Weekends: Get out of Town

Rob and I packed our bags and headed to Palo Alto Friday night, escaping the traditional October heatwave, concert crowds and a long week of work. My sister, Jean and Trent made us steak salads for dinner and we crashed to bed on their air mattress pretty early.

Leisurely breakfast the next morning – they made us delicious eggs and cinnamon rolls. Rob and Trent had a bike race south of San Jose, so we packed up for a warm day out at the course (warning: there are a lot of cute photos of little Everett from this weekend):

Rob is a member of the local SuperPro bicycle racing team, which hosted this San Jose Cougar cyclecross event. After we got settled in at the park, our volunteer task was to help with the kids race. There were about a dozen kids, age 4 to 12 who raced an abbreviated course in the heat.

Rob (in red) was the “pace car” – showing the kids where to ride. While Jean (in the green shorts) helped them jump over the barriers and Trent was the “sweep” rider, making sure everyone finished. It was pretty adorable!

Rob and Trent didn’t have their race for a few hours – so we left them with a car and drove to Santana Row in San Jose for a snack. Ceviche and iced tea at one of the open air cafes.

Back at Jean’s apartment – we organized baby clothes for a few hours. Packing up his newborn supplies and sifting through new items. They bought a lot of clothes from a Japanese family, so there were some hilarious t-shirt slogans to try to decode.  Of course, he’s rarely dressed with spending so much time at one of the pools in their complex. When Trent and Rob arrived we went straight there and little Ev had a glorious time splashing around.  Can you believe his eyelashes?!

Post swim, we drove over to a Vietnamese place for Pho and noodles. Jean loves the spicy Pho broth to rehydrate.

And Everett loved trying to throw everything he could reach on the table onto the ground.

We watched Ironman 3 and decided to spend a second night in Palo Alto – this time with their smaller dog joining us on the air mattress (and being quite the bed hog).  The next morning, we had kale smoothies and cinnamon toast for breakfast. Rob and Trent went for a bike ride and Jean and I dressed up for a day at Filoli – a historic mansion and gardens in Woodside. I loved the massive flower arrangements in every room of the house made using cuttings from the estate.

The house is pretty grand, but the grounds are even nicer. There’s a pretty reflecting pool, a swimming pool, apple orchard, wooded garden, formal box garden and rose garden. It reminded me of one of my favorite places in the world – the Musee Rodin in Paris.

Since Everett wouldn’t sleep, we took lots and lots of photos with him and the various flowers. If only he knew how to sit up, he’d be a much easier model!

The garden house, full of orchids and begonias was especially pretty.

Jean and I drove back to the apartment and had sandwiches with Rob and Trent for lunch. We went for another swim in the pool before driving back to San Francisco – still in the midst of its own heatwave. We could hear the music from the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival – with nearly 750,000 people in attendance – as we picked up the house and read the Sunday paper. A bright sunset – very rare in San Francisco – showed up while I was making Yucatan-style shrimp tacos for dinner.