Squeezed in another 3-day weekend; Can’t get enough of those. We got up early-ish Friday and rolled down to the Plaza for a pancake breakfast at the Cheesecake factory. They were having a fundraiser for a good cause, and we like pancakes, so it seemed a reasonable start to the weekend. After that we went back home, threw some clothes in a bag, loaded the car, and headed towards Harvard, NE to visit our friends Dan & Denise. They achieved empty-nest status several years back and moved to a farm outside of Harvard, but we’d never made it out there due to the horrifically long drive. That’s only a slight exaggeration; It was a pretty doggone long trip, especially with an antsy dog pacing around the car. We did finally make it though, with a only a few slight navigational snafus. For the record, we tried three products to get us to their house; Our trusty Garmin (with recently updated maps,) the new iOS maps on our iphones, and Mapquest. The Garmin was ruled out right off the bat when it couldn’t find road 321. Both the Apple and Mapquest offerings mapped it out, but with significantly different endpoints. Given all the bad press the new Apple maps have been getting, we went with the Mapquest route. Bad decision, it sent us about 15 miles east of their house. Switched over to the Apple map and it took us right to their front door.
Saturday we woke up to some great weather and drove to a nearby town to watch two of their grand kids play soccer. The kids were 5 and 7-ish years old, so they were on different fields. We walked back and forth watching them, and it was quite entertaining. The older ones actually had a pretty good grasp of the game, we saw some good plays over on that field. The little ones were just a pure comedy show. They’d be running the wrong direction, or standing around in a big group waling away on each others shins while the ball was 10 yards away, or they’d just suddenly lose interest and start wandering off. We got a good show on both fields. After that we headed back to their house, and started getting ready to throw a watch party for the Huskers game. When we planned this weekend a while back, we originally intended to drive to Lincoln and have a tailgate party. As it turned out all the hotels there were full so they decided to just host the party at their house. Good plan for me; I was done driving anyway. The game started at 7:00, and we had quite the party. I will admit only a slight interest in the game, although they fixed me up with a Cornhusker shirt and coozie so at least I’d look the part. Of much more interest to me was the feed table. One of his boys brought out a large smoker and spent the day cooking up a ridiculous spread. He did a brisket, several slabs of ribs, stuffed pork chops, bacon-wrapped shrimp, cream-cheese stuffed chicken breasts… We did NOT go hungry.
Sunday we spent the day driving home. The WHOLE day. For whatever reason it seemed a lot longer trip heading that direction. I was struggling to keep my eyes open most of the time, and Donette couldn’t take a nap because she had to keep an eye on me. Whew, I’m too old for parties like that. Teagan was totally wiped out too, she was immobile in the back seat all the way home. I think she had as much fun as we did over the weekend. She was an… “acceptable” house guest. There were a few mild squabbles with their dog, and she wasn’t overly fond of the horses. (Especially when Donette went for a ride on one.) For the most part she just enjoyed the big yard and all the fascinating new stuff to check out. She had a big ol’ time at the party too. Lots of kids to throw her ball for her, people dropping food all over the place, holy smokes it was a pittie paradise. Next time she goes to a party and everybody feeds her treats I’m going to require they spend five hours in the car with her the next day to suffer the consequences with us. Whew.