Weekend Recap

Well I know I planned to blog a little less, but weekends lately seem like I can hardly keep up with anything! I was busy Thursday & Friday putting the final touches to my assignment for Scrapbooking.com for October so that kept me busy waiting for paint, glitter and glue to dry.

Friday night we went out for dinner to Red Robin. Not somewhere we usually go but they email coupons to you for a free meal on your birthday so we figured what the heck, we hadn't been for, um, a long while! One of the good things about Red Robin is the Mondo beers, Bob sits here with his birthday coupon and his jumbo jug of Newcastle Brown!

The other good things about Red Robin? Proper steak cut fries, almost like real chips from back home. And the fries are free refills too!!! Oh and they have malt vinegar! LOVE!

Saturday was Bobs birthday, 21 again! lol! He gets a years reprieve from the big 4-0 next year ;) We went to lunch at Souplantation (again birthday coupon, see a theme here?) then grabbed showers and headed out to Rachel's for the combined "Cars & Bobs birthday Pool Party". We'd kinda planned on going to Disneyland after but realized on the way that it was probably a black out day on our passes (it was) and we were having way too much fun anyway at Rachel's so we stayed there till late (it was around 10.30 when we left). Didn't take any photo's myself but here are some I stole from Rachel & Andrews facebook pages, hehehe.

This is Rachel's place, sorry you can't call dibs on it, we already did. We've offered to trade, swap, and house sit for her. Seriously sa-weeeeet house! See that roof in the background, that's the house, the pool, then we were all sitting in the poolhouse section. LOVE the layout of their pace, LOVE LOVE LOVE!

One thing with having a party is parking so Bob dropped me off, and parked the car, then came in later. This meant all his team had ample set up to gank him! Here he walks in unsuspecting...

There were cries of "Bob", "Happy Birthday" and general "get him" comments and the water guns were on full blast!

Bob tried to hide behind a tree.... yeah like that's gonna work! He got wet through :) I think his buddy Jon Ross was the mastermind behind it all.

'Sup dude? Lookin' a little wet behind the ears?

Then of course the obligatory pics before the beer'n'food :) Rachel, Matt S, Bob and me in the poolhouse.

Chillin under the gazebo, seriously I told ya this place is awesome, but the pics don't do it justice! The house is freakin' awesome. Last year when they had a party I just came home so motivated to landscape the yard and make ours at least look a little like Rachels place. Unfortunately we have a pool 1/4 the size of theirs and our 'poolhouse' is a patio but if it feels the same it'll work right? lol

[Jon, Kass, Dan, Celeste, Matt]

Another section leading to the poolhouse. Can't remember the guys name in the stripey top but the other guy was Xander. Too many new people to meet, too many names, and I suck and remembering names!

Jon, Lin (and wife), Rocky, me and Bob relaxing under the misters. We decided Saturday night that our house needs palm trees and we've talked about misters for a while. They sure help cool the area down and that would SO help the dogs out.

Speaking of dogs, I neglected to get a pic of Mause Rachel's Weimariner. He was soooooo freakin' cute. We threatened to dognap him he was sooooo lovin'. Before we got our spotty monsters we nearly got a Weime so they've always been a great looking dog to us, we LOVE big dogs. Seeing Mause on Saturday we we're both smitten! In all a perfect pool party. Great chance to meet more of Bobs team and respective partners, and we got to spend more time at Rachels and wishing for a day when she'll realize she wants to adopt us! I swear we'd never leave the poolhouse! Why would we need to? It has a bathroom, couches, fridge and BBQ... we'd be set! Cheers for a great party Rachel!

That led us to Sunday. We had the misfortune of noticing Thursday that the pool water was not as clear as it had been, I checked the levels topped off the chemicals and everything seemed ok there, oh, the filter pump isn't working :( Darn thing tripped. Occassionally gets bits of tree stuck in it, doesn't have to be big, just enough to jam the pump. Anyway I worked on cleaning the filter and replacing the o-ring while Bob took apart the pump. Long story short we need a new pump. We'd talked about replacing the bearings but the plastic casing is corroding and so Bob is researching a new pump. Never ends does it?

In the afternoon we went with Dan & Kass to see Harry Potter at the IMAX. I'd heard mixed reviews about HP film and have to say, I thought it was blah. Wished we'd waited for the DVD instead. Really slow to get going. Too much "tee hee, she likes him, but he likes her" etc. These are teenagers right? I mean they are supposed to be around 16-ish now surely? Does anyone really call it snogging anymore??? I dunno, we were talking after over dinner how the films are reinforcing the reputation of the English being all prim and proper still. Seriously! Maybe I need to read the books cos the films have jumped the shark IMO.

Speaking of books, I've got to go to the library today and pick up books 6 & 7 in the Sookie Stackhouse series. Totally addicted to these, two more to go to finish the series so far but I hear Charlaine Harris is gonna be releasing a new book next year so YAY! Also loving the TV series True Blood too, which is based onthe books. Gonna be interesting to see how series 2 of the show pans out as they've changed a lot of little things that lead into future storylines, but as long as book 4 happens fairly close to the real thing I'll be happy. If you've read book 4 you'll understand this: shower scene onwards, they better keep that the same! That's all I'm saying!

Ok off to get creative!