It is Monday night. I have dropped Jennifer and Sam at the airport and they should be in the air by now winging their way back to Las Vegas. We had a great trip marred only by a couple of occasional issues with Samantha and her respect for her Mom's authority. Jen talked to John about and it and his response was that she'd been out of school too long. Sam is quite a Momma's girl. which doesn't seem to go with the fighting authority piece, but Sam has always been extremely strong willed. It was overall a minor problem with our trip, but a bigger problem for Jennifer (and John) going forward. She is a young lady that needs strong discipline because she tests boundaries consistently . Jennifer does a good job overall. Jennifer knows that Sam plays her and is working hard to stand strong. I'm proud of her.
They came in on Wednesday afternoon and I left early from work to pick up Darla and head to the airport. They were both in a great mood and we had a fun night, grabbing a late lunch/early dinner at El Azteca, the little Mexican food shop up the street from our house.
Thursday, Lucas came over to play with Sam and they spent most of the day together. I went to work and Jennifer was on the computer most of the day. I got home at regular time and Jennifer and Sam were already off to Folsom and dinner with her ex Step dad, Bill, who Jennifer considers a father figure and Samantha calls him Grampa Bill.
Friday I took the day off and we went to Benihana for lunch. When we asked Sam what she wanted to do during her visit, one thing was "Go to Benihana's". We had a ball watching the food being prepared and Sam enjoying the show. We got home mid afternoon and went in the pool followed by a trip to the park where Sam could play at the play area. Friday afternoon, we had Lucas and Alicia over for swimming and a barbecue and Darla's parents and David joined us to make it a party. I cooked two tri tips on the barbecue and everyone brought salads, fruit and desserts. David brought an appetite as I remember. Sam and Lucas had a ball together and it went to the next level when David got there. He was taking the kids and having them dive off his shoulders. The adults were visiting and we would look up when one of the kids would say, "Watch this!", which was often by the way. At one point Jennifer climbed up on David's shoulders and jumped off. I wasn't quick enough with the camera, but the were being siblings.
The kids played so much they drained about four inches of water out of the pool (don't they know we are in a drought?) and another two inches out of the spa. They were going from the pool to the spa to the pool to the spa over and over.
David stayed late that night and we watched a movie with Sam (Big Hero 6) and then an inane Will Ferrell movie called "Get Hard."
Saturday, Daniel and Becky came into town for, what else, a wedding and they joined Jennifer, Sam , Darla and I at the Original Pancake House in Roseville for a late breakfast. I had gone into the office Saturday morning to forward a report to home office that they were missing and to pick up my Oakley sunglasses that I left on my desk. I then went to get a haircut and by the time I got home we were packing up to go to breakfast. We had a nice visit wit Dan and Becky (Darla has the pictures on her phone) and Sam enjoyed seeing both of them. From there we drove out to Loomis and the High Hand Orchard. High Hand was a large packing shed back in the early 1900's and had undergone several changes since then, being warehousing for awhile before a couple of Loomis landowners bought the acreage 30 years ago and remade the buildings into retail spaces for craftsmen and opening a large nursery and restaurant on site. They have a lot of the old High Hand signs and crates and packing boxes displayed. We crawled around the nursery for awhile and shopped a bit in the stores. Jennifer bought a little fairy plant stick that is metal and goes into the soil around your plant. It is decorative. I bought Darla a hanging plant basket for the backyard made of a peat ball with plants embedded into the soil. We'll see how it does out in her growing plant nursery in our backyard.
From there I had promised to take Sam to have a milk shake at Taylors, a Frosty-style restaurant in Loomis that boasts over 250 different flavors of milk shakes. Sam had an Oreo shake and I settled for a mint chip shake as I was sharing with Darla. I wanted the Carmel Raspberry banana shake, but she won. Happy wife...
Saturday night we relaxed at home and had leftovers. Sam had mac and cheese and some leftover tri tip. Darla and I both had tri tip (mine in a burrito) and Jennifer had some Chili Rellenos and a tamale that Darla picked up for Jennifer at the Farmer's Market on Wednesday. We all went to bed early knowing that we would be up early Sunday for our trip to Lake Tahoe.
