Back from OC trip #2

We're home now from our second (of 4) trip to Orange County. This time was also super-duper busy though not quite as short as the last one. We were there about a week. The first two days (Thurs. and Friday of last week) were spent helping my mom transition her house from having a family of 5 living there (for 7 weeks in between moving from So. Cal to Virginia) to having Eric's mom, step-dad and step-sister for the long weekend.


One set of house guests left Thurs. night and the next ones arrive Friday afternoon. Friday night we all went out to dinner for Eric's step-dad's birthday. They recently moved to Maryland. He's Peruvian and was really missing good Latin American food. His only request was that we get good Mexican food. Lauren and her boyfriend also joined the crowd. He seems like a sweet guy (so far) but compared with Eric's family (who are French-Canadian and quite boisterous) he's a bit--as Lauren likes to say--"rough around the edges". He was a little taken aback at first when Eric's mom introduced herself and asked where they met. He responded hesitantly, that they met in a sober living house to which Eric's mom said, "It's ok, I work with the prison ministry at my church."

The next morning we all woke up bright and early for garage saleing where everyone had their eyes peeled for baby stuff. We didn't find much in that department (surprisingly...that's usually the one thing you can count on finding), but many of the ladies did find some very nice clothes. After getting home and having breakfast the guys headed out to meet Eric's dad and godfather for golf while the ladies went to the baby shower. It was a beautiful shower. Mom's friends really out-did themselves.

Sunday we headed up to the farm to celebrate Eric's 30th birthday. Ashley decided that having it a month early would be preferable (and much more realistic) than having it on time with a week or two-old baby, plus his family was in town already. I think by the end of the day we were all pretty much partied-out though.

Monday afternoon we had lunch and visited with my dad and then dinner with Dana and Josh. Very fun to see them.

Tuesday evening we headed down to Escondido to a shooting range which has practice tactical matches every week. The match was fun, though I realized that get very stressed when I have to shoot with lots of eyes watching me. I was a little bothered too that one of the worst shooters there (particularly in terms of safety) was a police officer. Yikes. When someone who's around guns regularly needs to be reminded to keep his finger off the trigger, I get nervous.

Finally, Wednesday we drove the long trek home. It was a pretty good trip overall...no major mishaps. I did manage to loose both my wallet and keys (at different times and places, of course) and spent a bunch of the down time trying with no success to recover them. We also got to go too a couple of excellent used bookstores--Acres of Books in Long Beach and Bookman in Orange. Very fun.

Right before we left, Ashley found out that her doctor wants her to have a C-section next week...the baby hasn't turned yet...so I guess our next trip will be pretty soon.