Cousin Jay visits, so fire up the grill!

Cousin Jay from Missouri is here in the Bay Area on business. He spent yesterday visiting with us, so we had the grandkids and their parents over for an intensive, meat-heavy BBQ.

Here he is watching a spirited game of Toss the Unicorn (which weirdly has wings, and a name too long and confusing to type in here) between Darci and the Weird Haired Mom. Riley is in the background playing with the pool table. The weather was great - just warm enough to be comfortable (unless you are Mrs Notthat) but not too warm.

Riley is amazing. He saw the pan of water left over from where I soaked the corn before putting them on the grill (thanks dad for the tip to leave the silks on the corn - this makes it easy and tastes fantastic!), and said he would be right back with an alligator, a boat, a fish, and a duck. I had no idea what he was talking about, but he dashed into the house and came back a few minutes later with an alligator, a boat, a fish, and a duck - all from the grandkid's bucket of bath toys. The thing is, he has probably used these only a half dozen times, and not for well over a month, but he instantly remembered that he had these and which were his favorites.

As I mentioned, this was a meat-intensive BBQ with chicken, pork, and steak. There was also the previously mentioned corn. We will have some great leftovers this week.

Before we ate, that stupid snake that is staying in The Boy's room this summer made an appearance. Not shown in the picture is me standing by the grill with a shovel, ready to defend the meat if necessary.

We started eating at the picnic table on the lawn, but then were invaded by a couple of yellow jackets and ended up bolting for the great indoors. The yellow jackets begged to be let in, but Idiot Dog Teddy guarded the door.

Mrs Notthat made a potato salad and an apple salad to go along with the meat and corn. Later all of this was followed up with zucchini brownies and ice cream. Nobody was left hungry or non-hyper.

Riley put on my sandals, which seem to be a bit big for him, and managed to walk around reasonably well in them. He is holding his turtle Bounce, who has his shell off so he can bounce higher. I blame this on Barney.

The Boy got down with the Tinker Toys and built this replica (loosely speaking) of the kneeling burning woman from the Fire Arts Festival.

Here Riley plays with the burning woman for a bit just before it inexplicably self-destructed. Note the PJs - it was time to wrap things up and for the kids (and me) to go to bed. It was a full day, capping a full weekend, leading to what promises to be a full week (I'm taking it off to work on things around the house during this break in WHM's school schedule).

Cousin Jay heads off to work today but we should be seeing him tonight again, probably up in SF somewhere.

That's it - move along...