I had managed to book us a suite at the Lake Tahoe Resort Hotel which used to be the Embassy Suites and is located right next to Harrah's. Dad and Shirley, this is right next to the Marriott Grand Vacations that you stayed in. The resort is 8 stories and built in a courtyard style with a large atrium in the middle of the rooms which are all built on the outside of the resort in a square. The atrium has a large area for both afternoon cocktails (Happy Hour) and the included breakfast buffet. They also have a large koi pond with both fish and turtles and an indoor swimming pool.
We drove up leaving about 9:30 and driving up Interstate 80 to Truckee and taking Highway 89 to Tahoe City and then around the west side of Lake Tahoe. We were going to stop at Inspiration Point overlooking Emerald Bay, but the traffic was packed with people coming and going and it took us the better part of an hour to make the 23 mile trip around the lake. We stopped in South Lake Tahoe on the California side and had lunch at a nice Sub shop. It was about 12:30 when I called the hotel to see if we could get in. There were no rooms ready yet, but they took my cell number and would call when it was ready. We walked a couple of blocks down Lake Tahoe Boulevard (Hwy 50) to a little Frosty ice cream shop and had a couple of cones and Sam had another Oreo milk shake. The girl is going through a growth spurt and can eat! We got the call that our room was ready so headed over to the resort and got checked in.
We went down with Sam and swam in the indoor pool. I sat out on the pool balcony for awhile and soaked up the 78 degree air. It was awesome. We went up, took showers and dressed for the 4:30 happy hour. They had mixed drinks, beer, wine, margaritas and daiquiris for $2 and sodas and juices for free. We all got our drinks (Sam got a Shirley Temple) and filled up on pretzels and popcorn. We were there for a little over an hour and then headed up to the room to get some warmer clothes on for the evening. We decided to walk to dinner and had nothing in particular in mind. We checked into a pizza joint called Base Camp that was in the middle of the Heavenly Valley shopping complex next to the Marriott resort. It was an hour wait, so we shopped for a bit and Sam collected flowers. I took a break at one point and was relaxing near Highway 50. An Oriental gal, or is it Asian, I always forget?...anyhow, she ran to make the crossing light and left the sidewalk with 7 seconds left on the light. She got halfway across and dropped a wad of currency. She turned to pick it up, but the wind whipped it up and carried it all over the road. I couldn't see how much money she dropped, but I did see a $20 bill and a $5 bill dancing in the air. The cars then commenced to further whip the bills into a frenzy. She looked back waved her hands and walked on. When the light changed, a good Samaritan ran out and scooped up as much money as he could find and was in hot pursuit of the young lady to return her $$. I don't know if he caught up to her, but it was quite a sight.
Our table was ready in 30 minutes and we sat in the restaurant. Sam had her issues that night and Jennifer ended up taking her out of the restaurant and back to the room. To complicate things, the restaurant baked the wrong pizza for Darla and I and they gave that to us free and baked our combination pizza after that. The waiter felt bad and "comped" us our drinks. The bill was $38 for three medium pizza, three lemonades and iced teas and Jennifer's IPA beer. We brought a full medium pizza home with us.
Jennifer was pretty stressed out when we got back to the hotel and I told her and Darla to go down to the casinos and I'd stay with Sam. I had a heart to heart with her about how she treats her Mom and how much it hurts Jennifer's feelings. She was crying and said she wanted her Mom. I calmed her down, we got her a drink, she brushed her teeth and she was asleep in ten minutes.
Today we were up early, had our breakfast at the hotel and on the road by 9:30. I took everyone over to the beach so Sam and Jennifer could see the lake and Sam could build a small sand castle. From there we stopped at the overlook on Highway 89 (pictures above) that was devoid of a crowd that early in the morning. I gassed up in Truckee and we were home by one o'clock. Darla and I played with Sam in the pool (and the spa) while Jennifer packed up, downloaded some of our photos onto her computer and then had a conference call with her work.
And we are to date at the moment. Darla is off on a supervised visit with a foster Mom and the real Mom right now. She has a couple of cases that she supervises a week and that keeps her in seed money. Well, that is our week in a nutshell. I hope you are all doing well and everything is progressing for Dad and Shirley with their medical and dental issues. We continue to pray for you both. Ciao.
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