Goin' Back To Cali

Last Thursday I flew back to RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA, to visit my family, visit some old friends, and to reacquaint myself with some of the personal belongings I left behind...my brother-in-law, SHAWN, picked me up from JOHN WAYNE AIRPORT, out in Orange County. On the way to my parents' house - the DE LA CRUZ HOMESTEAD - we stopped by the house that he and my sister own. He told me about the vegetable garden he was growing in their backyard and I wanted to see it, since Missy and I aspire to do the same thing in our own backyard. The squash leaves were huge:



Some sun-loving succulents:



Back at home, we admired the other-worldly succulents growing in my parents yard, as my niece and nephew, JULIA and EVAN, played around us:







Julia likes to emulate Missy on the trapeze...if only she lived in Athens, she could take classes at CANOPY, just like Missy:





Julia and Evan's little sister, LILLIAN, was too young to play on the jungle gym, so she spent the time drooling and spitting up:



My Dad, BENNY, encouraged me to go through the many boxes and boxes of my junk sucking up space in the garage...the plan was to send a bunch of stuff back to Georgia, but in the end, I only sent off a mere fraction of what I had wanted to:





I dug up my STORMTROOPER and BOBA FETT helmets and decided to give them to Evan and Julia, rather than spending the money to send them home to Athens:



On Saturday we got up early and took the kids to their acrobatics class:



From our second-story vantage point, we watched Evan and Julia practice tumbling, jumping, and swinging:









Afterwards, we headed out to CITRUS PARK to attend a high school reunion for RUBIDOUX HIGH SCHOOL's marching band, the DELTA ALLIANCE CORPS (D.A.C.)...my two sisters and I were all in band, as well as my brother-in-law and his three sisters...so, it was kind of a big deal. We saw a lot of old band mates and friends that we have not seen in a long-ass time, often times, not since high school...







My parents' PHOTO ALBUMS documenting the early years of the Delta Alliance Corps were a big hit...people were taking pictures of their pictures:



TANYA and BRAD, who both graduated my year, were busy catching up. Both Brad and I flew out from Georgia, and were probably the two people who came the farthest to the reunion (actually, I came the farthest, since Athens is more northeast of where Brad lives)...until a couple of weeks ago, I had no idea that he too had moved to Georgia and had been living here for several years:



Some of the BAND BOOSTERS posed for a group picture...my Mom, RUTH, was in the front row, all the way to the left:





We closed the reunion with an OLD TIMERS vs. FRESH MEAT football game...the old timers were victorious in the end, but at what cost? I'm sure the next day they all had to bust out the Icy Hot and Ben Gay...



Back at my sister's house, the kids, totally exhausted from the long day, finally settled down in their bedrooms: