California: Days 14 and 15 (The End, I Promise)

As the dwindling comments indicate, everyone is ready for the California posts to end. So am I. I love thinking about my trip and looking at the pictures, but December fun has begun and I just can't afford to get too far behind in such a busy month. So what do you say we wrap this thing?

Day 14: Thursday, the 25th

Happy Thanksgiving!

I woke up to a breakfast of crepes, with banana, Nutella, strawberries and cream. Yum! I opened a few gifts and then we quickly swept my birthday under the rug. I love when my birthday falls on either Thanksgiving or Black Friday because it gets almost entirely overlooked. I do better without all the hoopla. The only reason I bring it up now is because it is far enough past that I am not worried about anyone reading this and sending a singing telegram to my door or anything. This year I turned 35. Make an old joke if you like (that is for my sis-in-law, Emily, who always calls me old) but I love that I am 35. I consider it such a blessing. I don't want to be 20 again. I like myself better now, and I like my life better now. If I were 20 now, then I wouldn't have the 15 years that have blessed me so richly since then. I have thought a lot about aging and I could write LOTS on the subject, but that is not why we are here today. I will just say that it doesn't bother me. There are no guarantees and I am grateful for every year. It is a gift to be granted the opportunity to grow older, hopefully wiser, and to be with the people you love for longer. The only reason 35 is weird is because I moved away from "home" at 17 1/2 and I have never again lived in California. I have now lived half my life outside of California. Too crazy, since it seems like I just graduated a few years ago. I never imagined living away would become permanent, but after half a lifetime now, it seems less and less likely that I will ever go back.

Alright, back to the part where I am trying to get caught up.

For weeks I tried to persuade my family to just bag Thanksgiving dinner and go to Mimi's or something. My mom and stepdad can't eat anything but protein on their diet, Kristen and Steven were working, and me, Valerie, and Dave didn't care. Seth got wind of my plan and quickly intervened. He insisted that I make a turkey again since it was so good last year. I couldn't resist the compliment (even if I did borrow all my turkey tips from Erin) and agreed to take on the turkey. Everyone promised that if I just did the turkey, they would do the rest. Somehow, I ended up doing the whole dinner, with Seth as my trusty assistant. We had a 32 pound turkey and I was terribly worried about it drying. The dude barely fit in the oven, but when all was said and done, he was one moist and juicy beast.

Throughout the day, we once again tried to do stuff with the kids to make their own little holiday. Valerie did placemats and I did turkey cookies. Speaking of turkey cookies, it was not easy to find candy corn on Wednesday night. Glenn and Seth couldn't find any at the grocery store so I asked Kristen to please take me to CVS to look. (I don't drive in CA) They had two rows marked candy corn...all sold out! Once I get an idea though, I just HAVE to find exactly what I'm looking for. I asked her to please take me to one more CVS. Sold out! By then, she was fired up about the mission too, so we went to one more CVS. Sold out! We went to a grocery store. Nope. Dollar Tree. Wrong again. By this point we had butterflies in our stomachs at each new stop. We hit Rite Aid. It was looking like another defeat. As I started to walk away, I saw Kristen scrambling to get to the bottom shelf. She spotted orange way in the back. Ta-Da! Two bags of candy corn left. We were screaming and jumping and laughing our heads off. You probably stopped reading the tale of the candy corn already, after you determined it was a lame thing to devote a paragraph to, but I had to include it because it was so much fun! And we conquered. Thanks for going on my little OCD adventure with me, Kris!

Back to Thanksgiving Day....

After stuffing our faces with turkey, my mom took the kids to Tangled. I wasn't interested, but now I keep hearing how great it is, so maybe I will check it out. While the kids were away, Val and I took a plate of food over to Grandma King. She had a couple Thanksgiving invites, but she is 90 and it is not comfortable to be out and about all day so she stayed home. We wanted to see her. We called our dad and he said he would meet us there with pie. We dragged out the photo albums again and had another nice visit with GK. Again, she was hilarious! She is super private. So was Grandpa King. We were asking questions about how they met, and other biographical stuff. She kept giving us quick answers and brushing us off. We were getting really funny responses so we kept fishing for more until she finally had enough and said, "why don't I just write it down for you." I think that was our cue to stop. I got a lot of things from the King side, but as you know, I am not guarded or private at all. Jeff, Michael, my dad and my grandparents are impossible to crack, and yet me and Valerie run around spilling our guts all over the place.

After our nosy little visit with GK, we headed back to put the kids to bed and play one last round of Buzzerwizzer. We looked at old pictures from when we were kids one more time, while we listened to Dave talk about softball message boards. That was entertaining. I almost snatched all those old pictures, because I love looking at them. I never knew they existed until Nonnie passed away. That is when I became a picture freak. It made me so happy to find all those pictures, so I decided to start taking pictures of my kids as often as I could. Looking at those pictures, I learned that Alex looks a lot more like me than Alyssa does. I will steal a few next time to show you. Now before I reminisce anymore, let's just end day 14.

I meant to take pictures of the food and family, but once I sat down to eat, I never got back up for the camera.

Valerie made us placecards, and we wrote what we were thankful for on the inside.

I forgot to get a picture of their placemats, but you can kind of see them here.

Day 15: Friday, November 26th

I wanted to stay the weekend, but it was $700 cheaper to fly home on Friday. That morning was like it always is the last morning-everyone just circling around each other, trying to avoid the elephant in the room. Since we flew out of Orange County, we stopped for lunch and bay side goodbyes in Balboa. I totally failed in my efforts to steal Audrey. When it came down to it, I couldn't even pick her up to hug her goodbye because I knew I would lose it. Everyone promised to get out here for Spring Break, and then we were gone.

The flight home went pretty well. The plane was half full, at most. I was in one row with Alex and Alyssa, and Seth and Chloe had another row. They showed Despicable Me and the older two watched, and then drew pictures for the rest of the flight. It was almost 1AM when we finally arrived home. We were so tired, but since we were still on California time, we did sleep in until 10:00 for the rest of the weekend. Nice!

What a boring note to end on, so let's look at something cute instead.

One of Alex's pictures from the plane. Back to his usual favorite, Spongebob. While we were in CA, he was drawing stacks of Nightmare Before Christmas pics.

Alyssa's Princess and the Frog picture.