We had planned on taking Max to the Auburn Symphony the next weekend but he had an overnight trip on an aircraft carrier with the scouts, so we took Karissa instead. The symphony has a family concert every year. The conductor does a lot of explaining, interacting with the audience while he conducts. Before the show, I introduced Karissa to Liz, a friend of mine who is a Sugar Plump Fairy. After the show, the Placer High Band lets the kids touch and play various instruments. From there, it was off to Round Table for pizza.
Later in the month, we took Max for his date to Harris Center in Folsom where we saw Shrek, The Musical. What a great job the teenaged cast did. Great voices, dancing and acting. It was cleverly done. Max even talked to Donkey in the lobby after the show. We hit In and Out for a quick burger before the show and then went to BJs for a nice dinner afterwards.
The grandkids had a couple of craft days here. We made strawberry tarts for Valentine’s Day and then tried making bracelets out of tongue depressors. But it didn’t quite work out. We boiled the strips of wood and shaped them into bracelets inside jar lids and let them dry. Then we decorated them. Max decoupaged pictures of animals on his and Karissa painted hers. Unfortunately, getting them wet again caused them to straighten out so they needed to be reshaped again. Rog came up with a great solution by gluing two thin pieces of wood together and then shaping them….but I think we had enough of that project for now.
Mid month, Rog and I headed down to Santa Barbara for his annual black belt convention at the dojo. They have it on a three day weekend so that everyone can make the trip easily. Unfortunately, this year, President’s Weekend was one of our worst weather weekends in an already extremely wet year. The Friday that we left, it was incredibly windy day along with torrential rains. It usually takes 6 hours to get to the dojo, but it took us 6 hours to get to Salinas. 101 came to a complete stop before Hollister and wending our way through backroads wasn’t much better. Nine hours after we started, we finally pulled into a parking lot in Santa Maria and called it a day. The next morning, we had breakfast and then completed the trip to Santa Barbara. There trip home Sunday went smoothly, but the rains returned and made Monday wicked. The drought is definitely over, at least in Northern CA. Even the snowpack is way above normal. The garden is quite happy.
It did dry out enough a couple of times this month to get the yards weeded and cleaned up. Most of the plants are starting to show signs of Spring.
We continued our weekly movie outings to Studio Movie Grill, joined by the Zauchas for the week we saw the Lego Batman flick. At the end of the month, we joined some friends at Rock Hills Winery for a wine and food pairing. This was a 3 hour banquet with 7 courses accompanied with 7 different wines. All was delicious and the winery owner, Don, gave us excellent commentary. We have decided to return for their summer concerts and hope to take Michelle and Eric there for their birthdays this year.
Rog has been adding cabinets and finishing touches to the van in preparation for our road trip in April. After our Santa Barbara trip, we were greeted at the front door by 2 old friends...our terra cotta soldiers that have been living in Ryan’s backyard for the last 11 years. Fun to have them back again.
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