LAST WEEKEND November 9 - 13, 2012

BIRTHDAY GIRL EVIE  AND BIG SISTER GINNY

BATTLE ROYAL IN THE BOUNCY RING

PARENTS ENJOYING THEMSELVES

EVIE ON ONE OF THE SLIDES

Well, we're home again home again giggity gig.  My dad always said that as he pulled into the driveway.  It's from an old children's rhyme "To market to market to buy a fat pig.  Home again home again giggity gig."  We were in Virginia last weekend for our youngest granddaughter Evie's sixth birthday at The House of Bounce.

Started off Friday by getting up at 3AM in the morning so we could catch a 5AM flight out of our little northern California town of Chico.  If you don't get the early flight out the next flight isn't till noon and you miss most of the flights to the east coast out of San Francisco and we fly space available as retired United employees.  So, guess what I did?  We pulled up to the front of the tiny Chico Airport to unload our bags and I go "Where's my purse?"  You guessed it, I walked out with all kinds of stuff to load in the car and left my purse with my IDENTIFICATION at the house.  The TSA's (security) at the airport have a procedure to clear you for travel if you've lost your ID but even if they did that I had no ID to get me back to California so we went home getting back to the house about 6AM and Rod re-listed us for
the noontime flight out of Chico to connect with a flight that would get us into Washington Dulles at midnight so we went back to bed till 9AM.  We had no problems getting out of Chico on the noon flight and good luck getting on the first of the two chances to get out of San Francisco.  My daughter Robin was good enough to pick us up in the middle of the night.

Saturday morning was fun with Rick, Robin, Ginny, and Evie as Rod unpacked all the stuff we brought...a couple of different jars of olives (pimento, almond stuffed, garlic stuffed, big unpitted queens) and olive oil from the Olive Pit in Corning,  four big pomegranates we got from our nephew Robbie who had access to an orchard full  (checked at Giant Foods and they were $3.00 a piece), dry salami and two loaves of fresh sour dough french bread, and something my son-in-law Rick and my two granddaughters covet, a jar of pomegranate jelly made by my sister-in-law Barbara.  The Best!  With Tillamook cheddar cheese and Triscuits lunch Saturday was a feast!  Oh, I almost forgot,  Rod also brought with us a case of beer he got from the Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico.  Tumbler, Rick liked it when they visited us last August.  The rest of Saturday was used to visit and get over jet lag since there's a three hour time difference between California and Virginia.

 On Sunday it's off to The House of Bounce for Evie's sixth birthday party.  This is the greatest place.  They have four huge blowup slides and a blowup bouncy ring in a huge wharehouse like facility.  They even have comfy couches and coffee and sodas for the parents who come.  It was fun to see Kelly and her son Ian who is about four days older than Evie, Sally and her son James and daughter Charlie, and Evie's kindergarten friends and old friends from Chesterbrooke Academy.  They serve pizza and sodas and birthday cake at the end and the birthday child sits on a throne while opening presents.  The kids sing Happy Birthday and always end the song with Cha Cha Cha.  Sunday evening we drove to Old Town Alexandria and parked by the Potomac for a great dinner at Rick and Robin's favorite restaurant the Fish Market .  I had shrimp and Rod had grilled sea bass.  Yum!

 I always love to go to Rick and Robin's because they have great computer service that's FAST!  No waiting and waiting for something to come up and I even got to see YouTube stuff I never get to see at home because dial up is so slow and the only thing we can get in the middle of nowhere.  Rick says I only come to see them to use their fast computer service.  Of course that's not true but I do go through withdrawal when we get back home.

Tuesday morning it's up again at 3AM to catch a 6AM flight out of Washington Dulles back to San Francisco.  We got to the airport at 4:15AM only to find that the first flight had cancelled.  We stood by for the next two flights, remember we're space available retired employees, but finally got on a flight that arrived in San Francisco about noontime.  We were happy to have exit row seats together with extra leg room.  It's rare to get first class anymore.  There wasn't another flight to Chico till almost 5PM so we had a long wait at San Francisco and we passed the time having a dinner and Rod got on the computer and I played Scrabble on my IPad and caught up on the FB news.  We were lucky to get on that 5PM flight and finally got home around 7PM.  EXHAUSTED!  3:00AM East Coast time is midnight California time so collapsing in bed at 8PM  I slept till 8AM this morning.