Labor Day Weekend 2012

This weekend was fantastic: full of new friends, family, and fun.  

Jennifer's parents came out for a visit around the Bay and Sacramento areas.  We met up with them in Old Sac for the Underground Tour on Saturday morning.  Afterward we wandered around the Gold Rush Days festival until our lunch reservation at Joe's Crab Shack.  I haven't been to that restaurant much, but it was craaaaaaaazy loud, with random bouts of the wait staff doing choreographed dancing.  It was great fun for Eddie since the "cowboy" waiters would shoot all the "Indian" waiters at the end of the songs.  And since I'd just purchased him two water guns at the military history museum, he would also shoot the waiters (they shot him back).  It was weird and loud, but Eddie had fun and us adults got to eat our buckets of seafood in relative peace.

Eddie found the best (and I mean loudest) part of the military history museum gift shop. "Mama, you need by me a gum, a pewpew."  Sorry little man, you're still too young for a battery powered, light up pretend machine gun.  

Dave made a run to Starbucks for everyone on our way to the Capital building, where we went on a leisurely walk, sipped iced coffees, and chatted with Jennifer's parents, Bob and Barb.  It was a nice, cool time to wind down.

Since we were all still pretty full from our late lunch, we all went back to our house for wine, Bower hard cider, cheese, fruits, gluten free crackers, pesto, jam, chocolate, and more conversation.  It was really nice.  Eddie loved having "snacks" for dinner around the living room coffee table, too.

Dave, Eddie, Edward, Jennifer, Bob, and Barb

That night the Whitney parents went to their hotel and we put Eddie down for bed.  Edward offered to stay at the house with sleeping Eddie so Jennifer, Dave, and I could go downtown to see The Campaign.  We all used our half priced Fandango movie ticket vouchers and a free popcorn coupon I had from my Regal Rewards Card.  Woo!

Sunday morning the Whitneys came back to our house and we all headed downtown for a gluten free breakfast at Cafe Bernardos (huevos rancheros, yum!).  Then we walked (veeeeeeeeeery slowly since we had Eddie walking with us...) to campus and I showed them around my building and labs.  I'd forgotten my key but a nice professor who I sort-of-know let me inside when she arrived.  And of course I ran a sample since I was there anyway!

After that it was getting hot and the Whitney-Levie's wanted to take off for Napa for wine tasting.  So we said goodbye and wished them a fun rest of their trip.

I did a bunch of yard work in the front while Eddie and the neighbor kids kept me company.  Our yard looks so much better with all the dead flower stems removed from the spring's bounty.  Plus I hacked back a rosemary and potato shrubs so the walkway to the driveway is much more open now.  It was super hot while I worked but at least it got done.

Until Friday, I'd forgotten that it was a holiday today so we didn't have anything planned.  We decided to go to Lake Berryessa for a picnic and some swimming.  First we picked up some sandwiches, crackers, and cookies at Nugget Market.  While I ordered the food, Eddie and Dave went to look at the fire trucks responding to an ill lady at CVS next door.  The firemen gave Eddie a cool plastic hat, which I thought was awesome considering they were there for an emergency.

The lake was great--just hot enough that you wanted to be in the water some of the time and it wasn't windy at all (great since our umbrella wouldn't anchor very well in the soil).  

Our picnic site.

We ate lunch, played with the dogs, and I read and took a quick nap.

Eddie woke me up from my nap for a cookie...so I had one, too.

Dave and I took turns playing with/keeping an eye on Eddie.

At about 4pm we decided to pack up and go home.  I never got around to changing Eddie into his swim suit and rash guard shirt so he just played in his normal clothes.  As you can tell from the pictures they were FILTHY with stinky mud and soaked through.  So I stripped him down so I could rinse him off in the deeper water.  He took the opportunity to run around like a crazy man.  In fact, he ran after Taters who had gone over the rocks to investigate another family's delicious BBQ smells.  Since I didn't have shoes on to run on the rocks, Dave jogged up and over the hill to get the boys.  The family over there was cracking up as they watched naked Eddie run around after the dog, with no parent in sight.  

There he goes!

At one point in the afternoon while eating cookies, we spent a good deal of time and camera memory trying to get Eddie to pose for a family picture.  He was acting silly and didn't want to cooperate.  We used "burst mode" on the camera and got some funny shots.  It'd be fun to have them in a slideshow or a flip book.

This was one of the first ones and he wouldn't smile.

So instead we attacked him with kisses.