Quick trip

This weekend we made a long overdue trip to visit Ian's dad. We hadn't been up since last July, but in our defense we have been adjusting to being a family of four...

We arrived Friday night, weary after driving through a heavy belt of rain ~ compliments of Tropical Storm Danny, in time for a late dinner. Grant once again pulled out all the stops and served us some fantastic food! By the time we'd finished the meal (and of course dessert) it was well past 10 and time for some little ones to get to bed!

After a lazy breakfast Saturday morning we headed down to the community beach on the lake. I still don't know how we managed to forget all cameras, but the kids had fun wading out to their chins in the water and building sand castles at the water's edge. Then we headed back to the house to clean up and head to our favorite dim sum restaurant.

Visiting Fortune is always a huge treat, though this time I think Kylie enjoyed it even more than Ian and I. She showed her true "southern Chinese girl" taste buds and perhaps out ate even some of the adults. She consumed four shrimp dumplings, two shrimp crepes, two steamed pork buns, a pile of sweet chili sauce green beans bigger than my own, and a pretty healthy portion of Singapore noodles. It was amazing the amount of food she ate, and then requested fruit as soon as we got back to Grant's house.

Nap time was next on the order of the day and then we returned to the lake, this time with the dogs for some "off leash beach time." This time I remembered my camera...

Maya had fun chasing tennis balls on the sand, but Lucy was a blur of motion running from one side of the beach to the other, over and over again...

Not sure what on earth made me think that it wasn't worth the time to put the kids in suits for this trip down...
Even my "girlie girl" got a bit wet!
She and Daddy had to show that even though she's growing up, they've "still got it!"
And of course we had to end the evening on the water with the obligatory "hey, let's use the timer and get a picture of the crowd" shot!

Sunday morning we got to visit with dear friends Jim and Anne. Jim and Ian went to the same high school, though their lifelong friendship really developed at VT. These days we see those guys far too infrequently, but we fall back into the comfortable rhythm of true friends immediately with them. "Baby Abby" is getting quite expressive and was fun to watch!

"Who me?" Abby seems to be asking.

We enjoyed some fantastic Thai food (take out ~ the true signs of two sets of parents with toddler age children!) and a few hours of conversation as we tried to fully catch up since our last visit.

My babies with Anne and Jim.

All too soon it was time to head back to Grant's house to get ready to make the drive home. We rolled in our driveway almost exactly four hours after we left, so that short trip time makes me hopeful that another visit will come sooner rather than later and we can spend more time at "Gampa M's house" and catch the other friends we have that live in the area!