Group Picnic

We had group get together today. Jen started the ball rolling a month or so ago on getting a bunch of us that used to hang out in college to get together for a picnic. We decided on the DC area as the location since that's somewhat central to everyone (and lucky us, it didn't require an excessive amount of traveling on our part). We decided on meeting at Burke Lake, thinking we could ride the train, play some mini golf, maybe play some frisbee golf and then use their facilities to grill out and have our picnic.

This plan didn't last very long. Combining the fact that it was suppose to rain today with the much harder to surmount issue that no one brought charcoal, we eventually decided the park would simply be a staging spot to gather people, ride the train and merry-go-round then head back to our house and grill out. For the most part I think it worked out pretty well. There was a minor planning problem of us cooking 28 hot dogs and 20 hamburgers. We ended up having a little bit of leftover. The kids seemed to enjoy playing with all the toys here. We even managed to get everyone together for a group photo (below) without too much hassle (other than lots of camera swaps on the tripod). After lunch we went over to one of the parks in our neighborhood and the little ones fell asleep in their strollers on the way there.


After we got back from that everyone went bowling (except me). I was kind of bummed I had to miss the kid's first excursion out to a bowling alley, but I had to attend the wedding of one of the people that work for me. I had already skipped the ceremony and I wanted to attend the reception (Clara has worked for me for around six years, so I wanted to go and see her on her big day). So while I went to that, everyone else got to go bowling and then come back for dinner at our place. The wedding was long, it was the first wedding I've been to where the dancing and stuff was intermixed with the dinner courses. It also ran a bit behind schedule. The reception started at six and I left at almost eleven (right after the cake!) and they still had the bouquet and the garter belt and the send off to do. And in the case you were wondering how the kids did at bowling, Catherine got a 79 (marking once with one spare) while Quinn got a 66 (no marks). To explain a bit more, Catherine wasn't having much fun (see picture below) until she got to start using the kid's ramp to bowl. She would put the ball up on the ramp and push it. Then it would go down the lane (with pretty decent speed) from the ramp. Meanwhile Quinn was doing a more traditional bowling style and literally throwing it down the lane (takes after his old man I guess since I can recall chucking a ball down the lane on more than one occasion).