California bound!

In a lucky and blessed (though not completely happy) turn of events, the kids and I traveled to California yesterday for a week's visit. When my Grandma Linda passed away this summer, a date was set for her memorial to be Saturday 26 September. I was planning to come on my own all this time, but it was only a couple of weeks ago that I was able to also book the kids to come.

Rebecca, Ingrid, Will, Phoebe, Jordan, John, Heidi, Luke, Kristin, Rhiannon, Billy, Tryfan, Eric and me.

The reason for this is because I ended up winning a spot at a company innovation forum in San Francisco this week, so was able to put our personal funds into the kids' plane tickets since mine was covered by my employer! That is the lucky and blessed part.
Anyway, we flew with Norwegian Air from Gatwick to LAX on Thursday 24th Sept, rented a car and drove up to Santa Barbara that night, arriving at 9:15pm. We briefly reunited with Heidi & John, and also with Will & Rebecca before turning in for the night.  The next morning we all headed downtown at various times but ended up actually being all in the same place for the first time ever inside the REI store (hence the photo above). We split up in different directions around lunch time/ nap time, and the kids and I took Heidi, John, Jordan and Luke to the fabulous Backyard Bowls cafe. It felt like a tropical paradise inside because of the warm temperatures, palm trees and flowers blooming in the background.

Heidi and John inside Backyard Bowls

After lunch, we all headed back to the house and then us Sista's (Rebecca, Kristin, Heidi and I) nipped out while the babies were napping and had a foot and body combination special massage at Little Rainbow Foot Spa in the Kmart shopping center to celebrate Rebecca's birthday today. That was an amazing and wonderful (though not relaxing) hour, and we did a bit of grocery shopping on the way home.
In the late afternoon, a bunch of us went to Haskell's Beach to boogie board and play in the sea.

We got home and showered, and soon the house was full of party people! The herd of us were enough for a party anyway, but added to the mix was Carol & Jackie, Butch & Dorothy, Libby, Phil, Ruby & Molly, Dawnie & Ben, and probably some other friends and relations as well. Mom put on a good spread and it was all very happy and wonderful.