New Year's - Concord, California

On December 30th, we tagged along with Layne and Kris as they drove to Concord, California (near San Francisco) to visit family. Brian's Grandma Westover and many of his aunts, uncles and cousins live there. We got up around 5:00 am to finish getting ready and packing the truck. We said goodbye to Sean's family and off we went. 

The sun was just coming up as we left. Although there wasn't much to look at, and some people would call the drive boring, I enjoyed it. It was so wonderful to see mountains and open space! 

We made it there around 7:00 pm, about 12 hours after we had left. Although it was a long drive, and we were all snug in the pickup's cab among the stuff that wouldn't fit in the back for the entire day, it wasn't that bad. We managed to avoid most of the worst traffic and the weather was clear the entire way, except over one pass (don't remember where) when it was really foggy and at one rest stop where it was lightly snowing. Brian and I had the best of it though, we just rode in the back the whole way and got to sleep on and off.

Baby Faye had a cold while we were in Arizona, and had passed it on to all of us before we left -- she was so adorable and sweet that we couldn't stay away from her. We started calling her Typhoid Faye. Kris and Brian got the worst of it and I was feeling it trying to come on, but was able to keep it at bay with all the rest we got. Most of our time in California was spent laying low and sleeping. Even Archie got in on the napping. He would come and curl up on one of our laps, snuggling down into our blanket. I loved when he curled up on my lap, he was so warm.

We did venture out a few times, for short walks and to run errands. None of us really felt good enough to go see the sights, and we were all trying to help Brian get better before his work trip to Las Vegas the next week. 

On New Year's Eve, we hung out at Grandma Westover's house with Layne, Kris, Grandma, and Aunt Barta. Brian and Layne went out to get Chinese food and they didn't disappoint. It was a feast with all sorts of different dishes. We enjoyed eating dinner together and then watched the movie The Monuments Men. We celebrated New Years at 9:00 pm (midnight New York time) and then called it a night because everyone was still feeling sick and just wanted to go to bed.

The next three days were full of resting and visiting with family. It was really nice to catch up with everyone, most of whom we hadn't seen for four years. A lot of the Westover relatives came over to see us, which was nice, because we didn't really feel up to venturing out for visits, but still really wanted to see them. We got to see Brian's uncles Gale, Kirk and Paul and his aunts Maureen, Daena, Deniece, Jill and Barta, along with cousins Julie, Chad, Alison, Eric, Michael, Amber and some of their families. One of the nights we did drive to Vacaville to visit Brian's Uncle Eric, Aunt Joanne and cousin Robbie. We went to dinner with them at Panera Bread and then played games at their house. It was a fun evening. 

We fell in love with Archie all over again. He is such a great dog, and almost makes me want to have an inside dog. We never had indoor pets while I was growing up on the farm. Archie would come visit us every morning in our room to wake us up and every night before we turned off the lights to say goodnight. 

On January 4th we flew out of the Oakland Airport, headed to Las Vegas for Brian's tradeshow. We had said goodbye to everyone the night before and Layne and Kris drove us to the airport that morning. It's so hard to say goodbye to family! We are very grateful that we had the chance to visit everyone and spend so much time with them all.