We are in Atwater, CA

We arrived in Atwater on Thursday afternoon.  I called my nephew when we were passing by Fresno.  He asked how we were doing with the wind?  What wind?  He said it was extremely windy by his law office.  A couple of minutes after we hung up we got to the wind!  It was blowing pretty hard and we saw several Eucalyptus trees down along I-99.  We had to slow way down but fortunately were able to safely keep going.  After Fresno, wind died down and then started again close to Atwater.  The wind stopped that night but it has really gotten cold!  It was 32 this morning...yikes!

To top it off, our furnace stopped working!  Our little fireplace can't keep up so the plan was to buy a small heater to help us keep warm until we could get to a larger city.  And then....this morning the refrigerator stopped working?????  What is going on.  We played around with it and it wouldn't work on electric or gas.  So we called a repair service (hard to find on Saturday) and then Ted switched the propane tanks to see if that would fix the furnace (even though we had plenty of gas to light to stove) and then the refrigerator started working again on electricity!  We are still going to have them come out and still awaiting their arrival.

When we went to Murray Farms in Bakersfield, we found an interesting item.  It is a Buddha's Hand!  In Western cooking, it is used for zesting.  It is less tart and pithy than regular lemons but has the skin (look) of the lemon (with fingers)!  We bought one and brought it to our "gathering" in Atwater at Billy and Vicky Whited's house (Ted went to high school with Vicky, class of 64 and her husband Billy graduated in 1963).  There are about 20 of us here for the weekend.  We decided to see if anyone had ever seen a Buddha's Hand and give 5 scratch off tickets as a prize to anyone who knew what it was.  Cathy, the date of one of Ted's classmates, figured out it was some sort of lemon so she won the prize!

They are pretty funny looking!

We had a fabulous spaghetti dinner last night made by Della Crownover with her husband Jim reheating the meatballs and cooking the spaghetti.  Pat Gordon made her fabulous cheesy garlic bread and we brought a green salad.  For dessert Sharon Gillam brought a great cheese cake sampler!  There was plenty of good food to go around!

I took a few pictures of the group!  I only got a few and then got too busy partying!

Vicky and Billy's dog, Thor, always enjoys dressing up for Christmas!

Sometimes we bring small gifts for each other.  We usually pass them out after our gag/good gift exchange which will be on Saturday night after dinner.  Since we have such a large group Ted and I passed ours out last night.  I found santa and snowmen candy dishes for everyone and bags and bags of all type of candy.  We had chocolate, non chocolate and sugar free Christmas candies that we pass around and they fill their candy dishes!  It doesn't sound like it but it is a lot of fun!  After that Jim and Della brought in their decorated jars of cookie mix for everyone.  We got a jar of Chocolate Chip (Ted's favorite) and Gourmet Cookies (Della said they are yummy)!  I'll have to see if I can bake them!

Today Vicky and Billy's son and some of his musician friends will bring over drums, guitars and amps and do some old time rock and roll for us.  There are two or three different bands that actually come and play together.  It is a lot of fun and I hope the service guy comes soon so we can get over there for it!

When things are going wrong with our RV, at least we have our friends and health..."Ain't Life Grand!"