Holiday with family

Mandy and I visited my younger sister and her family for Christmas! My niece is now working, and didn't want to take as long off, so she declined to drive out with us, so I booked an airline flight instead. I was glad to be able to take advantage of the new non-stop flight from Denver to San Luis Obispo. That route has one of the smaller airline jets, a CRJ-200, so I was careful to not overpack my single backpack, and it worked out perfectly. Mandy was once again an awesome airline traveler, and rested comfortably in her travel carrier by my feet, the entire time. She didn't even raise her head for takeoff or turbulence or landing. Our seatmate didn't even know she was there, until I pulled her out to disembark.

We had a pleasant 10 days out there. We visited with my friend Sher in Los Osos one day, and went for a short walk in Baywood Park, after meeting her friends for lunch there.

We went for several walks with family, many of them around the local lake enjoying Christmas lights.









We took a very pleasant walk on Cayucos beach, and had a delicious Albacore sandwich in Cayucos afterwards.

My nephews and I went to see a movie at the Atascadero Galaxy theater. Such nice reclining seats! I almost fell asleep!

We had a delightful Christmas dinner, hosted by Brighton and Marissa, narrowly avoiding their awful flooding event that occurred a few days later.







Mikele and I took a nice walk up in the hills just west of Atascadero. We got to meet Tyler and Annalisa's baby Alice for the first time. Mikele and Bob took us to the Pismo Beach Melodrama, where they were showing their holiday extravaganza triple-bill show, and we all loved it. We stopped at the Butterfly Grove in Grover Beach before the show, and I enjoyed reminiscing about the first time I was there, 48 years ago, with my soon-to-be college girlfriend. And last but not least, I (and more than half the family) managed to come down with a third annual post-Christmas nasty cold. I hate to jinx anything, but I'll say that it appears I'm already getting over the worst of the symptoms, after just five days, which is way better than the last two times. I had really wanted to continue my tradition of driving up to visit with friends and family in Northern California, but I didn't get it together to make it happen. After coming down with this cold, I'm really glad I didn't run up there, and spread it to them. I also think that being tired from fighting the virus I didn't even suspect I had, probably tipped the balance, in feeling like it was just too much to attempt.