Weekend In Pictures: Bunny Ears And NJ Beer Fest

I need a weekend from my weekend.  Baseball, the NJ Food And Beer Festival, a birthday party, and a grand finale of me entertaining and grilling!  Friday night we had a client appreciation party at Skylands Stadium where we were able to rent out the left field picnic area and had a wonderful time.  I always enjoy how peaceful the vibe is at Skylands Stadium.  The Miners were doing great too!  It's so important and fun to hang with your coworkers outside of the office, and beautiful scenery doesn't hurt.  I always have fun hanging out with our clients enjoying the game.  Great to see some old friends, and meeting new ones too.

Awesome Girlfriend Megan had her Awesome Daughters for a big chunk of the weekend, so per usual we had to make every second of together time count.  We pride ourselves on being efficient with our time, out of necessity.  Friday night Meg was able to swing by our client appreciation party for a few innings before going back to Hackettstown.  Like a stray puppy, an hour or so later I then went over to see Meg.  Saturday morning would bring me back to Vernon, getting ready for the New Jersey Food And Beer Festival at Crystal Springs.  

We had an excellent time at the Food & Beer Festival, and of course I couldn't stay low profile for long.  You can see me giving a Facebook live video tour of everything they had going on here.  Then I figured my work was done.  They were PACKED!  I had so much fun hanging with Shawn, Mark, Kim, Bill and Alex.  We definitely are beer lovers, and at one point I walked by a pretzel that was larger than my head.  I kept running into friends of mine left and right.  Beautiful weather for the event, thank goodness they had a tent.  Just as I'm getting ready to leave, they somehow rope me into a Hop race.  This is where you hop on a medicine bouncy ball several yards.  The first race, I somehow won while not so gracefully falling on my face across the finish line.  It. Gets. Worse.  The powers that be regarding this hop race crowned me the winner in our first round, and made me wear bunny ears.  Get it?  I hate to say I didn't at first.  There was just too much going on in the hot sun.  Unfortunately our Facebook live video cuts out right before my final race, but I lost.  Then, while falling off, I stung both of my knees at the same time!  They're not as sore today, thank goodness they're not sore while I'm walking.  Bending down to pick anything up, that's a challenge, but they're not as sore today.  Progress.

Saturday night, I then made a cameo appearance to help my buddy Matt Spooner celebrate his 30th Birthday.  Remember those days?  It was a wonderful time relaxing on his deck with great red wine.  Spoon's view from his deck is even better than mine, even though my deck is bigger.

Sunday was time for an epic cookout.  Okay, to everyone else in the world it's just a basic and easy hamburger and hot dog cookout.  With me, entertaining is never easy.  I've been bad at it for years and always dreaded it, dodging any chance of having people over my place.  I'm always OCD and worry too much about everything being perfect, and everyone having enough fun.  Friday when I came up with my Father's Day cookout plan, I could hear Awesome Girlfriend Megan perk up.  Meg loves to entertain, so this gives us great balance.  I immediately notified / warned my besties that we were going to do a little cookout on my deck.  Burgers seasoned with our Longhorn seasoning that I highly recommend, and hot dogs.  Recently when Meg was visiting I noticed her hair straighteners look extremely similar to my grill tons.  To get a rise out of Meg and our friends I jokingly put her hair straighteners near my grill.  Sally, Douglioso and Marky all helped Meg and I have a wonderful weekend.  You know those friends who whenever you're together, it feels like the laughter goes on for hours and hours?  We are so blessed to have them.  They also know how anxious I get when entertaining and help me out tremendously.  I think my latest grill adventure was a major success!  We continue to learn what we like and don't.  I prefer Meg and I using a ton of good ground beef to make big, juicy burgers as opposed to smaller premade patties that cook much quicker.  Since I love my beef medium RARE, the redder the better, we're learning my preferred speed are bigger guys.  Combine that with a couple of fun phone calls getting able to say hi to Padre, Uncle Jeff, Uncle Dan, Uncle Leisure Paul and everyone else back home having fun with their cookout, we will call this another amazing weekend.  I hope your weekend was wonderful too.  Next week Meg is taking me back to Asbury Park.  More adventures forthcoming!