Long-Awaited Visit

 Happy 4th of July! Well, that's the weekend I took these picture. It had been the first big trip taken since Covid locked down the world. There was plenty of enjoying the family time, but I also found the time to snap some pictures.

Isn't this a thing of beauty? A festive Krispy Kreme donut. Let's not get all worked up over the treats, the family visit is the best part of the trip.

For lunch on Saturday we were taken to a place called Mod Pizza. It was described as like a Subway sandwich place, but for like, pizza. I took a picture of the menu for no reason, I was told it's best to "make your own".

Here's the toppings you can get. Pick sauces, cheeses, meats, veggies, little more of this, little more of that, you get the idea. When you're done, into the oven it goes! So grab a seat and wait for a few minutes.

Here's what we ended up with. I know I picked all the stuff myself, but I still feel like I have to say this was super delicious. That dipping sauce is Frank's Hot Honey, which they could normally pour all over the pizza, and it did taste amazing, too. But I was glad I got it on the side so I could also enjoy just the "normal" awesome taste of the pizza, too.

The Mod Pizza place had these mad scientist laboratory lights hanging. I had to double-check it was MOD pizza and not MAD [scientist] Pizza.

My friend's new truck had these cool skull caps on the wheels. You think these guys get dizzy after being driven around? Would a skull get dizzy?

Saturday afternoon was the big cook out gathering. Last time we visited over a year ago, My friend's Dad had made his own Cornhole Bags, and at the time, we took some blank fabric panels to custom embroider. It was neat to finally see the bags fully assembled. This is a McRib design if you couldn't figure it out. We are big McRib fans.

There were many embroidered cornhole bag designs. Here's some bunnies that would look fun jumping onto the cornhole boards.

Good 'ole hotdog! Does anybody really know what's in these things? Does anybody really care? Nothing fancy required, hanging out with the family was the highlight of the weekend, and with the risk of sounding cheesy, extra-appreciated with what all went on for the last year-or-so of craziness in the world.

Classic cornhole match up: Cats vs Fish. All of the bag art designs are "originals" from my friend, and not from any sort of merchandising source, if you were wondering where they were from.

Cards Against Humanity is a very "adult" card game similar to Apples to Apples, so it's not easy to get any kind of picture "clean" enough to share. We won the Spock Crying card with this D&D reference!

Of course, if you knew this family..., of course there was Carvel Ice Cream Cake! It was already being carved up before someone thought to get a picture of it! Not wanting to single-out any missed event, it simply said "Happy Hugs!!" Since the hugs are what we missed the most.

There was also a "regular" cake which was more 4th-of-July-ish. It did look good, but I only had eyes for the Carvel Cake that night.

Our greedy piece of the cake was like, 1/5th of the entire thing! We did not go back for 2nds, there was no need for that with the size of our 1sts, which might have actually qualified as 3rds or maybe even 4ths, all by itself.

Sunday for lunch we went to a favorite place: Fuddruckers! We were a little worried it would not have "survived" the pandemic shutdowns, and glad it was still here.

They were extra-small on the portion sizes of the french fries that day... busted! Fortunately we always get an extra order because the jalapeno cheese fries are just as important, maybe more so, than the burger. I know there are people out there who are sensitive over portion sizes, so make sure you lower your expectations here. Is that an awful thing to share?

Just had to pause for a moment while being driven around to appreciate... being driven around. In New Jersey, there is no one to drive us anywhere, so we always have to be the one driving the car. Being a "passenger" was oddly... odd. But in a good way.

We hit up a couple of stores, which I'll post pictures from later, but then we went to the grocery store to get something to cook up for dinner. At first we were shocked by the specific parking for Amazon Prime orders, but then we remembered that Amazon bought Whole Foods, so of course they can make their own spots.

Buenos dios, watermelon piqueno! All the way from Mexico! Florida is not really near Mexico, is it? How could they put that on the sign?

Where is my chip? This package says it has my fresh chip? Which one of my friends made this? I'm so confused right now.

I'm amazed I got such a great picture of that fighter jet as the car sped past it. Virginia Beach has a few military bases, and there are cool Navy things to check out if you know where to look.

I forgot about this road and only got a picture of the evil ditch in the area past the really evil stretch of road. Behind us, that ditch is seriously right next to the street. Did you ever play Mario Cart? The Rainbow Road track? It's exactly like that. Exactly.

Before my friend moved to New Jersey, he often rode his bike down this trail to get to the beach. While he misses that trek, he is glad he got to ride it for as long as he did while he could.

Sometimes when you visit people, you always go out to eat at favorite restaurants, but don't forget to ask for a favorite home-cooked meal. That's a much better idea. This home-cooked chicken diner was awesome.

We were visiting, so we were in "vacation mode" of over-indulgence. It wasn't too hard to convince everyone there to go out for ice cream after diner. A local spot to hit was Sweet Frog. Can you tell by these sweet frogs?

Sweet Frog is "one of those places" with the cups, different flavors, mix-ins, and pay by weight. We sampled several of these and although the blue cotton candy was hands-down the best, it was not fully frozen so we wound up going with a mix of vanilla and cookies n' creme.

They had a Unicorn mix! Look at that picture, how high it's swirled over the top of the cup! Clever subtle manipulation for you to do the same.

12.6 oz. Is that a lot? It was around $10 including the tip we left. Lots of candy including Heath Bar and those Sugar Lego knock-off Bricks.

Looks like some waffle cone pieces, M&Ms,... we did get the "unicorn" sprinkles, too. Note the color-changing pink spoon turns purple when it's cold. Why am I pausing to get a picture of this? Tasty ice cream is right there!

A friend had saved an extra super small pair of spoons he got with some kind of candy thing, and he was teasing about how long would it take to eat the ice cream with this Minty-sized spoon. 

After the ice cream we chilled watching a recently-released anime movie Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya: Vow in the Snow. It's a prequel movie to the Fate/Prisma Illya series; we were told that series is a little crazy, modernly-inappropriate at times, and something we could afford to skip. As a fan of the Fate series, I enjoyed the movie.

A trip out to the garage to pick up (...something I'll post about later) that had been waiting here for us for over a year, I look over and see a fan exactly like the one we have on our desk at work. It was funny to us that it's not -almost the same fan-, but surely the exact same one. We took this picture to double-check and yup it's the same.

Right before the trip back home, we sneak a picture of a potted plant in the front yard that had a bird nest in it. Awww! Look at the baby birds! Despite the common misconception, the mother bird does come back to the babies after people "mess with them". There might be some people reading this thinking it was wrong to get this picture, but I've been told the babies were not abandoned.