Another Wild Weekend

The father and son team of Isaac and Marc were at it again this weekend. Talk about a contented state of exhaustion. We were all over the place and saw tons of people and hung out with family and it was awesome. I'd just to highlight our adventures here so we can remember that this one is going to be tough to top.

It all started on Friday June 25th. Lisa had to go to work so she had to drop him off to me as soon as I got home. So I tried to be nice and get home as soon as possible to facilitate this. I needed to talk to Jim to get the key to his house off him because he was going away again for work and might not be there next weekend when Ale gets here to open the door for us. (We are staying at his house instead of a hotel for the #Alevacation) He wouldn't be home for a while so we chilled out and played some Red Dead Redemption. Isaac isn't that good at it because he doesn't care about doing the missions. All he wants to do is sometimes shoot a bunch of people but mainly chase down the train and ride it around. You do know he loves trains right? So we did that for a while until I got a text from Jim saying that he was home but he was going to cut the grass. I figured I could take Isaac out to eat and by the time we were done and drove over there Jim should be done with his chores so that was the plan we were going with.

We stopped at The Great Escape Clubhouse to have some dinner. This place is okay. It's a local place and the prices aren't too crazy. Isaac was excited because I guess when hanging out with his one friend Adam and his parents once they took the kids here. So he was familiar with it and he was telling me all the stuff they did. I grabbed some quarters from my car to let him play the games. I got a buffalo chicken sandwich and it was pretty good. After we were done I needed to stop at the state store next door and guess who I saw walking out? It was Aunt Dee and Aunt Mary Jo. They just came from a funeral home and they invited us to come over. I told them I had to meet my friend but that we would stop over later. From here we got in the car and went to Jim's.

I was glad to see that Jim was watching the NHL draft. For whatever stupid reason the place we were at had NBA draft coverage on and who the hell cares about that. I talked to Jim about what was going on and everything and he was really cool about it. He let me go upstairs and see the room and then told me if we were going to need an air conditioner that there was one in the basement we could use. I said no doubt we would need that and I went downstairs to get it. From there we started moving more things around. He needed a couch to go in the basement so we moved that. The futon bed that we were going to use needed hauled up to the room. That was a little harder to pull off but we that too. I asked him if he needed anything else but he said that was it for now. By around that time the draft was only on pick #12 or something but it was quarter to 9. How can it be that late already? My plan was to hang out until the Pens picked (#20) but if we were going to go to Blair's house we would have to leave now. Jim gave me the key, I thanked him for everything and we were off.

Last on our stop for today was Uncle Blair and Aunt Mary Jo's. It was fun to go over there and hang out. Mary Jo loved Isaac (cuz he's so cute) and since I haven't talked to those guys in a while it was nice to see them again. Isaac caught lightning bugs and Blair teased that he would give Isaac a dollar for every one he caught (He ended up not paying out :P). I got to run me and Ale's house idea past Dee to see what she thought. It was good getting additional input on that. I should write that up in a blog next. We didn't stay too long because it was late and getting dark and this was only the first day of our fun so we went home and pretty much went straight to bed.

Saturday June 26
I talked to my friend Anne this week and she invited us to go with her out to Keystone State Park today. Her boyfriend Ryan didn't get off work until 3 though so we wouldn't leave until shortly after. (Check out the band Ryan is in, The Boogie Hustlers, pretty awesome!!) That gave us some time to relax. I got my bills done and worked on backing up some of my videos and adding them to my tracking sheet. Isaac played more of the cowboy game (as he calls it). Around 3 we got our stuff ready and left. I told Anne we'd meet her at her house. When we got there and knocked on the door some dude I never seen answered. His name was Dan and apparently he lived there since April. Good job keeping me up to date on this stuff Anne. :| She texted me that she must have assumed she already told me she moved. Whatever. Not a problem. We just went back to my house and waited for them to come by and we followed them to the park.

