We are officially back from our California vacation. I’ve got the day off, because we didn’t get home until around 2:00 this morning, but as I stepped outside into the 90-degree heat this morning I quickly realized we were no longer in California. Boooo. We actually put some small amount of effort into extending the trip. The Royals are at Angels stadium this evening, which would have justified another night. We also wanted to put off facing the cat as long as possible; The Wrath of Kane is indeed a fearful display of spitefulness. But, it just wasn’t to be. For one thing, Donette leaves tomorrow on a business trip, and for another our debit card mysteriously quit working a few days ago.
Great trip though, I feel like I have been gone for a lot longer than a week. There were a lot more “activities” involved with this trip than usual, which I think made it more enjoyable. To skim the highlights, we flew into Oakland on the 13th with the Martins. Donette and Kelly were running in the Napa to Sonoma 1/2 marathon on Sunday, so the first weekend events centered around that. The run went off without a hitch. Matter of fact, they really didn’t even seem tired and we ended up meeting some friends and going out for the evening. Monday I got up semi-early and joined Chris, David (a friend of ours who just happened to be in town from DC,) and Steve (who lives there) for a quick nine holes of golf. Believe it or not, this marked the first time in my entire life I’ve played a round of golf. It was a great time, if maybe more due to the 68-degree weather than the actual game. Mercifully, there is no photo documentation of this event. After that, we picked up the girls and Steve took us on a tour of the Sonoma Wineries. Tuesday marked the end of the Martin’s trip, so we dropped them back at the airport and started the next leg of our trip, which was a drive down scenic Highway One. I am most definitely not a fan of driving, but if you have to be stuck in a car for any extended period of time that’s definitely the road to be on. Honestly I would rate it over the famed “Road to Hana,” which we’ve driven a couple of times also. Donette had planned the trip down the coast in relatively short hops so as not to exceed my notoriously short attention span, so we had lots of sight-seeing breaks along the way. A few of the more interesting stops were lunch at Nepenthe in Big Sur, and a tour of the Hearst Castle in San Simeon.
Late Thursday night, we arrived in San Clemente for the Schirner Family Reunion. This is my Mom’s side of the family, and this marked the third time we had all managed to get together from various parts of the country to descend on my Uncle Jack’s house in Laguna Niguel. Mercifully for him, the reunions are pretty spread out. Let’s just put it this way: In the pictures of the first reunion, I had a full head of hair and Donette was sporting a sexy spiral perm. And, at the last one all the younger kids were just starting their educations; This time they were telling us what colleges they planned on attending. Whew, time flies. It would still be a pain though, I felt sorry for them. At one point I counted 34 people in their back yard, ouch. That’s what happens when you live in a “destination location” though I guess, something I don’t have to worry about. I can even safely gamble a polite offer to host the next one, knowing nobody will actually take me up on it. “Hey, how about everybody come to my house in beautiful KC for the next reunion?” Uh, gee Phil, thanks but no thanks. Perfect crime.