Road Trip

What do the 405, 101,126, 5, 60, 710, 110 & 10 freways all have in common? I was on all of them in the last four days!! This thanksgiving I decided to spend with some pretty amazing people. So I traveled to Santa Maria. For those who have never been it is where my love and fascination of farms meets my love of beaches. The O'Roarks opened their home to me and let me stay in the worlds most comfortable bed for two nights. It is so quiet i sleep really well! It only took me about 5 hours to get there with the insane amount of traffic, but it was God's timing. It took me three hours to get to Ventura where I got off the freway for a pit stop and some much needed food after the bumper to bumper three hour tour of the405! As soon as I pulled into a parking spot Whit called me to tell me that Grandpa had passed away. I had the same reaction that I had when they told me grandma died two years prior, and that was one of nothing. I couldn't talk, couldn't breathe for a moment, couldn't really think. I just sat. Then I went into panic mode, do I drive back, push ahead, I continued on not knowing how Thanksgiving would be. Holidays are not my favorate days lately, mainly because my crazy busy life stop and I have time to think and thinking only brings tears and those who know me know that me and expressing emotion are not real good friends. Thanksgiving thursday was here and so was great food, starting with my favorite breakfast....apple jacks!! Then Dini made the thanksgiving feast. Turkey-which was totally juicy and looked like the pictures in magazines, cranberry sauce cut with this amazing cranberry wavy cutter thing (Leilani you need to put that on your registry) it looked all professional, stuffing, yams piled high with marshmellows-YUM!! and potatoes-which Kevin helped peel. It was a ton of food!! I think Kevin and Dini will be having thanksgiving well into next week! We then just sat around and relaxed which I never do and it was so nice not to have to think- Ihope they weren't board! Friday Kevin took me to the new train depot and talked about trains and town history as we traveled it was so interesting. He is so excited about it it is contagous. I got to meet his good friend Rob and Lea who were also fun to talk with. We then traveled to Pismo to look at the butterflies. 1000s of them. Words cannot describe the beauty of them. We then walked down this cool little path to the beach which agian was amazing. It was a perfect day to be at the beach. After a while we walked back up and listened to a lady talk about the butterflies and of course there was a railroad tie- Eucalyptus was planted originally to be used on the railroad, but it wasn't good wood for that, so the groves stayed, butterflies came and the rest is history..... I then got to go to Dini's work-Glad a Way farms. They sell beautiful gladiolas . It was cool to see how many millions of bulbs and how they sort and organize it all. We also got to eat Orkuit Burger-really good!!! Athough I really wanted to stay another day or two I thought I should probably make my way back to reality. I then headed to my brothers in Ventura. I haven't seen him since August so it was a good visit. He got a new german shepard puppy who at 5 months is about as big as copper and about as hyper as sam!! So much fun!!! Not wanting to go home I decided at the last minute about 9:30pm to stay at Leilani's so we could maybe get some wedding stuff done. So Saturday we spent together which was really fun and productive. 54 days till she is a wife! (she will be a good one) I decided to stay and play a little longer with yet another puppy Rubi!! very fun. I stayed and went to church with Ed and Jodi today. It was really nice to be with family in church. I can't explain it. It was just what I needed. I then finally came home. My dogs super excited to see me, only I worked on homework and yep I got it finished!! before the day it's due. So now I will prepare to go back to VA for grandpas funeral. God has interesting timing.