A Visit to Northern California

I enjoyed a wonderful visit with my parents and my sister Carolyn and her family in Alturas, CA--high desert, one of the "sagebrush counties", truly in the middle of no-where :-)--and also squeezed in a side trip to Ideal and Les's new home in Chester, CA--a mountainous area just a little out-of-the-way from my return drive to the airport in Reno, NV.

Daddy showed me around the new greenhouse which Nathan helped him build this summer; he's already producing an amazing variety of vegetables and his crop will flourish all winter long! We looked at dozens of Mother's pictures from the past 80 years; she has many scrapbooking projects in the works. We ate Alturas Chinese food and pancakes at the Veteran's Hall and celebrated Daddy's 92nd birthday. It's always a special thing--and a bit eye-opening in a deja vu kind of way--to spend time with "just the birth family" because everyone knows all the favorite sayings, jokes, memories, wisecracks; everyone laughs at the familiar idiosyncrasies and habits. And we rejoice in being with the people who have known us and loved us the longest.