The Overdue Update or: What We Did on Our Memorial Day Vacation

We made our regular trip to the Lehigh Valley to visit Jen's family for Memorial Day. We set out on Saturday, and Finn slept for most of the first half of the drive, but woke up around lunchtime. We thought that he might be close to a Cranky Freak-out, so we pulled off at the nearest rest stop to eat. Unfortunately, it happened to be a supremely weak rest stop, with only a Sbarro and a Nathan's Hot Dogs. (And probably a Starbucks; they all have a Starbucks, right?) This has caused me to take a vow to Never Eat at Sbarro Again, Unless Snowbound and Out of All Other Possible Options (and I'm keeping this vow too, unlike my I Will Never Watch Forrest Gump vow which I broke and now regret). It's fairly crappy pizza and certainly not worth the jacked-up Turnpike prices. Basically I dropped my iPhone fund on four cheese slices and a root beer.

The rest of the trip out was pretty uneventful, and we arrived to some really beautiful weather. I think that this was Finn's first warm weather visit since achieving bipedalism, and he appreciated having a large, honest-to-goodness country yard to run around in:

Actually, he looks like he's power walking. He'll be doing 20 laps around the mall in no time.


Meanwhile, Jen made an interesting discovery in the upstairs bathroom:




Some of the family was gathered for a strudel dinner (referred to as Strudel Fest '08 or Strudelpalooza). The main course menu included chicken & spinach with cheese, onion, and cabbage, which is better than you might think. For dessert there was apple, cherry, cheese, and apple & sour cream. Jen went up to change Finn and when she came down, she announced that there was a bat in the bathroom. I went up with her to investigate and sure enough there he was, roosting in window. He had apparently squeezed in through a slit in the screen. I thought that he looked a bit dry and said that he might be dead, but Jen wasn't so sure. That made Jen's youngest brother Jon, and Nate, one of the nephews, go check it out as well. They agreed with my assessment. However nobody was willing to open the window until Jen's father went up. He opened the window and the bat fell to the sill, confirming that he was either dead or at the very least, really tired.

The next day was very busy for Finn. In addition to running around all over the yard, he checked out his cousins' sliding board:


and went for a tractor ride with PopPop:



and Daddy, too:


and, um... danced?


I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure that he's doing a move from the video for "The Right Stuff" by New Kids on the Block:




Check out the dude on the left (Joey?); replace him with Finn and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

We also had our picnic that day, with tons of great food, more desserts than you could hope to eat (I thought I was finished when I realized that I hadn't had any spice cake; with Finn's assistance I muscled through a large piece), and a growler of Guinness from Jen's brother Russ, a fellow beer lover. Russ has a kegerator, so he always has a growler of something yummy.

Finally, on Monday Jen had a shoot with niece Annie:

On our way back, we again stopped at a rest stop to eat, but this time it was the rebuilt stop at Sidling Hill. It was pretty swanky. Jen had a headache, so I went over to the convenience store area to get one of those single-dose packets of some sort of pain killer. Well, right next to that stuff was a surprisingly impressive selection of condoms. There were probably twice as many kinds of condoms as there were pain killers. I found this a bit odd; is there that much Turnpike lovin' going on out there? Am I missing out on something?

That's all for now. I didn't even get to everything, like Jen's dad switching to a Mac at nearly 70 years old, but I don't want to over do it on my first post (if I haven't already).