Just Me & My Dad

The Father's Day Extravaganza - that title fits for our weekend celebration of my dad. If you know my dad, you know he's awesome. He's my best buddy and I want to be just like him.

We kicked off the weekend with a camping trip. My dad and I put up our 12 man tent. Yep, 12 man. So what if we are only two and a half people. Who doesn't love to stretch out (and do ten consecutive cartwheels without touching the other side), that thing is palatial.

The next morning we rented a row boat and cruised out onto Burke Lake. My mom brought a bag of old bread so I could feed any geese we saw on the lake. Little did she know that once I started throwing the bread out, FLOCKS of geese would swarm our boat - chaos! I LOVED IT! My mom just about passed out from fear of the crazy geese trying to get into our boat. My dad protected himself  with the paddles.

Then we headed home to co-host our rockin' neighborhood block party Saturday night. About 75 neighbors came out for a street BBQ, moon bounce, basketball, and street tag. So much fun! I showed off my serious jumping skills in the moon bounce.

Sunday was the big event and my dad scored some serious loot. Luckily he had me to help rip open the gifts at lightening speed. I made him a card filled with lots of pictures and tracings of all of my favorite cars. After church my dad and I took a two hour nap - us guys needed to recharge after such an action-packed weekend.

We ended the night with a bike ride and stop at the park. Ahhh relaxation, just me and my dad.

Dozens

If 12 are in a dozen, then we hung out with dozens and dozens of our friends this past weekend. Saturday morning began with a hike up Sugarloaf Mountain with a TON of my little buddies. It rained ridiculously hard Friday night so much of the trail was still under water - like a little stream. I LOVED this and ran directly up the middle, making sure I didn't miss a single ounce of water. Knee high? No problem, I zipped right through it. Gooey mud? I loved it! Major wipeout into the rocks? Okay, so that wasn't my favorite part, but I recovered quickly. Here are a bunch of the hikers...

Afterwards we met at our friend's family farm for breakfast and headed over to feed apples to their miniature horses. How cool is that? Who owns full grown horses that are MY SIZE?!!? (My mom is holding my buddy Henry)

From there we headed to lunch with our friends Lennie and Nelson. Lennie is so nice even the chipmunks in their yard come right up to her so she can feed them - so neat.

Mark and Eryn were in town and we scored double visits - dinner on Saturday and then a bike ride Sunday afternoon. Mark road us to a hidden park in Old Town and somehow there was a magic football waiting on the grass for us - no one around, just a perfect football waiting for us to play with.

Sunday night was crazy. Jill Chappell, Michelle Chalmers, Mauri Earl, and Patti Papworth came over for dinner. There was uncontrollable laughing and lots of good stories. The highlight of the night was when I got everyone to play a wiffle ball game. Things were going well until my dad pegged Jill in the leg with a wiffle ball that was probably traveling at 75 miles an hour....ouch. Jill was super cool about being maimed, only saying that she could no longer compete in the sexy legs contest this week. So sad.

Dozens of laughs, dozens of friends, dozens of blessings!

Kiss the Giraffe

We started the weekend with some tennis. My parents whacked the ball around while my buddy Jordan and I played in the adjoining park. Not to worry, I jumped in on the tennis-action before the night was through.

I scored big this weekend. I got a fancy plastic pool (my mom says those words don't go together, fancy and plastic) that has a slide and a giraffe. The hose gets hooked up to the giraffe and water trickles out of it's mouth like a waterfall....unless your parents hook the hose up at full force like mine did. Then the giraffe's neck is completely vertical and it fires water out of it's mouth in 15 directions - all at my face's height - like an angry, venomous snake. The water's force is so strong that it stings. Nice job mom and dad. Every time I slid down the slide my dad would yell, "Kiss the giraffe!" I can only imagine what the neighbors on the other side of the fence thought we were doing.

The Nelsons joined us for dinner on Sunday. The Nelson girls make me feel so cool. They chase me around, play cars with me, and I don't even realize I'm 6 to 14 years younger than them!

We hiked out at Great Falls National Park with the Brittains on Monday. They are a so much fun. I chased Noah the entire time, he's fast. We stopped for lunch at this hidden little beach-like area and got to put our feet in the cool water (it was ridiculously hot on Monday). If you are in the Virginia/Maryland area, this park is pretty impressive and the falls look like they're part of a movie set. It's hard to believe downtown Washington, DC is less than 30 minutes away from this spectacular spot. By far, the funniest part of the day was when a total stranger called my mom Pocahontas (Pocahontas, really!?!)

We ended the long weekend with a friendly tennis match with the Stransky/Brown family. While our parents played, Francesca, Fletcher, Mitchell, and me brought our racquets and smashed a lot of tennis balls (as well as the ground, the fence, the bench...). Can every week have a 3-day weekend?