California, Almost Utah Trip

 Our next adventure was our road trip to California and Utah. We drove the first day through the Arizona and part of the California desert. And we stopped at my Mom's house. We stayed the night. It was a good time. We got there in the evening, and Sarah went for a walk. I was rather famished so I ate the rice and Kikomann Ribs that my mom had made in the crockpot. She told us about the puzzles she had been working on. Dad was on his trip to Peru. I took a small portion of the night looking through stuff in mine and Jacob's room. Not that much stuff was mine. The only thing there were shirts (which I probably should have taken). The next morning, Mom asked for a blessing because she was going to have a Mammagram check up with the doctor. That same morning we changed up our plans from going to Sarah's mom's house first, to going to Kirsten and David's house, seeing as how they were celebrating Danielle and Fiona's birthday together that night. It was a good and wise change, and not something we weren't already going to do, just later on in the trip.

The time with Kirsten, David, Christina, Jon, and their kids, and Arno was really beautiful and great and the drive to their house was really spectacular. One of the nights we ate really good steak, it may have even been prime rib around the large granite table on their porch. Toasty and Charcoal both wanted the scraps really bad. Christina helped the girls make two nice chocolate brownie? cakes and let each girl decorate their own cake. We then open presents. Christina gave Sarah and me the opportunity to present Fiona with a present, a scooter. We also signed little note cards. Danielle received a really beautiful flute. It was just a nice time with them.

One of the nights, Kirsten and David took us out to eat at a really nice restaurant. I seem to recall getting really good Mac and Cheese. We got into a stimulating conversation while eating and then went out for a walk around town. David told us that a lot of the shops have a sign of a cow that is multi-patterned in front of their shops as a tradition that the downtown Santa Maria folk do. It was also a beautiful and pleasant night to go for a walk. We then went to the grocery store and just enjoyed the time while David and Kirsten shopped.

We went to go to the ocean with a good majority of the people in the house. Christina couldn't come because she had homework that she was doing all weekend. It was nice to talk to her about the things she was learning. The hike to the ocean was rather incredible. We had to go over a boardwalk to get to the ocean. It was like a mile or so hike. But it was worth it to see and be in the water and see the children's reactions to the ocean. We also got a lot of Santa Maria native grown strawberries. They were so sweet and delicious. Another thing that we did was spend time in the yard helping with the plants and chickens.

Sunday was good, but for some reason I was tired. They had a nice pot luck after church. It was nice to meet some of the Trefflich's friends and make some new friends ourselves. David then invited us to go to this Japanese festival up north. It was really cool because Sarah and I got to see some Samurai armor, ancient Bonzai trees, and some performances of Japanese Cultural music. After that was finished and we came home, it was time for Sarah and I to start our next adventure.