Eric and I went to California last Friday morning and spent five days with my sisters. We also drove to San Diego to watch the Patriots and the Chargers face off.
We flew on my personal favorite airline: Jet Blue and landed in Long Beach - SO much better than LAX!
We had reserved our car through Enterprise, but realized when we landed that we'd booked it for SATURDAY not Friday...so we went to the counter hoping they would have cars we could rent one day early. I was happy when I saw this sign:
We approached the counter and told the guy of our silly error and that we needed to get a car one day earlier. He told us that he wasn't sure they had any cars available but that we could wait until 1:00 p.m. (3 hours later) to see if one becomes available (GEE WHIZ, can we?). Wait for 3 hours for the mere possibility!? Your sign says there are cars available!!! (oh, and it took about 30 minutes for him to get this information to us)
So we cancelled the car reservation for Saturday and asked where there was another Enterprise. "It's about 2 miles away" Oh good, well let's hook that up, then, shall we? "There's a taxi right outside that is about $10"
What? Um, do you realize that EVERY SINGLE ONE of your commercials says you'll come get us? Nope, not so, apparently...so $15 later we're at the other side of the airport trying to get a damn rental car. After another 45 minutes, we finally get into a car for about 3 times the amount of what we had on our reservation BUT we could be on our way...so off we went, lest I personally hurt the poor kid behind the counter.
We spent the first day at Elida and Damon's house, but had a great dinner with Sandy and April, too. Yummy dry buns - LOL! No really, they were just delish! Can I have a little water, please?
We helped Mason with his first taste of soda:
The drop of coke hits the tongue:
Thinking about it, rolling it around:
Um, not so much! Good kid!
How about some water to wash out the taste:
Saturday we all went to lunch and then to the tide pools...that was kinda cool.
And then on
Sunday we drove to San Diego to see our NE Patriots face the Chargers. We loved our seats - well worth the gazillion dollars we paid for them...We were on the 50 yard line, 9th row up right behind the NE bench. Awesome!
To our dismay, our Patriots did not bring enough fight to the game and lost 30 to 10 - so sad *tear*
In boredom, I took several random pictures of the game and the disappointed fans and anything I could find of mediocre interest.
Airforce fly-over right before the game began
Me with NE Patriots superheroes - too bad they couldn't save the game for us.
Bill Belichick
Disappointed fan (around the beginning of the 4th quarter)
Our CRAZY neighbor! The obscenities and malice was outrageous!
Me and Eric - one of my favorite pictures of us (shhhh, don't tell Eric this picture is here).
After San Diego, we went back to LA and stayed with April and Sandy. We played the Wii and had a blast. Richard and Cynthia had been in Costa Rica the same time we were in California and they had a late night lay over so on Monday night, we all hung out together. What a blast!!
I miss my sisters and love when I get to hang out as a family. We have such a great time laughing and being ourselves - loud and funny.
It was nice to come home to my dogs, though. I missed them and they were very happy to see us. We got home with PLENTY of time to catch the final presidential debate and you can bet, I loved it! That will come later (maybe).
I'll can another batch tomorrow; that batch will be HOT and include a ghost pepper and several habaneros. Eric likes his HOT salsa, so I thought I'd make a truly hot salsa for him. 
