Almeida Adventures: August 2016

Schnell’s Visit the USA!!

Peter & Kaija stayed with us for a week in July. It had been 2 years since we saw them last in Germany, so we were happy to be able to spend some time with them. We didn’t do too much, as they wanted to relax and enjoy their holiday. We went wine tasting, had a neighborhood dinner party, checked out a water park, toured model homes, went out to dinner a couple of times, and played a lot of chicken foot dominos.

Celebrity Golf Tournament
Lake Tahoe, July 21-24, 2016

Lake Tahoe is so beautiful and the weather this year was perfect. We saw record numbers of people in attendance on Saturday, it was super crowded.

We arrived Thursday and headed to an annual dinner party at the Keys with friends. There’s usually around 20 people in attendance and we always have a great time. Here are “the guys”.

This is the awesome view from Steve & Elaine’s back yard. They live right on the waterway in the Key’s, just beautiful.

Bret Saberhagen, MLB Pitcher

Jay DeMarcus, Rascal Flatts
(We’ll have to work on “shadows on faces”)

Jay DeMarcus, Trent Green, Joe Don Rooney

Joe Don Rooney, Rascal Flatts

Justin Timberlake

Roger Clemens, David Wells, Willie Robertson

Roger Clemens, MLB Pitcher

Caddies with their celebrity
Tim Brown, Bret Saberhagen, TJ Oshie

Tim Brown, NFL Wide Receiver

TJ Oshie, NHL Hockey

Trent Green, NFL Quarterback

Willie Robertson-Duck Dynasty, David Wells-MLB Pitcher

This is the CRAZY 17th Party Hole. People pull up in their boats, drink on the beach all day and get shit faced. There are police to handle the crowds because they get really rowdy. There is also a lot of interaction with the celebrities… it’s really fun to watch the activities that go on.

Okay, I think we got our exercise… this is what we did each day.
Steps Walked Miles Walked & Calories Burned

Grape Days of Summer
August 6-7, 2016

Graham & Lynne were here for the weekend and we had a great time wine tasting with them in the small local towns of Lincoln, Newcastle, Loomis, and Auburn.

Paddle Boarding with the Kaia Girls
July 27th

Such a FUN day on the river!

FroYo Run 5K & 10K
August 20th

Kaia Roseville represents at the FroYo. We had so much fun running this race together. Some girls ran the 10K and some of us ran the 5K.

Here are the stats from my app.
My official stats are:
Pace: 9:49, Time: 30:28
5th place out of 77 females in 55+ age group
67th place overall out of 884 females
142nd place overall in all age groups out of 1,271 male & females
Not too bad for me NOT being a runner! I just do it because I love these group of supportive women.

Here we are enjoying some well deserved post run yogurt.

Joey Turned 8 on August 13th

He had lots of Lego’s to open!!

Alex loved playing around with the wrapping paper.

Here’s the Yoda card I made for Joey.

Trying to Save the Lemon Tree
August

We planted a lemon tree 4 years ago and lost it the next year. So we planted another lemon tree and it’s been struggling for the past 3 years. Although we have babied it for 3 years by protecting it from frost, doing research on watering and implementing those strategies… still struggling.

So we decided to give it one last effort. We made a planter box, dug a bigger hole, and put it in really good dirt.

We were very careful when digging up the tree to preserve the roots.

Let’s hope it survives and flourishes!

Planting a Shade Tree – August

Before

We dug a BIG hole, and pulled out a ton of rocks… as if we need more fricken rocks!!

The ground is like concrete, so we soaked it overnight and dug some more.

We installed PVC so we could run the drip lines through it, and put a layer of small rocks for leveling the retaining wall blocks.

Then we built the first, second, and third layer of blocks.

We installed weed barrier and connected the drip system.

You can see that the hole is pretty large to give the tree lots of room to grow.

Next we added really good dirt.

The tree is small right now, but it’s a really fast growing Red Tipped Photina and should get about 15’ high X 15’ wide. We placed it strategically in an effort to prevent the sun from shinning directly into our kitchen window which is over the sink. As the tree grows, we will trim the lower branches to force top growth and get an enlarged trunk.

Woofstock’s 10th Anniversary
August 28th

We attend this event every year and love seeing and petting all the dogs and puppies. We see so many different breeds in all shapes and sizes. Many of the dogs are dressed up for the themed “hippy” event, which is a take-off from Woodstock back in 1969.

There’s always a K9 demo from the local police departments. The audience is encouraged to ask any questions, so you learn a lot and it’s very interesting.

Babysitting Joey & Alex
Sept 2 – 5, 2016

We watched the boys while Jim & Jess had a relaxing “date” weekend. Our weekend wasn’t so relaxing, but we had a great time with those little monkeys! In our whirlwind weekend we had an exciting 3 days... never a dull moment! We played games, built Lego’s, went to Lemos Farms in Half Moon Bay, went to the park, and visited a bunch of model homes (which the boys love for some strange reason)!

There’s always a Costco run for one thing or another and the boys found these awesome bears to climb on.

Here are the boys checking out EVERYTHING in all the houses. We had to keep a close eye on them because they have so much energy and had to touch everything.

These are just a fraction of the stuffed animals that they have.

Lemos Farm in Half Moon Bay

We spent 4 hours at the farm and the boys did not want to leave. Needless to say they had a blast. They were climbing on everything they saw. We took a hay ride twice, pony rides 3 times, a train ride 3 times, and of course fed the animals in the petting zoo.

There is a new park right down the street from their house and it is really cool. So we hung out there for a couple of hours before the parents came home.