October at the Pioneer Home

October’s Festive Meal was an "Octoberfest" themed feast, with fried pork chops, sourcrout & brats, pickled cabbage, and potato gnocchi. For dessert they had Black Forest Cake with whipped cream, one of Mother’s favorites. The festive meals are always well attended, but this one seemed to have even more people than usual. The food was quite plentiful, although Mother only ate a few bites of one or two of the dishes.

The music afterwards was quite good: an older gentleman played the guitar and sang the old Country songs that Mother grew up with. Several of the residents even got up and danced! Mother was tired, however, so she opted to go lay down and sleep in her room after eating.

Family Reunion in California

Bryan and I went on vacation a few weeks ago, going down to California to attend his family reunion.

We flew into San Diego late Thursday and checked in to a hotel for the night. The next morning, we headed over to Sea World and spent a lovely morning strolling around the park looking at all the fascinating creatures that live in the oceans. I had seen on their website that they have an enclosure full of Magellanic Penguins, so had to go see them because I got to work with those penguins last year when I went to Patagonia. But my absolute favorite was at the entrance to the park where they had a touch pool full of feeder fish. I put my hand in and hundreds of tiny fish (the biggest being maybe 3” long) flocked to my hand, all nibbling at the dead skin. I could have spent all day at that pond and told Bryan that when we get rich and can have anything we want, I’m getting a pond full of feeder fish! That was just the coolest thing ever.

Around 2:00 or so, we headed on down the road to the town of Canyon Lake where his cousin lives in a gated community. Within this gated community was the campground where the reunion was to take place. We had reserved our spot ahead of time and arranged to have a camper waiting for us – so all we had to do was navigate the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 7-lane highway. That was not fun, let me assure you.

But we eventually got there and got settled into our camper. The reunion was organized by his cousin Randi and her husband Rick. They both put in so much work, coordinating the schedules of over 50 people from all across the nation. There were many different activities available to keep us occupied, from playing in the lake to sitting around the campfire shooting the breeze with everyone.

The grand finale of the event was a big family dinner at Randi’s house to celebrate the matriarch’s 90^th birthday – Shirley was Queen for the Night and enjoyed an amazing dinner, a big birthday cake with lots of candles, and a slide show with hundreds of pictures of all her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren – most of whom were there with her!