Visiting Grandmas

So yesterday I had a very authentic California experience of spending the majority of my day on LA freeways in traffic. You really are not experiencing LA if you don't get stuck in traffic. Ilene, Kari and I drove to the north of LA to where the grandparents live. Both of Lisa and Kari's grandmas live in the same nursing home and they even share the same room. It was fun to see where they live and how well looked after they are. It is a house that has been converted into a nursing home where they only take 6 patients at a time. All the staff are Christians and see it as their ministry and they take such good care of everyone. It was nice to visit a nursing home that smelled like a home and not like a hospital! We then drove back to Grandpa Hiepler's place where we had lunch with some cousins (FYI Lisa: Nicole, Natalie and Sarah and Aunt Doreen was there too). Ilene was spending the night there so she could spend some quality time with her sister and dad, so Kari and drove all the way home...a LOOONG 3.5 hours in bumper to bumper traffic.

On the way home we stopped off at Kari's grandfather's old ranch in Malibu. It was sold after he passed away but Kari wanted to have a little look to see what had been done to the place. She knows the owner so it wasn't too creepy of us to snoop around. The house looks great with a fresh coat of paint. We went out the back to check out the horse stables and were treated to a pony show. The owner is in the midst of training Sammy, a little pony, to do some tricks. Was very cute.

We then went on to Dana Point where I met up with Will to hang out while Kari caught up with her best friends who she hadn't seen since her return. An evening of mexican food and Point Break. A classic that Will, James, Amy and myself used to watch a lot of when Amy and Will lived in Perth for a year. Good memories.

Tuesday I had a relaxing day of reading etc. In the evening we decided to take our dinner and go and visit Isaac, the adopted son of Bob and Ilene, who lives in Laguna Beach. His front porch has an amazing view of the ocean so we hijacked the table and he was able to join us for a bit before he went off to dinner with his girlfriend. Was lovely watching the sunset and some crazy people swimming in the cold night air.