Weekend fun

This last weekend was a lot of fun. My brother and sister in law Mike and Cindy came over with their kids. They got here around Midnight Friday night. They went straight to Donald and Lisa's, which is where they were staying.

Mike suffers from the same love of the Tri-cities that I do. He grew up in Seattle the same as I did. He experienced the same lack of summer in Seattle just like I did. He quickly learned that traveling to the Tri-Cities in the summer meant you could actually enjoy a few days of real summer. This is usually how people in Seattle discover our little slice of summer heaven. They leave a wet, dreary, 65 degree day and in three and a half to four hours they are suddenly living the good life with 85 to 90 degrees or more of lovely sunshiny weather.

Saturday was our day to do stuff.

We didn't really do anything out of the norm, because normal stuff can be so much fun and satisfying.

Number one on the Out of Towner's agenda was to go swimming. I didn't really think that swimming deserved that much reverence. That is until my sis-in-law Cindy informed me that they never got to swim in warm weather. What really got me was that it was probably no more than 82 or so that day. In other words, barely warm enough to even dip a toe in a pool according to me and Lisa. But I guess to people who think that 62 is acceptable swimming weather 82 degrees is swimming Nirvana.

Now all we had to do was find a cooperating pool.

We use to always go to my Aunt Doris' pool. Unfortunately Aunt Doris and Uncle Dennis sold their house with the pool that we had always used for summer swimming, roughly two and a half years ago. I try to not be too upset, but it's kinda hard sometimes.

My kids grew up learning to swim in that pool.

We have spent many a big family Fourth of July at that pool. Doris really misses that pool too. So I try not to complain. First, what good would complaining do? The house has been sold, new people live there and now their families have the fun Fourth of July's there. Second I really love my Aunt Doris and since she misses the pool as much as I do I would never say anything to make her feel bad.

All this is a really long explanation as to why we were a little deficient in the pool department.

I have several family members in Pasco who have pools. Nice pools. The only problem is they are quite a lot farther away than Doris' pool, which is what made her pool so great.

Don't worry. I'm not bitter. Really.

After a bit of calling around it was ascertained that Leon and Tami's pool was available. Leon is one half of my twin uncles that are a few years older than me. And his wife Tami who is my age is my aunt.

They have one of the most beautiful yards I have ever seen. It's so gorgeous that they have lent it out several times for weddings.

Isn't that nice of them?

They are also just as generous with their pool.

So to Tami and Leon's we go.

I thought about going swimming but like I pointed out earlier it was only around 82. Anyway someone needed to watch my sweet baby grand daughter Elisabeth so that my just as sweet DIL Lisa could attend to Alexandra and Lorelai in the pool.

Lisa more or less did the Lifeguard thing.

Walking around the perimiter, offering helpful hints to the girls, making sure that no one drowned. Her oldest Alexandra (my number three grand daughter) Has started swim lessons this summer and blew us all away with how much she had learned. It's funny too because the one time that I took her to her lesson it looked to me like they weren't really teaching them much at all. She sure did pick up a whole lot more than I would have ever thought. She was floating on her back, she was jumping in, she really did earn her new title of "Pollywog".

After swimming I went back to my house (well Shawn and I went back home, he BTW had a blast!) Mike and Cindy went back to Donald's and Lisa's, with Donald and Lisa. We all had our little dinner assignments. I was in charge of making potato casserole, beans and green salad.

Donald made what is quickly becoming his Famous Tri-Tip Steak.

(Using a rub perfected by Mike and Cindy. So if you ever hear Donald bragging about his amazing Tri-Tip and not giving credit to Mike and Cindy, be sure and tell him SHAME ON YOU!!)

I had also invited my sister Janice her husband Craig and their two kids Mitch and Miranda.

It took a while to get all the food ready because we had lingered at the pool until 5:00-ish. Finally about 8:00-ish we were ready to eat. The funny thing about this is that earlier in the day when everyone kept saying "Oh we'll be eating around 6" I kept saying "We will be doing good to even be ready by 7." I'm the realist in the family you see.

Well, we ate. We visited. We laughed.

We started a fire in the fire pit to roast marshmallows. The problem though, was that the fire got started so late that by the time it was ready for marshmallow roasting everyone was leaving.

Janice and Craig and kids went home.

Some of the rest of us went over to Donald and Lisa's for a night of American idol. That stinky (oops it's his birthday so I will lay off the "stinky") That silly, wishy washy, son of mine suddenly decided he would rather play his own special version of UNO than do American Idol.

Talk about Bait and Switch.

I guess we were trying to recapture the magical time we had, had at Mikes house in Tacoma on the Fifth of July. In my experience though, it is almost impossible to make a wonderful time happen again. At least if you want it to be just the same as the original. Still it was a lot of fun. If you could ignore all the noise coming from the game of UNO. It is pretty hard to sing to the TV when you can't hear the music.

I had to leave early because Courtney who had come with me needed to get home and get to bed because she had to get up early for work the next morning.

Apparently after I left things really heated up.

Mike and my oldest daughter Heidi who are both very funny people, kind of took over the American Idol song fest. Heidi did a perfect version of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Then she and Mike started being just plain silly. I guess they started purposely messing up the songs and using all kinds of crazy accents. I felt sort of bad missing so much fun but I really was tired.

Now, to wrap it up I have pictures. Pictures taken by Lisa not me, and she is graciously going to help me set them up so you can see them all. So without further adieu here are pictures of our lovely weekend.

Here is Shawn singing his little heart out.

Donald preparing to light the candles on his birthday. Lighting the candles really makes him happy. But blowing all the candles out with one big breath, makes him feel very Manly! He is getting up there in age though. For him to keep on extinguishing those candles in just one breath we are going to have to put all those candles in a tight little circle on his cake. That sure will leave one big hole in the middle of the cake.
As you can see, Shawn was having himself a GREAT time!

Shawn had a pretty hard time staying on that whale, but he managed it long enough for Lisa to get a good picture.

Shawn and little nieces. He really loves being Uncle Shawn.

Mike and Cindy. Smiling because it's 82 instead of 62.

Donald and that little cutie pie Lorelai.

Me holding my sweet baby Elisabeth, who had the time of her little life. She just kicked those chubby little legs and smiled and smiled.

Alexandra relaxing by the pool. I guess she was tired out from all the real swimming she was practicing.