Wanna Play Catch Up?

Michelle & Jim farewell from Norfolk

Okay so I realize that I've been quite tardy on my blogs lately, so bear with me.

As you may or may not know we've moved from the East Coast to the West Coast.  Such is Navy life.  Always an adventure!

Jim & Darby Cadillac Ranch

So we packed up what was left, after the movers had come, into our two vehicles and traveled from Norfolk, VA to Chula Vista, CA.  We had the two cats, our dog and the bird travel with us.  Don't worry we had the cats in a different car from the bird!

We stopped each night at a pet friendly hotel so that everyone could be out of the vehicle, stretch their legs and be reassured that all was well.  Thank goodness for a bit of  planning ahead of time.

Winslow, AZ

The animals did much better than I had hoped they would.  Although our female cat was none to pleased about life on the road.  Our boy cat on the other hand thought it was a great adventure!  And our little dog?  She loved it.

Even though we were on a deadline to be in California by the end of September, we managed to get in a bit of sight seeing again.

Our stuff has arrived!

We stopped in Texas at the Cadillac Ranch, went to the corner of Winslow, AZ, visited Las Vegas, NM where they filmed the original Red Dawn and of course stopped in Glendale, AZ to visit family.

Whew!

Fortunately for us, our household good were delivered within days of our arrival.  This pleased the animals greatly!  They were tired of air mattresses and folding chairs.  And I was with them in that regard!

Adina & Michelle

It's taking adjusting since our move here.  We've been blessed with really great weather though.

Jim, Audry & Rebecca

We've caught up with old friends, visited a museum or three, and had company three times already.  Jim has even reconnected with old shipmates.  How great is that!

Michelle's parents even came out for a visit around Halloween.  Insert a squeal here.  To add to the joy her aunt and uncle also came to the area during the same time.  So we did a bit of sight seeing and then back to Casa de Davenport for a lively couple of rounds of Mexican Train.  We're kinda hooked!

While we're getting used to the west coast way of life (and let me just say here that people are way more laid back here, a bit too laid back in some cases), we decided to get museum memberships.  We've already been to the San Diego Museum of Man.  Michelle wanted to see the exhibit on Monsters.  Bonus was the exhibit on Beerology.  Since the exhibits are constantly rotating and this is not the only museum that we have a membership to, this will become a habit for us.

A habit that I look forward to.

The weather here is another change in our life.  We're used to colder climates.  Not that it hasn't gotten cold here, but not for long periods of time.  And people react differently here.  I had a friend mention that they hardly got any rain here.  Plausible since California is in the midst of a drought.  You wouldn't know it by how often people wash their cars around here and how often all the sprinklers for the lawns go off.  However, it has rained quite a bit since we got here.  So much that we've actually turned off our sprinklers for the time being.  People have been known to freak out when it rains here and will treat it like a snow day.  LOL

Michelle & Jim snow selfie

And don't even get me started on snow.  So after Christmas Jim and I decided to drive up to the Palomar Observatory.  We were hoping to go in, but it was closed.  Which was sad.  The drive was lovely until we got higher up.  There was snow.  It wasn't the snow that worried us, it was all the crazy people parking, on the road, to go play in the snow.  I'm still shaking my head over this one.  We even saw people shoveling the snow into the bed of their trucks and on top of their cars (by the way that's a jerk move and quite dangerous) to try to take some back.  I guess they don't realize that snow melts. Can't wait to see what other craziness we will encounter while we're out here.