Our Trip to California

We went to California in August.  It is now November.  I think it is way past time to post pictures.  

Kyle's sister Jackie came with us.  She was awesome to read stories to Hazel, entertain her in the car, and even help get her ready for bed most nights.  It was great.

We spent the first few days at Kyle's Aunt Elaine's house in Oakview, not far from Ojai.  They have a beautiful pool in their backyard.  Here is Hazel playing happily in the waterfall before...

 ...Elaine pulled her in and blamed Jackie for not catching her. 

We all saw her pull her.  It still makes us laugh. Isn't that face precious?

 Luckily it didn't take too long to get our munchkin back in the water, having fun.  Elaine had this wonderful "swimmie" that her kids used to use, and it fit Hazel perfectly.  It helped her float a little better.

 Hazel enjoying her first Drumstick that evening.  It got all over, but she sure loved it. 

 Aunt Elaine and Papa Peter singing "The Hokey Pokey" with Hazel on the front porch.  She warmed right up to both of them.

 We went down to the beach in Ventura one morning.  It was very foggy and actually quite chilly, so we didn't take our swimsuits.  The water was really cold and Hazel didn't like it.  We didn't like it much either.  We did have a lot of fun though.

 Then we went up to Solvang to visit Kyle's Grandmother and spent a few days there.  It is a touristy Danish town, with lots of shops downtown.  Kyle picked up some geodes for our budding geologist, and they broke them outside while Jackie and I were downtown one day.  I don't think that tiny hammer did any good whatsoever.

 Kyle got a new doll for Hazel while we were there, and named her Sunny.  We wanted her to have something special that she got at Great-Grandma's house.

 There is a miniature horse ranch just a couple miles up the main road, and we had a lot of fun taking Hazel.  We had gone up there a few years ago and had a lot of fun, but we just knew Hazel would love to see the "ponies."  She did.  This one was a baby and especially little.  They were so cute!

 I spent quite a bit of time with Grandma asking her questions about her life and writing down the answers.  I could have done this for a solid week!  She has so many stories.  Our visit was not that long, and my hand was already cramping as it was, but we had some interesting conversations.  She just turned 93 in September, so we wanted to get some stories while we still could.  This particular night we stayed up very late.  Hazel was having a hard time going to sleep and Kyle was so helpful with her even though she cried a LOT.

 When I finally went to bed this is what I found: awwww.

 Grandma has this great family tree painted on the wall in her hallway.  The trunk has a picture of her and Grandpa Jack, the branches are their three children, and those branches have kids and grand kids coming off of them.  The roots have pictures of ancestors.  It is amazing. 

 On our last day we realized that Hazel had not given us any photo ops of her with Great Grandma, so we tried really hard to get some.  Alas, she wouldn't let Grandma hold her, but we did get a few shots of them in the same picture.  A few were a little better than this one, but not by much.

We had a wonderful visit.  We hope that we will get to see Grandma again sometime.  If we do, we'll make it more of a priority to get good pictures.