Not a bad weekend

or I knew I should have turned left at Albuquerque

Friday morning after dropping the kids at school Liz and I had breakfast together at a local diner. Then we went shopping at Liz's favorite store where we purchased a garden storage bin. Back home, aided by my trusty rubber mallet, I put the thing together, loaded it up with "stuff" then parked it around the back. I then felt compelled to clean up the backyard, which included trimming one of the trees and replacing the latch on the gate. After lunch I waited for the Cable Guy, and waited, and waited, and around 3:45pm he finally arrived to install our DVR (he was scheduled to be there between 1pm and 3pm). With the DVR set up JE and I hit the local Par 3 golf course where he was ecstatic to be allowed to drive the golf cart around. They've done a bit of grounds work and it's not just a simple Par 3 anymore, now it's a little bit challenging. I made a few Pars, but I also had my share of triple Bogeys. I lost one hole to JE, and on another was thinking too much about the bunker guarding the front of the green, flubbed my tee-shot, and hit my ball barely 10 feet in front of me. Yup, on one hole my 7-year old son hit his tee shot further than me. I managed to scrape in with a +19 score. Liz picked us up around 8:30 and it was hometime and bedtime.

After breakfast with the in-laws (and leaving the kids with them) we headed east out to Ontario. I wanted to take Liz to Victoria Gardens, a mall I'd discovered on a site visit out that way, but I couldn't quite remember where it was. We exited the 15N at Foothill, which is the correct exit, but we turned right instead of left, so after a detour we wound up at Ontario Mills Mall which is where Liz wanted to go anyway.

We shopped around a bit then I finally convinced Liz to come in to Dave & Busters with me where we played a few games of Ghost Squad, or tried to. They have four Ghost Squad machines set up in the Ontario D&B, and it wasn't until we sat down at the third machine that we were able to get a game together. On the first machine the trigger on my rifle was jammed. The attendant appeared like lightning and set us up on the second machine with 10 credits. Liz burned through most of them because my rifle on the second machine didn't work properly either.

After that Liz and I had lunch, in D&B, and then decided to give another machine one last chance, because I still hadn't been able to play :( This machine and its rifles worked pretty good, and Liz and I were soon sitting side-by-side mowing down terrorists. We beat the first two levels and made it to the end of the final level, grenaded the boss's shield away, then promptly forgot we had grenade launchers and tried to shoot the final boss to pieces. He still had a tiny bit of health left when we ran out of time and I swear if we'd both just tossed a couple more grenades we would have beaten the game. Someone claimed she didn't like video games, but I think she enjoyed playing Ghost Squad ;)

Sunday afternoon we rescued the in-laws and went swimming in their pool. Our baby girl was a little scared to go in, but with a little bit of encouragement (and no, that doesn't mean we just tossed her in) she was swimming around with me. More to the point she was holding on to my shoulders, and kept afloat by her buoyancy vest she felt confident enough to kick her legs. Then it was all "Look at me! I'm swimming!". She even got a face full of water a few times but it didn't phase her, and when it was finally time to get out she had to be dragged kicking and screaming from the pool. It's a big change from last year when she'd cling to me for dear life and couldn't wait to get out.

All in all, it was a pretty good weekend.