Immediately following the baby shower, and I do mean immediately, I headed over to the middle school to pick up Becca and some little white lab rats for a weekend playdate.
Fifth graders do experiments on these little critters and the students can take turns taking them home for the weekend. When Sarah & Bethany were in 5th grade, Ed talked me into saying yes, somehow or another, so there wasn’t much chance I could say no this time around. I did, however, specify which weekend the rats would come. It was to be the weekend that Ed was single-parenting and I was jet-setting to CA for a grown-up girls weekend/auntie visit.
I managed to get the rats home and snap that picture. Then the next morning I was off bright & early for my quick flight to southern CA! First stop, my nephew’s basketball game!
Oh how I loved watching him play and being part of “regular life.” The second picture is after the game and my brother, their fantastic coach, is giving them some pointers and discussing their next practice. Nephew #2 is standing in the foreground listening in.
Then it was off to my brother & SIL’s house for some football and other fun games. Apparently I throw like a girl, but I improved with some good instruction.
No fun night is complete without some Ticket to Ride! I think my nephew has his game face on…
And then my brother graciously loaned me his truck and I drove an hour to Pasadena, to a hotel, to spend the night and the next day with this girl for her 40th birthday…
She’s my shopping superior as you can see (& there aren’t too many of those that I actually know personally) and we, along with two friends who drove over from Arizona, headed to the Rose Bowl Flea Market, which was just as cool in real life as it was to read about!
It was pretty incredible – booth after booth of awesome old junk, dumb old junk, awesome new stuff, and dumb new stuff. 
Sometimes the prices on things amazed me…
And most of the time I felt like I was on an episode of American Pickers and I might just bump into Mike & Frank at any moment!
After our day of shopping, we did some more shopping and walking in downtown Pasadena,
and ate at a place I think would be popular in Bellingham…
Happy birthday, my sweet friend!
I stole that picture from Tam’s blog, because I realized I didn’t have any of the four of us! Loved spending time with you three!
Then it was back to my brother’s for a short evening and morning with the niece & nephews before my flight back home again. Somehow I managed no pictures of my SIL this time. 
On the way to bring the boys to school in the morning, we drove down a familiar street and I said, “Let’s see if we can find Grandma & Grandpa DeWitt’s house!” Amazingly, we did, even tho it had been years since I had been there, and had only been there a handful of times, and Susanne had never been there, and it had been painted. When I texted the picture to Ed, he knew it was familiar and it didn’t take him long to figure it out. Such sweet memories there for him.
It was a great weekend away and when I came home, the rats had gone back to school!
2 comments:
hooray! such a fun weekend all around for you (and i love that you have photos from the booths - i didn't do any of that)!.... but really, a photo of my rear end?! :)
love AND miss you, dear friend! thanks so much for celebrating with me!
Yes, a photo of your rear end. You were just so determined and ready to go and it amused me. :) I had to capture it!
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