Back home and stayed the same

Jet lag really did us in yesterday.  We flew east on Friday, arriving in the Orlando airport around midnight.  We never really ate dinner, since we had no time to spare in changing planes in Dallas.  We thought we would buy the cheese and fruit plate on the Dallas to Orlando leg, but the flight was too short.  I bought trail mix and pretzels and Mark ate his leftover cheese peanut butter crackers.  By the time we arrived home and unloaded the car, it was after 1 a.m.  We went to bed at 2 and got up at 10:30.  Then we spent the whole day in a fuzzy-headed fog, watching TV, and unpacking.  UGH.

The good news was that my weight was the same yesterday morning as when we left last Wednesday.  I was 276 when we left and the same yesterday.  Unfortunately, I ate a lot of salty, homemade chicken  soup and a large quantity of salty pistachios yesterday, so I'm up two and a half this morning.  Gotta love it.  I expect it to go back down by tomorrow morning.

Last night, Mark finally set up our Hanukkah gift from Evey and Eric from LAST YEAR!  They gave us a sound bar for our TV, but we couldn't figure out where to put it since the connector cords were short.  While in San Jose, we saw that Evey and Eric had basically the same thing and put it right on top of their TV!  Why didn't we think of that?  So now, we have an awesome sound bar on top of our TV and the sound is amazing.  Thank you, Evey and Eric!

Today we are heading over to Disney Springs to see the new Disney animated feature, The Good Dinosaur.  We may also check out the newly expanded World of Disney store to buy a toy for the NARFE meeting on Thursday.  It's our annual holiday party, and everyone brings a toy for the Toys for Tots collection.  Naturally, we always buy Disney toys!  When we get home, I plan to wrap holiday gifts for Lowell, Emily, Mark, Cindy, and Flyn.  Flyn is my person from the holiday gift-giving drawing this year. Then there will be a lot of TV to catch up on again.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal with Evey and Eric, although the turkey should have cooked longer.  We followed the directions and used a meat thermometer, but it was still a bit underdone in the dark meat. Still the 12 pound bird provided plenty of cooked meat for Thursday's dinner and plenty for leftovers.  This was the first time Evey and Eric had hosted a Thanksgiving in their house, and the table was beautiful.

We had a lovely touristy day driving to Half Moon Bay, Pescadero, and Santa Cruz on Wednesday.  We also went to the movies to see the new Bond movie, Specter, on Tuesday.  All in all, we had a spectacular time.

And our fabulous and very smart son-in-law, Eric, did a lot of maintenance work on my computer.  My start up disc was virtually full because of the nearly 50k photos and videos on it.  He was able to move all the pictures to an external drive and clear up the disc.  I now have 75% of the disc space open.  Mark bought me the terabyte external drive as a Hanukkah present this year, but I wasn't really sure how to use it. Thanks to Eric for fixing that.  Then he also got me started on upgrading to the newest operating system, which I couldn't do before because I didn't have enough open disc space!  All in all, he worked very hard to make my Macair run like new!  i can't thank him enough.

Now we are back to reality and a very full calendar of daily events.  Our Solivita retirement life of non-stop activities has returned, and we love it.

Here are some more pictures from our trip.

Monday night we sat around their fire pit in their backyard for several hours, making S'mores, talking, enjoying the bright moonlight, and having Bailey's in coffee.

Eve's black car on her pretty street with the leaves turning.

Picking a lemon off the tree in her backyard.

Eric with their Bird of Paradise plant.

Evey and I went to one of her favorite coffee shops for lattes, carrot cake, and to do the family gift-giving drawing.

I drew the first name out of the box.

Cold, windy, and sunny on Half Moon Bay.

Driving down the Pacific Coast Highway from Half Moon Bay to Pescadero.

Lunch at the historic restaurant and bar, Duarte's, in Pescadero.  Delicious.

Next stop, the Goat Farm

LOTS of goats!

Sitting in the really cool hand made goat chairs in the loft of the barn/store.

Pigeon Point Lighthouse

I was excited to see an actual old-style phone booth at the lighthouse.

Harbor seals were playing around the rocks.

Evey made cinnamon rolls for Thanksgiving morning breakfast.

Hanging out and watching the parade.  That awesome coffee table was hand made for them by Eric's dad from a burl they bought for themselves somewhere in CA on one of their trips.This was the first time we had been to their home since they got the table finished, bought the couch, the rug, and the fancy electric recliner chair.  They have made a beautiful home for themselves.

Eric is taking a picture of his delicious apple pie that he made for us.

About to cook a turkey!

The beautiful table in Evey and Eric's beautiful home.  Thanksgiving is all about family time.  Although we missed Lowell and Emily, we knew they were having a wonderful time with her parents, too.