Anyway, mostly we spend our time on normal weekends with Jason and Gin and their little rugrats Ollie (almost 3) and Max (10 months). As such, I thought I should post some of my favorite pics of Eric with our nephews. Now, let me explain this family dynamic to you by way of a conversation I had with Ollie the other day after an afternoon of swimming in our pool:
Me: "Ollie, did you have fun swimming with Eric?"
Ollie: "Yeah."
Me: "Good. I love you Ollie."
Ollie: "Ok... and I love Eric."
Ollie and Eric
Max and Eric - and those are raisins in Eric's hand... not poop...I think another illustrative conversation I could share occurs every time I walk into Ollie's house without Eric behind me:
Me: "Hi Ollie! What are you up to?"
Ollie: (With his "naughty" face on) "Are Eric?" (Translation: "Where's Eric?")
As you could gather, Ollie LOVES Eric. I think Eric may have even usurped Grandma's thrown. He doesn't want me to get in the middle of their play time, he doesn't like Eric to hold Max, and a common phrase I'll hear him tell ANYONE else trying to help and/or play with him is "Eric do it."
Regardless, I still love the heck out of those babies. Here are Ollie and Eric one morning of the 4th of July weekend "cleaning their ears:"
Anyway, I thought I should also quickly recap this past weekend for posterity's sake and to warn the general public:
Eric and I decided we'd take a weekend trip to Yosemite.
Our plan: Spend most of Saturday hiking the Yosemite Valley, stay overnight in a hotel, and then return the next day for more scenic hiking and breathtaking views.
Reality: We arrive to Yosemite Saturday around 4 PM. The park is PACKED! We are literally STOPPED in traffic in the park and cannot find a parking space for over an hour. We finally get out of the car and make our way down Mist Trail. There are so many people with crying children I momentarily wonder if I died and some how ended up in Hell. Amazingly, the park's beauty still outweighed the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and we managed to get one picture without 50 strangers in the background.
We leave the park around 6:30 to try to beat some traffic out. We are trapped in traffic anyway and eventually make it to our hotel in Jamestown, CA around 8. Now, I found this hotel weeks ago using Hotels.com and chose the only one with more than 2 stars in the area that wasn't over $150. It was an "America's Best Value Inn." OH MY GOSH... IT WAS THE WORST PLACE I'VE BEEN IN MY LIFE! Eric and I decided to write this review for Hotels.com and we're planning on calling the manager again (he seems to never be around):"Insomniac Plumber's Haven"
"We got in around 8 PM ready to crash after a full day of hiking. Our "cottage" was more than rustic - it was a DUMP! The wall A/C unit was so loud and erratic my husband and I were still awake at 5 AM when we decided to just leave and make the two hour drive home so maybe we could get just a little sleep that day in our own bed. The unit continually switched on and off all night - and not a sweet background air noise - a huge blast of sound (and no accompanying blast of cool air... it was so hot in there and the windows DON'T open)! The toilet ran continually unless you re-flushed it a few times until you got lucky and it finally sealed. When our neighbors on the other side of the cottage came in around 10PM, we could hear every sound they made. We knew it was a male, female, and little girl speaking Spanish. We heard when they went out to get things from their car, used the toilet, shower, sink. We even heard them get into bed. We decided we should probably turn our TV off as their daughter probably needed to get to sleep earlier and if we could hear them this well, they were probably following the storyline of the movie we were watching on our side of the wall. Anyway, if you haven't gathered, I don't know how this "hotel" managed at 2.5 star or why their overall rating is a 3!? Maybe those pleased with the accommodations are insomniac, plumbers that enjoyed having others around to listen-in on at the wee-hours of the morning and broken toilets to tinker with all night long."
So we came home, missed our second day of hiking, and flushed a cool hundred down a leaky toilet.
(Disclaimer: Yosemite is still BEAUTIFUL - you should go, but reserve a campground and bring a bike)
