Category Archives: California

Monday Birthday Beach Day

During our ‘DisneyCaliFam’ vacation we spent a few hours at Huntington Beach on Monday January 16th. Some of our Cali family met up with the 10 of us at Fred’s Cantina on Main street for a bite to eat before we braved the high winds on the pier and at the seashore. Two of my sisters and seven nieces and nephews joined our ten for a lively few hours. The Swordfish tacos were delicious!

This guy saves me a seat next to him 90% of the time.

Happy Birthday churros for these two who share their birthday.

Off to the pier with Main Street behind us and Fred’s Cantina on the corner upper floor on the right.

Leaving the pier and heading to the sand and shoreline. That is another photo intensive post that will be coming soon.

Sunday Birthday

Sunday of our ‘DisneyCaliFam’ vacation was Jamie’s birthday. Dan and she had a nice breakfast date alone where Jamie could enjoy one of her favorites without any interruptions from the kiddos.

They brought treats back for us to enjoy from the bakery.

Sunday afternoon my friend Heidi and her husband Ken picked Greg and I up for an evening together at their home. Heidi has been part of my family’s life since the 60’s and we were besties in the 70’s and beyond. I was her Matron of Honor when she and Ken were married in 1978. Our two families spent lots of time together while our children were growing up. She took the photos of our kids here.

Friends for life are the best kind of friends. We had a wonderful evening enjoying dinner and conversation in their beautiful home. While we were away our kids went bowling with a few of the cousins joining them.

The birthday girl was the champion of the night!

Back to the present…we had a dusting of snow on Saturday night that has covered some of the dirty snow. We are now in a cold trend with temps predicted to get done to single digits soon. It’s still winter after-all.

Hoping to catch up with you-all this week.

There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy ~ Hymn

There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy
Like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in God’s justice
Which is more than liberty.
There is plentiful redemption
In the blood that has been shed;
There is joy for all the members
In the sorrows of the Head.

For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of our mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more simple
We should take him at his word,
And our lives would be illumined
By the presence of our Lord.

Troubled souls, why will you scatter
Like a crowd of frightened sheep?
Foolish hearts! why will you wander
From a love so true and deep?
There is welcome for the sinner
And more graces for the good;
There is mercy with the Savior,
There is healing in his blood.

Words: Frederick W. Faber

Waving Goodbye…

…to Southern California.

We are leaving the city of Orange and finishing our family vacation in Huntington Beach today, flying out later in the evening.

After rain the first few days we have enjoyed sunshine filled days. Our Tuesday Disneyland day was perfect weather for us, sunshine and cool temps. Sounds like we might be returning home to more snow!

The Celebrations Begin…

These five represent 233 years of life and we enjoyed celebrating them on Saturday night the 14th of January.

Crumble Cookies for the win!

 

The siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews and grands were a fun, noisy crowd. We enjoyed build your own tacos before the crumble cookies.

The girl cousins.

My siblings in order of birth.

Sisters

Cousin once removed love!

Thank you to Debbee and Lenny for hosting all of us!

Cousins Christmas California

Because we have 3ish more inches of snow on the ground and we are below freezing (high of 16 degrees) and the next few days are going to be cold and brutal in our area and many other areas, I’m stealing all the joy from photos that our Laura and our nieces Debbee and Kristin shared on Facebook from their cousin time in California Sunday and Monday, where the sun is shining and there is no snow. (That is one long sentence and this is one photo logged post)

Our Josh and Laura are intentional in their relationship building and keeping. God has blessed them with the means to follow-through with the desire to use their discretional time wisely in the love and care of others. Here it worked out for them to fly to Southern California to be at the annual cousin Christmas time with some of our nieces, nephews, and grand nieces and nephew and spouses.

They bumped into Santa at the airport.

The party this year was at our nephew’s home on the beach where the cousins were treated to the extra bonus of the Christmas boat parade that they could watch from the deck. Dave and Kristin hosted our kids overnight, too.

Our kids, Josh and Laura. My sister Kathy’s daughters, Melissa and Michelle with Michelle’s husband and Jack and Avery (our grandnephew and niece). My sister Vera’s son and daughter with their spouses.

Our beautiful girls…we claim them all.

My brother Steve’s son, Tim, and his family arrived so they had a re-do of the deck photo.

Some of the crew gathered at Disneyland on Monday and had a magical time together.

All day and into the night at the Big D.

Josh and Laura made the most of their 2 day stay in Sunny Southern California. They are coming home to snow today on their side of the mountains.

These cousins have had so much fun over the years together. Now they are enjoying the added fun of the spouses that their cousins married. We are so thankful the love continues. My mom and pop would love seeing these times continue.

“Stay together, Love each other” Their Dzeda (grandfather) left them with that encouragement and they are doing a good job listening.

The photos above are from the 80’s in California.

And speaking of World Cup Soccer (Futbol), (That is a weird segue!), here we are arriving at LAX from Seattle in 1994 to attend some of the World Cup Games when Los Angeles hosted the games. My sister Kathy and her girls picked us up from the airport. Our sons were able to get tickets for some of the games in Los Angeles and San Jose. Brazil beat out Italy to win in 1994.

World Cup 2022 just ended this past Sunday and what a championship game it was. Argentina came out ahead of France in the end and are the World Cup Champions for 2022.  It was fun to see Lionel Messi finally add a World Cup Championship to his soccer accomplishments.

