Images by John 'K'

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve had another batch of visitors to sunny California. For 3 weeks now we’ve had my 2nd eldest daughter and her boyfriend visit from the UK. It’s been nice to see her again (hadn’t seen her since August 2005 when my wife and 2 younger children joined me in California), and it has also been nice to meet her boyfriend (who she started dating after she got back to the UK from her last visit). They make a good couple – both as mad as one another (which is probably a good thing), and they already sound like a long-time married couple (I should know). I hope this one works out for her, as they seem well matched and certainly seem to enjoy one another’s company.

 

Also with us for a few days (and will be with us for a few days more) is the current boyfriend of the elder of my two girls who came with us to California. She met him on-line through one of the games she plays – he’s already visited us once before, and he seems a nice guy (and he’s about the same height as she is!!). He lives over the other side of the country, so apart from these two visits this has been a long-distance relationship, but clearly he’s serious enough about her that he’s been prepared to fly over to California twice (so far) to visit her! What would be nice would be to see this be enough of a carrot for her to finally commit to getting a part time job, get some income of her own, then she can afford to make the return trip. Who knows – stranger things have happened….

 

Because of work pressures, I haven’t been able to spend as much time with our visitors as I would have liked to. I’ve had a lot of stuff that needed doing in the evening to keep on top of things, but I somehow managed to keep my weekends free, and we’ve managed a few fun trips out. We’ve done the usual visits to Monterey Bay Aquarium and San Francisco (both ‘must do’ activities for anyone visiting us now), we took them all horse-riding in one of the regional parks, and we’ve even chilled out with an afternoon picnic at the local sports park.

 

Things return back to normal next week. As with our Christmas visitors, it’ll be a shame to see everyone go, and it’ll seem odd having just the 4 of us in the house again, but it’ll also be nice to settle back into a more normal routine again.

 

Come the summer, we’ll be doing things the other way and we’ll be visiting back to England for a couple of weeks – after being out of the country for over 2 years, that’s going to seem very odd, and I don’t really know how I’ll feel about the experience – more on that as it happens.

 

Anyway – I have stuck some pics from some of the recent excursions up in the Photos section….