This was another place I have not been in forever (see Father's Day 2010) but now I was sharing some time there with my son. He did mention that he was here before with Lisa and her cousin Katie. Not sure if that is true or not but hopefully so. At least she is doing some stuff with him. We picked out a spot on the beach and started playing and swimming. I warned Isaac about doing that gagging thing he does when he gets water in his mouth. He was pretty good about it today but he did puke once and I had to take him out of the water for a bit. I still don't understand that. I've never seen anybody else do what he does and it bothers me a bit. Besides that he played in the sand and with Ella and Sean. He made some new friends too. I took him out to the deepest parts a few times and let him go to see if he could swim and he did great. He's not a strong swimmer but he could probably stay afloat and save himself if he had to so I am proud of him for that. We may have got there late in the day but we stayed until dusk came so it was a good long time. I know I was exhausted. After we got dried off and changed we even fit in some playground time. There was a nice playground right there so I let him play around on that and got some more pics for 2010PlaygroundFest. I lit some of his fireworks when we got home since we really couldn't do that at the beach. Nothing spectacular since we are in lamo anti-fireworks PA but he still enjoyed it. The little neighbor kids even came over to check them out. I made us some food and we took showers and went to bed after that.


Sunday June 27
We woke up today and had one more awesome thing to do before the weekend was over. It was Allie's 4th birthday party!! She is my cousin Stephanie's kid. Aunt Dee called in the morning about this. I guess she was coming too so it would be a good idea to pick her up when we left. We ate breakfast and got our stuff ready to go. Zip was supposed to follow us over but he was not there. He had one of those inflatable jumping houses for kid's birthday parties and he was going to set it up for them. That was cool! We made a quick stop in Delmont at the Wal-Mart to pick up some presents and we were off. This is in an area I don't normally go so I had to use my phone's GPS to get there but we had no issues. I couldn't wait to see their new house.

There were already lots of people there when we arrived. Lots of older people that must have been Sam's (Stephanie's husband) relatives because I did not recognize them. I did see Elaine (her mom) but from what she told me most of the other relatives that I know from her side of the family were on a cruise in Alaska at this time and were not coming. I did see a girl that I went to high school with there and that was weird. We had a blast though! The house was amazing! I am so jealous. This is the kind of house that I could picture myself being happy with. It's big and there is a room for everything. Their property is very nice. A whole acre I think they said. I walked all around everywhere when I first got there and checked it out. You could say it's sort of close to Pittsburgh but it's still in a woodsy area which is nice. Their pool was awesome too!! I know Isaac loved it. I think my child is turning into a fish. We could not keep him out of it once we let him in. Everyone seemed to be apprehensive at first about going in except a few of us and then the pizza came so we had to get out to eat. We went back in for a bit but it started storming so we closed it but it stopped after 20 minutes so we opened it again. We had to get out again when it was cupcake and present time. The cupcake's she made were awesome. They were Oscar, Cookie Monster and Elmo cupcakes!! Allie loved all her presents. A lot of people left by that time but there were a few of us who stayed. We got back in the pool and played some volleyball for a while. They had flippers and I never used them before but I love them. It's amazing how dramatically they can improve your swimming skills. With those on I could motor across the pool in seconds. I kept them on for the rest of the day and my ankles were hurting later. We also got see and play with her new baby Jillian. She is so super cute. Actually the last 2 groups to leave were us and her mother. I got to talk to them seriously for a bit. I also told them the house thing and she was kind of bugged that my mom made excuses not to come. We also planned what we are doing to do next week when Ale comes because they want to meet her. I guess she gets some deal at this bowling alley nearby so we are going to do that. I hope to show their house to Ale so I can give her an idea what I dream of for us together.

We probably didn't leave until like 8. We stopped at Burger King to get some dinner and even after I was nice enough to put on a shirt the kid still gave me crap for not wearing shoes in the store. I was going to call and bitch the place out about him but whatever. As big of a total no-issue that was I guess he was just following rules. We took our food home and ate then took a shower. I put Isaac to bed because it was getting late and he needed some sleep after that weekend since he had to get up early with me this week to go to Penn Pals. I called Ale on Skype and pretty much fell right asleep after telling her about what all we did. I can't wait until she can come with us when we do those things. <3