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Wednesday, May 20, 2009

I had a great time at Dennis and Abby's place!

I got there on Thursday afternoon and stayed until Sunday night. I have not been down since they bought their condo, so it was nice to finally get to see where they live now. Thursday we went out to dinner at an Italian place and then just hung out at their place and played with Midas and Dagny. Friday we went to C.A.R.D.(Center for Autism and Related Disorders), where he works and he showed me around and I met some of the people he works with. Then we went to Huntington Gardens. http://www.huntington.org/ Abby did a project there for her work and so she was able to get us free passes in!
I had a blast taking pictures! It is acres and acres of gardens, one garden is acres of just cactus. Every kind, I had no idea there were so many and tons of them were in bloom. There is a Chinese Garden, Japanese Garden, English Rose Garden, Australian Garden, a Botanical Garden, Herb Garden, Jungle Garden, Lily Ponds and water falls, and a Conservatory. I took 447 pictures just at the gardens! Dennis and Abby were so patient with me...here are some shots of the gardens and then some of them waiting around for me to continue. Along with the gardens, there are museums and a library. They have an amazing collection of books and letters in there! One of them was the first book ever printed on a press, the Gutenberg Bible. They did a BBQ for dinner that night. Dennis made burgers and pomegranate margaritas and Abby made salsa...good stuff!! Then on Saturday, we drove to Oxnard and went out to lunch with Uncle Jimmy. It is always fun to spend time with him. Saturday night, Abby's Mom and Dad, (Lanie and Terry), came up and we had another BBQ with them, including churros for dessert. Sunday we went to their new church and then out to lunch and back to their place to hang out some more before I had to catch my plane. The last time I stayed with them, I experienced my first earthquake,right in the middle of the night we woke up to the whole place shaking. Quite a thing to wake up to, especially having never gone through one! Well, I almost made it out of town before another such experience. An hour or so after they dropped me off, the whole airport was shaking! I've read that it was between a 4.7 or 5.
It is just so amazing to see your kids as adults, to be in their home, see them cooking, cleaning and living life on their own. Like it is pretty weird to have HIM making ME breakfast and out there on the patio, is an arbor they built with grapes that they are growing. Take a look at the planter he built for his tomatoes...they grow upside down! That plant is full of green tomatoes already!

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