Day 27 - An Ace Dinner is Served

We both awoke this morning feeling rather disorientated as we were, as explained yesterday, spending the night at Alicia's. John even spent several seconds staring at the wall wondering where his bedroom door had gone (it's at the exact opposite end of the room to where it had been at Mary & Bob's). However, moments later, once all logic and common sense had been regained, we leaped out of bed with breakfast on the mind. As per usual, Alicia failed to disappoint on the provision of a splendid selection of fresh fruit, cereal, bagels and even scones.

After hearing of Andy Murray's success in the US Open quarter final, we decided to try and find out what time today's semi final game against Rafa Nadal was being broadcasted. However, the task didn't prove too difficult as we simply turned on the TV set and lo behold the game had just begun. Not only that, we were watching it in HD on Alicia's state of the art widescreen TV, so we sat back and boy did we enjoy. We needn't tell the Brits this as we sure you'll all know, but our good Scot was 2 sets up against Nadal (yes folks, you read that correctly and no we weren't imagining it) when play was stopped for the day due to torrential downpours. Simply typical... we come to the USA... experience drought-like conditions everywhere we go... then as soon as Murray is hammering the best player in the world, it gets rained off (?!) in true Wimbledon style. Anyway, you can guarantee the J's will be glued to the TV set for the conclusion of that one tomorrow.

Mid-way through the afternoon, ourselves and Alicia departed for Bob & Mary's where there was to be held a large family gathering. The distinguished guests also included Lance & Shannon (Alicia's big kids and, of course, grandchildren of Bob & Mary), Lee & Kyle (also grandchildren of Bob & Mary), Amy (Lee's wife) and Big Lee (father of Lee & Kyle). Once we had been introduced to those we had not met before, we all sat down outside as the sunlight trickled down over the pool. With chilled beverage in hand, and snacks not far away, we enjoyed a pleasant few hours chatting in the shade before we were called in for the meal. Once all 11 of us had been seated we enjoyed a taste-bud-tingling feast worthy of a Royal gathering, or even a Jonas Brothers lunch break. As we can sense your tongues wagging, we will of course inform of you of the precise components of this mouth-watering culinary odyssey... bbq chicken, potato salad, green salad, some other form of salad, sweetcorn and sourdough bread. Followed up, naturally, with a wide selection of desserts. After another enjoyable couple of hours at the dinner table, we made good use of the finals moments of sunlight by heading outside for quick impromptu frisbee demo and coaching session. We expect to see Lance, our principal student, pulling off an 'upside down indigenous pull to a quad-spinning electrolyte with a backflip' next time we see him. Shortly later it was time to say goodbye, so we said our farewells and waved everyone off from Bob & Mary's doorstep.

From that last sentence, you may have gathered that we are staying back at Bob & Mary's tonight, so hopefully John won't be scared that his door has disappeared tomorrow morning. It had been a wonderful afternoon/evening and we'd both really enjoyed meeting Joe's extended family. To finish off the day with a night-time dip in the swimming pool which, when lit up, was just too tempting to resist. This time the diving contest branched off into spontaneous physical comedy during which many a humerous water entrance was patented ('the cell phone', 'the momentary distraction' and 'the lifeguard pose' being just a few). We also discovered a rather cool camera mode which produced some spectacular shots, some of which we have decided to exclusively treat you to below...

Once we'd dried off and warmed up, we spent some time chatting to Mary & Bob and now we are nearing bed time.

We hope everyone is well,

J 并且 J

PS. We apologise for the distinct lack in range of photos from today, imparticular from the family gathering/meal. We were having such a good time that we completely forget to get any snaps which was a rookie mistake of the highest order.

PPS. A big shout out goes to Edd, who successfully publised his first comment yesterday (about time!)