highway to Woodland. Of course, we'd left the directions and phone number on the coffee table at home but since Woodland is a very small place we assumed we'd find the place. We knew it was on East Street but after confirming the address from a gas station phone book we still couldn't find the place! Oh well, at least we tried. We were successful at the Tractor Supply--my dad bought his 325 gallon water tank and I convinced Dave to let me raise some chickens in the backyard. (I spent a good amount of time flipping through chicken raising books and perusing all the feeders and waterers. It turns out my dad wants to raise chickens, too, so we've decided to order at least 6 chicks come Spring and he'll take half back to Livermore.)

When we got home and jumped out of the truck, my dad spied our nasty tree stump by the driveway and said "Hey, why don't we take the out this afternoon? It shouldn't take too long." I said "Go for it, " and left him and Dave with the pick-matic and shovels while I busied myself with rewiring some lights in the garage. It only took them about 2 hours to get the whole thing out. This is great, because now I can plant pretty things all along the driveway!

The whole was REALLY deep:
...just kidding!
The stump was large, but (luckily) it didn't have a major tap root so they just chopped off dozens of smaller roots and wriggled it free:
Later on my dad and I went to the Food Co-op and bought ourselves a whole leg of lamb to grill for his birthday dinner. Preparations went about the same as before, with him posing for pictures just like Edward did back in December. This time we used fresh parsley instead of dill and it was very yummy with couscous and yogurt.
I also made a red velvet birthday cake--I'm totally not impressed with this cake (or perhaps just this recipe). It tastes like sugar and butter, which I guess makes sense since the frosted cake contains about 4 cups of sugar and about that much butter. Ick. Can you believe it requires a WHOLE 1 ounce bottle of food coloring? I think Red 40 is carcinogenic...perhaps I should rename this cake Red Cancer Cake. At least it is pretty!

There goes the whole bottle of cancer into the batter:

The finished cake (I messed up my gel icing "5"):

On Sunday we went to Fair Oaks to visit with my mom's family--unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera and didn't get any pictures of baby Conrad. (Just imagine the most adorable boy with the best temperament and you've got the picture...) We went out to eat at a brewery and then visited at my Aunt Bev and Uncle Bill's house. (Uncle Bill is my mom's twin brother; Dave also has twins in his family and we're hoping we'll end up with twins of our own some day.) The visit was super fun (but too short), since I haven't really hung out with my cousin Mike (or his wife Delonna) much ever. I wish we lived closer to them... Hopefully I can get one of them to email me a picture from that day (someone took pictures of me and Conrad...) and I will post it here (hint, hint!).