Travels with Mar and Lar

Irvine, CA

November 14-23, 2009

For Lar, this was a business trip. I taught a class at our Irvine office – three people. It was sort of a hard class to teach. They all came from the same company, so they did a lot of “internal discussion” of their specific problems. This is not a problem for me, it just impacted the time. The experience level was vastly different – so I had one guy who was trying to learn the software, one guy who thought he knew a lot and one guy who did know a lot. And then, I got sick. Wednesday through Friday I had a real bad cold. The only thing you can do is push through it.

Mar came with me on this trip because Irvine is only 30 miles from Andrea’s house and the grand kids. Mar would send me off every morning and then brave the So. Cal highways and spend the time helping Andrea or visiting Andrea.

We spent most of the evenings together just looking around, but being it was fall, by the time I got off work it was fairly dark. Tuesday, we did run over to the beach, but didn’t get much time. Wednesday, Michael, Jasen and Spencer came and went swimming at the pol with me (we had fund despite it being a little bit chilly). Mar and Andrea and Emma went “girl’s night shopping” because Emma has a cast on her arm and can’t swim. Thursday, Mar and I did some shopping. Friday we went to a Chili cook-off and pie contest and Andrea’s ward. Jasen won for the best chili. Spencer was the odds on favorite in the pie-eating contest, but he wasn’t even close.

We stayed the weekend and spent Saturday at Andrea’s. It was interesting that Erica and Rich flew in on Saturday with Alice for Thanksgiving week at Disneyland (with Rich’s family), so we got to see them also. Alice thinks that her cousins are the greatest – and she loves the beach, so even though it was clod – and the water was more so – we went to the beach so she could play in the water.

Emma protecting her cast.

Alice playing .

Rich, Alice, Erica and Andrea

Spencer - just being himself. He felt it was just too cold to go in the water - he is a California boy so 60 degrees is challenging.


Sunday, Mar and I went to sacrament meeting, and then drove to the Newport Beach temple.


Then we went to Crystal Cove State Park.


Then we flew home. Other than “sick Lar”, it was a good week. I enjoy traveling with Mar.