This past Sunday, we drove up to San Francisco to visit my in-laws. They’ve already cleared out most of their household belonging as they prepare to put their house on the market so there was plenty of room for the kids to run around. We even went into their backyard to pick lemons off their gigantic lemon tree for lemonade so the kids had fun doing that.

It was when we were picking lemons that I came to realize where Alex’s MacGyver-ish resourcefulness comes from — his dad! Because their lemon tree was so huge, there’s no way you could get the ones on top so his dad built a lemon-picking contraption made up of: one long wooden stick, a lightweight plastic salad tong, and a long “yank chain” (aka string) threaded through loosely looped holders that were spaced evenly along the pole for use as guides. It worked amazing well and was just light enough for the kids to use too. Pretty ingenious I must say.

After the kids had some fun playing and snacking on fresh Cherries, Blueberries, crackers, and cookies… we were joined by Alex’s brother and sister-in-law for dinner at their house. Alex’s mom cooked up some Bun Rieu for us after we had a starter of papaya salad. We even went home with four grocery bags of prepared foods so Alex and I were both pretty excited about that (no cooking for us this week). We even got the kids’ teeth brushed before we left so the kids fell asleep for the night on our drive home. It had started drizzling by then too and gotten significantly colder so it’s a good thing we made it out before the downpour began. It was a nice gathering for us especially since we hadn’t seen the grandparents for some time and even Uncle Van and Aunt Jenny had fun playing with our boys too.