Weekend with Friends

Jake and I had the rare opportunity to visit our friends Nicole and Eric here in California this past weekend.  We rented a car and headed out for the 7 hour drive on Friday morning.  Despite a rocky start - we got into a fender bender in the infamous LA traffic - we made it before dark and spent a fantastic weekend relaxing.  Eric and Andy go way back in their Navy diving days and through the years, Eric and I have also become very good friends.  His wife, Nicole is also one of our favorite people and Jake and I get very excited when we get to see them.

Since we've seen them last, they've bought a really nice house on 5 acres of land and have their own ranch...complete with horses, goats, chickens, dogs, cats and rattlesnakes.  Well, the rattlesnakes aren't exactly welcome, but they're part of the deal nonetheless.

Jake's favorite part of the weekend was definitely hanging out with Eric feeding the animals and doing boy stuff.  I've enjoyed watching him interact with the men in the houses we've visited, but I especially enjoy watching him with Eric.  He's the closest in personality to Andy so you really see Jake light up and latch on.  Jake's been a trouper through this whole trip - being apart from Andy for so long - but I know he longs for that interaction, so this time was especially great.  His absolute favorite part by far was feeding the chickens and gathering eggs.  So much so, that he's planning our chicken farm when we "come back and get a house."
"We have to have chickens, mommy.  Then we won't even have to buy eggs!"

Gathering eggs with Ms. Nicole

Mr. Til and Jake played a couple of intense games of chess.

Another bottom tooth gone!

On the way home, we had another unexpected event, only this time it was good.  Jake lost another tooth!  He was upset at first thinking it was a big tooth, but when he realized it was a baby one, he was really happy.  Not happy enough to hand it over to the tooth fairy though.  I had to save it so I can add it to the others on the boat.  Not sure what we're going to do with these things....Maybe the tooth fairy will get a discount on her bulk purchases one day...

In the meantime, Andy has been busy...scrubbing the bottom, changing oil, buying new engines (yeah!!), grocery shopping, doing laundry and helping other people fix their problems.  I'm looking forward to getting back so we can help (no, really, my fingers aren't crossed or anything).

This week we'll be celebrating a very important day...Jake's 7th birthday!  I'm busy at work trying to figure out how to make a dinosaur cake.  I know, I'm in the states, go buy one.  Well, guess who wants me to make it instead?  I may or may not be posting pictures...we'll see.  I can't believe he's already 7 but I know every mom says that (mine can't believe I'm almost 40).  He's such a funny little thing even if he is kind of strange...it's very entertaining to watch him grow up.  The apple doesn't fall far from the tree from what I hear.

I hope everyone has a great week, I know we will....only two more weeks and we'll be back to cruising and posting and hopefully more interesting stories.  Thanks for hanging in there with us... stay tuned.

We visited the town of Caloma, famous for it's start
of the Gold Rush in California.  Of course we had to
go to the river and look for gold.  Evidently, it was
VERY cold.

Looking for gold.