MAY 30th - SAL PICNIC

Every year Nathan’s company does something big for the employees come summertime. In Texas, they normally do a huge Six Flags group day and offer family passes for about half price. They also do a picnic at a park with a couple of bounce houses on the hottest day possible. Not very many people come to it and tons of food gets wasted. Well, this year’s Save A Lot picnic far surpassed last year’s. Of course, the reason is because we are in a different warehouse in a different state, but I have to say we were very impressed. They rented out the entire Family Fun Center for 3 hours and had it catered with lots of different food. It was great that Nathan didn’t have to cook food the whole time. We were all given a bracelet that allowed us to do everything for free…roller skating, bowling, batting cages, go karts, mini golf, laser tag, and arcade games. The place was packed and people were even there early to get in. I couldn’t believe it. In Texas, it was like pulling teeth to get even management to be involved in anything outside of their required hourly duties. I think maybe 30 people showed up last year.

This year close to 300 people came. It probably helped that most of them already know everyone and their families since the majority of them grew up in the area. We pretty much hung out by ourselves but the kids had lots of fun. The time went by so fast that we didn’t even get to do everything. Nathan had to go back and forth mingling and doing some bossly things, but he got to spend far more time with us than usual.

Cole is a hot shot "pro" on the Wii bowling game so, he was not happy that he kept throwing gutter balls on the real thing.
We hit the mini golf while everyone was eating to avoid a wait. That was a good idea until we realized that there wasn't much food left.

I took this picture when he wasn't paying attention. Funny how he appears to be bragging even when he thinks no one is looking. We like to call him Sir Bragsalot.
Brooke would manually place the ball right next to the hole and simultaneously raise her hand and yell "woo" every time she knocked it in. It was really cute.
Cole is all business. Eyes on the prize.

I'm not kidding, we waited an hour in line to ride the go karts because so many people had small kids that couldn't ride alone. So not worth it...At least to the parents. Turns out it is kind of painful when you're close to the age of 30.

Nathan and a couple of others made up 250 goodie bags filled with balls and tatoos and other toys for the kids to take home when they left. And for all of the employees they stuffed 152 backpacks with a questionable 1980’s replica tie-dye shirt along with a few other things. Nathan was supposed to wear his brightly colored purple/yellow/orange tie-dye shirt to the picnic, but he flat out refused. He wouldn’t let me take a picture of him in it for the blog either. What a poor sport. He said the committee actually picked them out and thought they were quite nice. As Jeff Foxworthy would say, “You might be a redneck if....”