Week Ending - Thanksgiving and the weekend after

I'm checking in a day late with Wanda et al over at her blog, Reinventing Mother, for


I find it extremely hard to think about blogging when I'm with my family, but tonight I have a window of time to write a quick post. We drove up the Baja peninsula to get to Santa Barbara the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

I'm planning to do a post later this week with more detail on some of the sights.

Our whole family was there - a real treat! We have traditionally all come to Santa Barbara for Thanksgiving as the one time in the year when we're all together, but the last several years some of us have been MIA for good reasons, so it was really great to get back on track with this tradition.

These are all our grandkids - ages 9 to 17.

Some of our granddaughters did a wonderful job of setting the table with special place cards (made by Brenna), beautifully folded cloth napkins (thanks, Jordan!) and little leaves scattered festively (Jillie's contribution). And of course the actual plates, glasses, etc. (Ayla's work).


The northern branch of the family had to drive the 10 hours to get back home on Friday, because they were in a wedding on Saturday, but the Pirate and I stayed several more days and did the same 10-hour drive today (Monday).

Our two Santa Barbara granddaughters both had birthdays the week of Thanksgiving (#9 for one, #14 for the other). On Friday we all went out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant where they cook the food right at your table. Here's a photo of our (now) 14-year-old granddaughter Brenna with her mom - the twin outfits were (I believe) unintentional.

Saturday we went to Stearn's Wharf and the museum there.

Our son Josh and his 3 kids.

By Sunday we were all pretty tapped out so we just hung out at the house after church, and the Pirate and I made an early night of it since we'd be doing the long drive the next day. This morning the first thing we did before leaving Santa Barbara was to take a bag of fruit down to the park where the homeless people tend to congregate.

The hotel where we had been staying provided fresh fruit in our room every day, so we gathered it all and took it to some folks who needed it. They were SO grateful! What a great way to start the day!

It was dark when we finally arrived at our cottage in Mendocino, so I'll take some photos tomorrow and do a post about this lovely place which is our family's home base.

Until then, Dios te bendiga!