Road Trip to Lemon Cove

We headed up to Lemon Cove for the weekend to spend it with Steve's Aunt & Uncle and his cousin Susan and her family. Lemon Cove is about 20 minutes east of Visalia. Steve's uncle lives on some land....Twelve Oaks, and the kids were going to have the weekend to explore.

I decided to play hookie on Friday at work so we could head out the door. We waited out the traffic and piled 300 pounds of crap in the car. Thank God for big suburbans! You gotta love traveling with kids. I'm not any better as I packed the same 5 cup coffee pot we took on the cruise. The great thing about Uncle Bob and Aunt Jo's is they have little "casitas" on their property. We got the 2 bedroom on. We arrived about 2:30pm and the fun started. Uncle Bob had the electric cars out and ready to go. The kids jumped in the John Deere tractor and were off. They have a huge lawn that the kids could run around on and not hurt anything. Love it! It's so much better than telling the kids to be careful of the cars parked in the street at our house.

A little while later, Uncle Bob asks if the kids want to get on the "breezie." I have NO clue what this is. Well, it's a quad. Let me tell you, Kyle wanted nothing to do with it and of course after 2 minutes of riding it, Brooke wants to "do it by herself." The thing I love about Uncle Bob is that he is just a big kid himself and truly loves running around with the kids and playing. This is a 79 year old man who doesn't let green grass grown under his feet.
Susan and the kids arrive after she picks Bobby and Kelly up from school. They too also go to a private Christian school. It's a super hot day so we decide to head to the pool. In true fashion, we have every pool town in the pool and the kids are loving the swim boards that squirt water. Of course I am loving the fact that Susan is making margaritas and serving them up at the pool.

To the back of the pool is a pasture that has a horse named Blaze and 2 donkeys named Coco and Gus. Uncle Bob asks if Brooke wants to feed them carrots. Well of course she does. She goes over there in her bathing suit and isn't afraid to walk right up and give them some carrots. She sits on both donkeys and the horse all the while she is wearing a bathing suit.Steve brings over Kelly and Kyle in their bathing suits as well and here is Kyle standing on the fence with his water wings still on. Too funny!We decide to get dressed and go find Auntie Jo who is in the house. It was too hot for her to come out. We enjoy a great meal with family all sitting around the table talking and sharing stories. When it's time for bed, I think it was Bobby who asked his mom something and she said he would have to ask us. Well, he wanted to have a sleepover. Well, the entire theme for the weekend from everyone was, "Oh they're kids...let 'em do it!" So we said what the hell and all 4 kids piled into one room. Kelly is 6 yrs old and I believe Bobby is 7 yrs old. Of course, Kelly sacked out the first and Kyle was the last one to bed at 11:30pm at night. Oh well, it was their first sleepover and they were with their cousins having fun and watching movies.

The next day, almost all of us piled into Uncle Bob's truck to go out and see the cattle he has. I think he told us he has about 50. I am just tickled pink as we are having this good ole country family fun weekend. When we get out to the cattle, Steve and Bob are trying to get the bull....yes the BULL, to stop long enough so they can get a stick out of it's foot. The kids are in the back of the truck standing on the hay. It was a super hot day and there was absolutely NO breeze whatsoever! Plus I had told Brooke not to close the truck door and she looked right at me and did it anyway. Good thing it closed softly as her finger was in the door. It still got her pretty good and at this point she is loosing it since she was up so late last night. We headed back to the house to cool down. Susan was going to show us her and Rays house while the kids hung back. They live in a gorgeous house.Later on after the kids took a much needed nap, we all went in the pool again. I so wish we had a pool at our house but we don't. The kids love the water and are just animals in there. Good thing Ray was going to be cooking up some of his food since we all worked up an appetite. He was cooking ribs! Yummy! Before dinner, we headed out to the lawn since Ray brought out the kids' motorcycles. I think Steve had more fun on it. Brooke of course wanted to ride it by herself. It scares me that she is not afraid of hardly anything. After a superb dinner, we all called an early night as we were all exhausted for a busy day. But what a great day!

The next morning, we got up, had some breakfast and started to get our stuff together. We did fly some kites on the back lawn again and took a few more spins on the breezie and the John Deere. I even went out the horse pasture and up a hill with Brooke and was teaching her to lean forward and to lean with the bike. We packed up the car and headed home. It was a really fun weekend and we have already made plans to head back for Easter. What a great Easter egg hunt that is going to be on that back lawn!! I told Susan we'd have to get together before that since the kids had so much fun playing together!