Hope everyone had a fine, relaxing holiday.  We did I suppose.  The “relaxing” qualifier is a bit of a stretch, but I need more activity in my life anyway.  We sort of kicked off the weekend by driving down to the airport to pick up Doni’s sister Jackie on Friday night.  It was pretty late by the time her flight got in so we didn’t do much (if anything) that night.

Saturday we got up early-ish and headed up the hill to Tahoe.  That was a good time as always.  We started off on the south side as usual, with a little shopping and a little relaxing.  After that we branched out from our usual haunts and drove around to the other side of the lake.  It was worth the horrible traffic and long drive I’d say.  The views are really something from over there.  You can look down on Emerald Bay from the road, it’s quite a sight for sure.  If I had to choose between driving up there and looking down on it or taking the boat cruise around it like we did with my family a few weeks ago, I’d probably recommend the boat ride.  Tough call though.  After a bunch of picture-taking and site-seeing, we stopped at a recommended place for some lunch, then headed back.  We took I-80 back to the house, which I’d never done before.  I think it’s faster, if not nearly as scenic.

Sunday the girls hit the outlet malls for a little light shopping, after first dropping me off at nearby Lake Natoma for a little paddling.  I got a new inflatable kayak a few weeks ago, and this was my third or fourth time out on it.  So far I’ve stuck to the nice calm lake water, playing it safe.  I do enjoy it, quite relaxing and makes me feel like I’m doing at least some form of exercise.  The other times I’ve gone the water has been pretty sparsely populated;  Not so on a Saturday.  Either due to the holiday or just the weekend, it was pretty darn crowded.  Manageable though, I definitely enjoyed it.  This weekend I might take it out on the river and see how I do.  If no update next Monday you might want to be mildly concerned.  We wrapped up the day at the house with some tasty ribeyes on the grill.

Monday we met up with some friends in nearby Plymouth for a “progressive picnic.”  It was sponsored by several of the local wineries, and sounded like a good way to spend the holiday.  Apparently everybody else thought so too, it was a bit crowded for my liking.  It effectively consisted of hopping from winery to winery doing some tastings, and each one had some type of food for the “picnic.”  It was a good time, and we got to visit a few new wineries in the process.