Congratulations on making it through this post. I like to document these special times to look back on as a kind of journal of life as it happened. Sometimes they flow well and sometimes they have diversions…

 

Pelicans on the Pier

I was happy that these Pelicans were resting instead of flying so I could get my photos.

Back here in N.E. Washington State we have entered a dry warm cycle which means I’ll need to start watering the planters.

Dear has started painting the exterior of our home. When it’s complete I’ll share some before and after photos. Enjoy the last weekend in June!

Sister Day

On Monday June 13th (my last full day in Southern California) our sister Kathy drove out to Huntington Beach to spend the afternoon and evening with us. We went for lunch to Summer House in Corona Del Mar. When we finally got our food it was very good. We didn’t realize they were having a ‘soft opening’ after being closed for renovations. A brand new cook and only one cook and other new staff people who were all very pleasant but it took over an hour for our food to reach our table. Good thing we weren’t on a lunch break. We were on a leisurely outing. From there we hopped over to Roger’s Gardens in Corona Del Mar.

The succulent wall gardens were amazing.

We looked at all the beautiful hanging baskets and pots filled with flowers that were amazing and very expensive. The individual plant starts that you could buy were comparable in price to what I’ve seen at Wal-Mart this year.

These hanging succulent baskets were very cute.

After the gardens, on the way back to Vera’s, we stopped at 85degrees, an Asian bakery with lots of goodies. Vera was making dinner for us and I wanted to contribute the dessert. So many beautiful desserts to choose from.

Back at Vera’s bungalow she started on dinner and Kathy and I relaxed enjoying the aroma of onions and garlic and someone cooking a meal for us. Our youngest sister, Lana, arrived home from work and all the sisters enjoyed the evening meal together. Vera’s daughter-in-love joined us, too. It was good to be together.

Vera made a ‘shepherd’s pie type dish’ using ground beef, zucchini and crushed tomatoes and for the topping instead of mashed potatoes she substituted mashed cauliflower. It was very good and I suppose lower in carbs. We made up for those carbs in our dessert.

Here are the desserts we enjoyed, a chocolate cookie cream loaf and a strawberry cream tiramisu. Light and tasty.

It’s not very often that all four of ‘the sisters’ are all together in one place so we had to take the obligatory sister shots. Kristin was our photographer.

Lana, the youngest, me, Vera, and our oldest sister Kathy. A seventeen year span between the oldest and youngest. An 12 year span between me and our sister Lana.

Lana lives in Texas as of a month ago, I live in the state of Washington, Vera and Kathy live in Southern California about 20 miles from each other. Kathy lives about twelve miles from where we all grew up.

This was one week ago already. The laundry from my trip is done. I’ve mowed the lawn. I pulled a few weeds. We had our Colville kids over for a meal. Life is back to ‘normal’ here in the country.

Sunday Night in Cali

On Sunday afternoon/evening my sister and I were invited for dinner at our friends beautiful home in the city of Orange. We sat in their patio and enjoyed appetizers, lots of conversations and then dinner. It’s hard to tell from the photo above but that is an infinity pool in the background.

Our wonderful host and hostess, Ken and Heidi. Heidi was my best buddy in my college years and beyond. She was living with Dear and me when she met Ken, dated him, got engaged and then married. I was her matron of honor. She is truly the hostess with the mostess.

Ta-da and toodle-pip!

Toodle pip is a very British and informal way to bid farewell.

Thank you for a beautiful evening, great food and good conversation. Till next time…

Driving home from Ken and Heidi’s I took a photo of the gas prices at this station.

While I was in Cali the local kids dropped by on Sunday to pick up a package that was delivered to us for them.

JJ and Gramps also went next door to pick up one of my packages that was mistakenly delivered to our neighbor. Addy conquered the gravel mountain in front of the shop.

Back to Colville and the Country and away from the big city lights. Tonight we are having our local kids and grands over for dinner. This will be the first time since April 29th. For much of May and into June they were in another state for a Workation.  It will be fun to have some extended time with Addy and JJ and see what new skills or vocabulary they have developed.

For those in the U.S. and Canada a Happy Father’s Day weekend to you!

Beach Walk Sightings

Home again after a long day of traveling and no energy to participate in Wednesday Hodgepodge. Alaska Airlines upgraded me to First Class for my flights home and that was a nice treat. The flight attendant was cheerful and happy to serve which made things even more enjoyable. After landing in Spokane on my second leg of the journey, we made a stop at Hobby Lobby to try to find a few things for the walls of my of our guestrooms that we upgraded to a King bed, etc. My brain was in slo-mo which made making design decisions difficult. We left with two small items and headed to Costco to fill up our vehicle with gasoline and buy a few items. Back on the road home we tried to stop at a favorite spot for dinner in Deer Park but it was closed for some mysterious reason. We tried a new spot in Loon Lake and it was good enough that we will stop there again in the future. Once home we had absolutely no energy left so the unpacking will be slow. Here are some extra photos from a walk along the Beach that my sister and I enjoyed.

Besides the beautiful ocean and beaches we saw both pretty and unusual things on our walk Friday the 10th of June.

The dog walker. This made us smile. This was a group of very well behaved dogs!

And besides seeing things on the ground we spotted this group in the sky.

Getting back in the groove here at home. Thank you for following along and all the kind comments. I’ll be responding soon. And just like that we are at the middle of June!