We left the Christchurch Airbnb on a Monday afternoon, and arrived at Bryan and Sian's place on Monday afternoon! Not bad...we arrived without hiccups (Global Entry was a breeze), and with only one extra bag, in which we helped Sue & Matt bring home some of their goodies. Well, us too, but not as bad as previous international trips (3 bottles of wine, 2 jars of free PIC's peanut butter, a WETA cap, and a sweater that I did not intend to buy if it weren't for the plane delay in Aukland and shops to buy from! 😳).
Bryan & Sian had already left for Palo Alto, so they were kind enough to let us stay at their place to get our bearings for a couple of nights before driving up north. While we had to drive down to Irvine to take care of more banking with my mom & Larry, and go to storage, etc. we were able to get in some good food on our own, laundry and re-pack.
In the meantime, Luke is living his best life with the Foster's! Derek & Christine are home for the holidays - he is being very spoiled!
Larry dropped mom off for us so we didn't have to drive back southbound, and we headed on our drive to Palo Alto to spend Thanksgiving with Sian's family 😊
Upon our arrival, we were greeted with warm hugs and an amazing Chinese feast!
My mom discovered that an old family friend of ours (Aunty Hsiu from Ju-Tsan) lives 5 minutes from the Ye's, so on Thanksgiving day, while we explored the local park, and played pickleball, we dropped mom off for a visit.
Helen (on far right of our group shot below) is Aunty Hsiu's middle daughter and a year older than me. Our dad's came to the US together from Taiwan along with "Uncle Fish" (A&V's dad). I wrote a short document about their journey following Uncle Fish's passing...with affection, we called our dad's FOB's!
Meanwhile...Jacob & Dia spent Thanksgiving in Boston with her mom and Uncle's families 😄
Sian's mom's mom Face-Time'd with us that day! We only met her once in Torrance for USC graduation in 2012, but my mom was not there because she broke her leg.
On Friday morning before taking my mom to another friend's place in Walnut Creek, we did a walk around the Stanford Campus. Barry & I don't recall ever really touring this campus at all - it is beautiful!
They had on display many of Ruth Asawa's works.
We worked on 2 puzzles while we were together and got hooked! Mom was pretty much wiped out at the end of each night!
Our drive back south was beautiful and un-eventful. We stopped to pick up Luke from Amy at South Bay Galleria before dropping off mom, stopping at storage and heading to our hotel for the night.
I think Luke wanted to go back to Amy...he says kiss my *SS!
While we stayed at a pretty cool place in Tucson, it was our usual Best Western in Fort Worth. We dragged him through stops in Yuma, and the same rest stops along our usual route...
Finally got home and were greeted by these beautiful Amaryllis that Dia's mom Julia sent while we were away...they will be blooming just in time for Christmas, and she will be joining in our family festivities!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
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