Shopping Trip!

This afternoon, Leslie and I left the fellows at home while we went shopping. This was to be a very serious shoe shopping trip! Leslie badly needed new running shoes --

While I really needed new sandals --

These are Capistranos by Abeo --

Next was a stop at Disney to pick up our passes and to get a baby present. I sure liked this Mickey topiary fountain --

Somewhere along the line we also stopped at the local Godiva Chocolates' shop and picked up some chocolate-covered Oreos for the fellows. After all, it is the 100th Anniversary of the Oreo cookie!

By the time we got back to Auntie Violet, Bill had hulled and sliced a couple of boxes of the strawberries we had gotten yesterday. I sauteed some pork chops, then simmered them in white wine while I fixed a green salad (Leslie says my salads have more "stuff" then salad in them...) with avocados, orange peppers, green onions, palm hearts, artichoke hearts, cucumbers, green peas, tomatoes,spinach and tortilla strips . We ate the chops with some sauteed asparagus, then finished it all off with strawberry shortcake topped with dark chocolate sauce. It's a shame that none of us like to eat...!

A Special Day

I followed Auntie Violet and Forry back to the ranch this morning in the toad. It just seemed like too much effort to hook up the Jeep just to tow it 20 miles, then unhook it again so that we could go to Moses Lake! We don't do it very often, and then only for short distances, but I worry that we're going to get stopped one of these days for having Auntie Violet's license plate obscured. We have a shield that slips onto the front of the toad, covering the head lights when it's being towed. When we're not towing the toad, the shield is kept in brackets on the back of the motor home, thus covering over the license plate. Auntie Violet does also have a license plate on her front bumper, but evidently it's the one on the rear that counts.


We did minimal setup when we got to the ranch; extended the jacks and the slides and hooked up the electricity. We parked a good 8 feet further forward towards the creek then we usually do, hoping that we would get better reception for the antenna and my pc aircard, but it doesn't seem to have made any difference, I still only get three bars!




After we finished up, we headed into ML, picked up some doughnuts and lemonade and went to visit Vic and Phyl for a bit. She was resting when we go there, so we got to visit with Vic for a while until she woke up.


The big deal today was to go over to my Brother Pat's house where his whole family was planning to be home. We had not seen then since early last fall. Did we ever have a nice visit with them all AND a feast besides!




These fellows are my brother (on the left) and his oldest son Jared, a Seattle engineer who was home for the weekend with his wife. The two of them are fixing Cajon blackened tuna and halibut. Jared made pineapple salsa to go with the fish. My sister-in-law Cindy was wrapping bacon around potato wedges when we arrived; these were browned, then baked until tender. Niece Ashley was slicing strawberries for short cake.






The next little guy is my great-nephew Carter. He and Uncle Forry and his grandma are all watching the "pig-catching."




Pat's youngest son Nick and one of his friends parents are catching one of their project pigs in order to weigh it. They had four young pigs in the pen weighing between 75 and 95 pounds that they caught and weighed. It really was a riot watching them -- and the pigs weren't even greased!

My Kind of Day

Today was a good day! I slept in until after 7:30; had fresh sweet California strawberries, yogurt and granola for breakfast; washed a couple loads of jeans -- and hung them on the line; followed Forry down to Jamul Automotive to pick him up after he dropped off the brown pickup for an oil change; had a leftover hamburger patty with avocado slices for lunch; then read for a while and took a nap!

About three o'clock we decided to get a little more ambitious and went to look for birds and flowers. We went up Barrett Smith Road where I have been intrigued by this eucalyptus tree which was so badly damaged by the fire, but just keeps on putting out green leaves:

Many of the burned bushes are the same way. The tops may be burned and dead, but the leaves are coming from the bottom:

It seems as though everytime we are out and about, we see different flowers. Today we saw some datura:

Some lupine:

And this little beauty blooming along the road -- I have no idea what it is:


We drove on over to Otay Lake where we saw snowy egrets, mallard ducks, coots, California gulls, and trees full of double crested comorants:

We were puzzled by the comorants at first, because we had not seen them in breeding plumage before. They now have impressive -- almost an inch long -- white tufts on their black heads.

We went on into Eastlake and had a wonderful Mexican shrimp dinner, complete with a shared piece of flan.

My kind of day!