Sweet Pickles-

Decided to make sweet pickles tonight. The refrigerator kind. Can't wait to try them in a few days.

Catfish Dinner (thanks, Jayme)

Late this afternoon Jayme brought Ivy out so she could run around out here. While we watched her we decided to just throw in the catfish lines. Jayme cast out twice. Her bobber was about a foot from the dock and it went under. I ran for the net. She did a great job of keeping it on the line until I could net it. Bryan and Tom were fishing out in his boat so they came over to help us out. The fish weighed 6 & 1/2 pounds. I have wanted to catch a catfish and cook it over the open fire for about a year now and we finally got to. It was a blast!

It's just a perfect day...

to do this...

Another restoration-

I have had a little yellow 1958 Hamilton pedal jeep on my front porch ever since we moved into this house. It was very poorly painted by me for a drama prop, rusting and full of cobwebs. Bryan decided to restore it to it's original look, which was a Police (highway) Patrol jeep. Now it will have a place in the house. I think it looks amazing. We are just waiting for the little hood ornament to get here. There are very few pictures on the web of these because the Police Jeep was only made in 1958. They then made that body style into Army and Air Force jeeps and a pink jeep for girls. But we knew that the original paint was white and that there was a speaker in the front grill. That was because in the Patrol car there was a working hand held mic. That was the only part missing on my car and not reproduced because they are fairly
rare. But amazingly enough right in Lincoln is Speedway Motors which is the place to get pedal car parts and they had the decals for the car. We were at an antique store and I found an old operators headset. The mouth piece on it looked so much like the mic in the pictures that Bryan was able to take that part, put an old screwdriver handle on it and viola! little police mic. It doesn't actually work but it makes the car complete. For some odd reason the advertisement from 1958 has the car colored yellow but lists white as the color.

It was 65 degrees this morning...

So outside we went!

So. Cal. - Day 5

Disneyland. Bryan decided that since we were there, and we only have made it back once in 30 years, we should go to Disneyland. It was much the same but also very different. They have separated it into two parks so all the old school Disney stuff is still in the Disneyland side but the newer stuff is in the California Adventure side. We didn't go to that. Very much more crowded than Knott's was.
All in all a fun time.
The next morning it was up at 3:30, return the car, get through security, fly to Huston, find out they bumped us off our early flight, try to battle that to no avail, wait 3 extra hours fly to Omaha, drive home. It was a fun trip. We'll probably do it again when we're 83.

So. Cal. - Day 4

Sunday and a good day to hang out on the beach, go to Shoreline Shops, visit a couple antique stores and finish up the day at The Crab Pot. Delicious food and a gorgeous view.

So. Cal. - Day 3

Saturday we went all over to places we lived, worked, went to school, ate at and shopped at when we lived there. This was strange because 30 years of growth and change made things vastly different then what we remembered. Except for the apartment we lived in, that looked a lot the same. They had filled the pool in and made it a berm. We also watched the service, at Berean, online. Bobbi and Mike sang a duet at the end. It was beautiful. That evening we ate at Seal Beach then walked along the beach until we were stopped by some rocks.

So. Cal. - Day 2

We had tickets for Knott's Berry Farm. When we lived out in California, Bryan worked at Knotts for their Halloween "Knott's Scarey Farm". He was a monster in the post office and then the next year he was a monster in mine ride. So Knotts holds some memories for us. It was so fun. A perfect day weather wise and the park is in amazing condition and exactly the way we remember it.

Return to Southern California -Day 1

(30 years later...)
Seems so strange to see that in type. 30 years! Doesn't seem like we are that old (as long as I don't look into any mirrors...). As part of Bryan's sabbatical he wanted to return to the places where this journey of our lives in ministry began and this was one of those places.
We left for the airport at a very early morning hour and arrived in Los Angeles 3 hours later then scheduled thanks to a delay in Denver...
When we arrived we got our rental car and headed for Long Beach.
It was lunch time so we walked across the street to a little place that looked like it was promising. Excellent choice. Zucchini fries and a chicken wrap!
Our hotel was a great choice. Not fancy at all but an extremely good value as it was minutes from the beach. We then went exploring around the area just seeing what there was to see. The ocean of course! And lots of other stuff.