California get-together

I mailed my Christmas cards in Mesquite, NV on the the way to California.

Mike and I listened to an audio book by Gerald Lund, The Undaunted. The story of the Hole-in-the-Rock  expedition.  Excellent read/listen.  It is an 800 page novel, so we listened to a lot of it while traveling these past weeks.

CA-- Left on Saturday December 21 in the morning and arrived at Suz's in Temecula right on time and right when Ken and family drove in, too! Visiting, eating, and more visiting and more eating.  We spent the night with Aunt Maureen and Christine and Jill in Huntington Beach.  Then, on Sunday morning we drove home.  Listening, listening all the way.  We had a nice visit with Aunt Maureen and Christine. They were so kind to let us stay with them and it reminded me of olden days as a little girl when I used to sleep over at Aunt Maureen's apartment.  Well, maybe she was just babysitting, but it felt like a sleep-over and she was always so sweet.

 Sandi had found a cassette tape in her things at home that said it was a recording of Uncle Owen and Grandpa Sorensen, so we all piled into Ken's mini-van to listen to it.  He had a cassette player in his car.  We listened to it a couple of times. Funny, but the recording was of Grandpa opening his junk mail. ha!

Aunt Jean with Sandi's husband, Dave.

Christine, Suz, Gina and Cara. (Kara?)

Mike and Kirk enjoying the appetizers and chatting.

Aunt Maureen and me.  I took this "selfie" with a little aiming help from Suz.

Logan (4) and Jill (17) on the trampoline

Justin and Avery in the glow of Suz's gorgeous Christmas tree.

Uncle Gary, Aunt Tuny.  And Teddie, of course.

Cousin Ken.  Sadly, Geri was not feeling well (flu bug), so was unable to attend.

Outside their house.  They really go all out!  It's lovely, and despite the blurriness of this photo, is is really nice.

I'll try to upload a brief video I took.  If it takes more than 3 minutes to load, never mind...I still have not discovered how to do things quickly while blogging.  It just DRAGS for me!!  Aargh. 11 minutes.  Good thing I had something interesting to read while waiting.

This was the Saturday before Christmas.

The Monday before Christmas, December 23, we drove up to Salt Lake City to visit with Nick and Kaylee and pick up Eric.  We also ate lunch out at a Chinese restaurant with Gayela AND I managed to sneak in a quick visit with one of my ol' college buddies, Deb Ashdown Chesley. She's always so good to give me a call when she's in town visiting her mom down on 700 West, and Deb has lived out of state for a long time.  Now they live in South Jordan, fairly close to where Nick and Kaylee live.

Kaylee is one very lucky girl.  Nick and Eric had just gone out that morning to get her personal belongings from her wrecked car in Tooele.  Nick took pictures of the car.  Massive damage--so blessed and lucky is that girl!!