Christmas in California

Traci and I boarded flight 102 on Friday evening and headed for California. This is where I am originally from and I make every effort to make it home at least 2 times a year. Christmas is always a good reason to visit and I can always count on one of my sisters to plan an "event" to bring us back a second time. My hometown is about 100 miles North of Sacramento and is named Paradise. The town was named for the gambling that took place during the gold mining years.

We spent Friday night with my sister Linda and had the opportunity to catch up with her and the Molina family.

Linda and Bill

It's always great to see the little ones in our family and see how much they have grown. Most of them are at the stage where they are just learning how to walk, talk and remember faces. Unfortunately, since our visits are so infrequent, the remembering faces is not working out so well and we end up having to re-introduce ourselves to the younger nephews. Linda and Jason worked with Noah prior to us arriving and when we walked in, he knew us as Uncle Bill and Auntie Traci; however, when morning came, we were the new people.

Saturday morning Jason, Noah and I took Noah's new tricycle for a spin in the parking lot. This wasn't the same tricycle I had when I was a kid. Mine was all metal with hard tires. Noah's tricycle had pressurized tires, a wooden deck on the back for push kicking and a ringer to warn people he was about to run them over.

Noah and Bill

Saturday we drove to Paradise and had an early lunch with my aunts, uncle, sister Brenda and mother. My mom is an incredible cook and loves to make me a meal when I come home. It is a good thing I only come home for about a week or I would ended up looking like the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka... Good home cooking will do that to a person. :-)

While at my mom's, Traci and I had the opportunity to "try" and bond with another nephew. Issac is the very tall 22 month old child of Brenda who had just woke up from a nap. Traci was able to engage him in a level-5 game of peek-a-boo and I got him to stand still for a quick photo. He is such a smart kid. A few of us were going to watch a 70s band play at the local casino and were going to leave Issac with Grandma. He could sense that we were going somewhere and that the key to us not leaving was to keep Brenda within arms reach.

Brenda got him to sit down and watch "Cars" and then said she needed to go into the other room. Her plan was to sneak out the back door but Issac knew better... He jumped up, hugged her legs and began to moan and groan about her leaving, I let him know he was lucky that he was staying home with Nana and watching a great movie. He looked at me with his squinty little eyes and shook his head back and forth very slowly. :-) We ended up making making a run for the door and enjoying a night of 70s music and getting caught up.

Chocolate covered Issac

We are looking forward to our remaining days in Paradise.