Winter Trip 2010 #10

We just spent a wonderful 10 days visiting family in San Jose, CA. We got there on Feb 15th. The ride was so beautiful. I have never seen CA so green and plush. It felt like riding through the hills of Ireland. Anyway, my Aunt Bev just moved into a new home in an adult community. It is a very nice community and very well kept. I'm sure she is going to be very happy there. She just recently moved from Morgan Hills to San Jose to be closer to her daughters and their families to include grandchildren and great-granddaughter. Aunt Bev was such a gracious host - always feeding us and Charlie. My aunt's dog, Pixie is half of Charlies' size and she wanted to play with him so bad but Charlie was only interested in what was in her feed bowl. Poor Pixie, everyday, Charlie would barge in the house and clean out Pixie's bowl. We enjoyed helping my cousin, Jody and Aunt Bev with little jobs to get her settled in. The rest of the family had already moved in her furniture and stuff and put in new appliances in so she looked pretty comfortable and cozy by the time we got there but Jody made up a "To Do List" and we enjoyed helping check things off the list. Aunt Bev treated us to a buffet lunch one afternoon at her favorite restaurant and cousins, Jody and Karen joined us. I can see why that is her favorite restaurant - the food was great and my goodness so many choices. It was hard to get back to our chores after that feast. On Friday evening, we finally got to see Jody's husband Dave. He worked all week and we had left for the motorhome before he even got home from his evening commute. Anyway Dave and Jody treated us to a nice dinner at one of their favorite restaurants, called the Flames Coffee Shop. It was really great. Again so many choices. But the one thing we noticed they had, but did not partake in, was wonderful desserts. I have never seen cakes so huge. We definitely had a fun evening catching up. We took a break on Saturday and drove over to Santa Cruz, CA for the day. They were having a Clam Chowder Cook Off on the boardwalk. I love clam chowder and I couldn't wait to taste all the chowders. The place was packed - it was a beautiful day and I think everyone came out because of the beautiful weather. However, when we got there I found out, out of the 76 chowders they had on hand, you could only taste five. What a bummer! But I did enjoy my 5 little tastes anyway. We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the boardwalk watching all the people and the beautiful ocean until they called out the winning chowder. We then drove over to lighthouse point and watched the surfers. It was there that we had a quiet moment thinking of our beloved uncle Joe, for it was he who introduced us to that spot the last time we were with him. There were some huge waves. It was also cold. Jim and I wore jackets with hoods and the surfers did have on wet suits but it still looked cold. The waves were so big and we was wishing we had our camera but it was in the truck and it was too cold to walk all the way back to the truck and then back to the surf so you'll just have to take our word for it! Later that evening we met our niece, Heather and her finance, Nicole for dinner at the Hindquarters Steak Resturant in Santa Cruz. We had a wonderful time catching up and telling stories on each other. It was our first time meeting Nicole and we were delighted to meet her. On Sunday, Jody and Dave hosted a wonderful brunch at their house and everyone brought something. It was definitely a feast. That afternoon, some of us girls went to see the movie Valentine Days and the guys went to visit the Hiller (Hiller Helicopter fame) Aviation Museum. (Bless Dave and Tom's hearts, for they had to endure Jim reading EVERY information plaque in the museum) The movie was great and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Jim said he had a wonderful time at the Museum. Monday it was back to the To Do List. We were getting all the small stuff done and feeling pretty good about the list. Only the big stuff is left like paint the house, and landscape the front -- we would have like to have done that -- but they still needed to decide on the color to paint and the design for landscape and then notify the Manager of the park. Tuesday we spent the first part of the morning packing up the motorhome and getting things ready for our next leg of our trip. We went to Aunt Bev's for dinner on Tuesday and everyone surprised me with a 60th Birthday Party. To say the least, I was very surprised and had a lot of fun. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to San Jose and Santa Cruz and left for Harlingen, TX on Wednesay, Feb 24th. We'll be catching up with our Oklahoma friends in Harlingen and looking foward to it.