Saturday morning dawned sunny and warm – what else?  We’re in Southern California!  We spent a leisurely morning visiting and then had our yummy Italian leftovers for lunch.  Somehow Italian food seems just as good or better the second time around.

After lunch Bill and Mike went for a bike ride while Doris and I went shopping.  The variety of shopping available here is astounding.

We arrived back home in the early evening.  Mike had gone to work at the church which was having its inaugural Saturday evening service.   Doris, Bill and I went to pick him up after the service and we all made a mad dash to the San Diego Chicken Pie Shop, one of my all time favorites.  The place is nothing special to look at but the chicken pies are heaven with a crust.  We ate way too much (again), it’s just so good you can’t help yourself.

Mike had DVR’d the Oregon v Washington college football game which we watched when we got home before going to bed.  Go Ducks, they beat Washington handily for the 11^th time in a row.

Sunday morning we got up and went to church.  We started at ‘The Venue’ a coffee shop/café style service with good music.

After the service we checked out the High School group where Doris does a lot of work and then went to the start of the second service in the sanctuary so that we could hear Emily, Doris’ daughter-in-law, sing.  She was amazing and it was a really enjoyable morning.

On our way home from church, Bill and I took the car through a car wash.  It didn’t get completely clean, that’s going to take some scrubbing, but it looks much better.  Because of the drought in California we can’t just wash the car in the yard with a hose so we’ll have to wait until we get to a wetter part of the world to do that.

We were able to get almost all of the Gilson family together for dinner on Sunday evening.   Before we left the house we got this picture of three of the Gilson women.  Starting from the left, Doris, Emily and Jenna.

Here are Peter and I working on booking flights to Anchorage over the Christmas holidays.  The entire Gilson clan is making the trek to Anchorage for a wedding/vacation at the end of December.

Matthew had to work so he wasn’t able to join us, but the rest of us had a great dinner at  Phil’s BBQ.

Here are Jenna and baby Caleb.

After dinner, Doris and I left to go pick my mom up from the airport.  We made our getaway through the window at the restaurant, it was a much more direct path to the car.

My mom is joining us for the next week during the California portion of the trip.  We spent the rest of the evening visiting and looking at pictures and generally enjoying each others company.

Tomorrow we’re going to the zoo!  I can hardly wait.