Movies, baseball and lots of eating out!

Another busy week and lots of driving!

On Thursday we saw the new Star Trek movie.  We both really enjoyed it.

On Friday we drove down to Escondido to the Camping World.  I had a coupon for $50 off any one item and we had wanted to get a new ladder for the new motor home.  We made our purchase and then met our friend Rusty Coole at Centre City Cafe in Escondido.  We had a good dinner and caught up with Rusty.

On Saturday was the start of the Memorial Day baseball tournament at Tecolote Baseball Park.  The teams are made up of the best players playing City Recreational Baseball.  Trent's team consisted of players he's been playing against for the last few months.  It's great because the kids don't care, they love playing the game and they have friends they play against or with and it doesn't bother them at all!  The first game started at 8:00 a.m. and since we are 1 1/2 hours away, we didn't make it for the first game but Trent's team won handily.  The next game was at 2:45.  We got there and discovered the nightmare of parking at the baseball field there.  We managed to find a space a couple of blocks away and were in plenty of time to see the game.  Trent's team was ahead by enough points that game was called and they were the winners!   After the game we went with Jeri and Stach to Tio Leo's for dinner.  We had a good dinner...of course eating too much and headed up the freeway to Menifee!

Sunday's game was at 5:00.  We went early and had an early dinner at a Chinese Buffet place in Pacific Beach.  Another good dinner!  Trent's team was ahead and again the game was called and they were winners!  On Monday, Trent's team was supposed to start at 1:30 but the prior game went long and they didn't start until after 2:30.  Unfortunately we had to leave to go to a barbecue and didn't see the end of the game.  When we left it was at 0-1 (favor of the Tecolote team) and we lost by 0-2.  Trent's team came in second and they probably got a pretty nice trophy!

The kids had a lot of fun and I took a picture of Trent and one of he and his friend Joey after one of the games:

We went to Peggy Price's after we left the ball game.  Her nephew and his wife and two boys (4 and 6 years old) were visiting from Kansas and her brother and his wife were visiting from Lake Tahoe area.  She had a ton of food and everything was great as always.  She mixed the beef with a mixture of lamb and pork and boy were they delicious.  She had homemade potato salad and a corn and black bean salad.  Of course she had desserts; a chocolate and toffee and cracker mixture that was yummy, some red velvet cookies and a combination of cup cakes!  You never go away hungry from Peg's!  It was great seeing them all.

Today we were supposed to meet my half brother, George and his wife Lori for lunch at the Ontario Mills Mall but they were unable to make it.  Ted and I had a nice lunch at the Rainforest Cafe anyway!

This lion with dreadlocks was on a tee-shirt!  We thought he was cute!

I copied a couple of pictures from the brochure of our motor home.  Some things are different in the pictures than what we are getting, including the color of the motor home, but you will get the idea!

We are getting the fireplace and tv shown with the recliner and these are the color of our cabinets.  We are getting a dinette set instead of the table and chairs shown.

Our furniture is lighter than shown here.   This is basically our floor plan except the sofa on the left is the fireplace and recliner and the sofa on the right is an L shaped sofa!

Tomorrow we leave here for Fresno.  On Saturday Craig and Claire will graduate from law school!  We are so excited for them!  They are studying very hard for the bar exam which will be at the end of July!

Law school graduate..."Ain't Life Grand!"

We are back at Wilderness Lakes!

Last week was a very busy week!  On Tuesday Ted and I met Jeri and Stach at the Spice House for lunch and then after lunch, Jeri and I took off for Harrah's for two nights!   On the way there we stopped off at the Bernardo Winery (and no, not for wine) for some shopping at the Cotton Cottage.  It's a great little dress shop.  The owner knows her inventory and seems to have a good eye on what looks good on her customers!  She has a lot of bright things!  After shopping for a bit we headed on down the road.

I didn't do so well gambling but I did bring money home so that was a good thing!  On Wednesday we went to Bates Nut Farm for a ladies night.  They had a fashion show, a singer that had appeared on American Idol (that I didn't know) who sang a bit of country, a wine tasting and a nice dinner.  It was a nice break from the casino!

Thursday Jeri dropped me off at my nails and then Ted picked me up and later dropped me at Paula's house, she is one of the Girls Night Out ladies!  She was having a Tupperware party.  It had been forever since I had been to a Tupperware party but I did buy a couple of things and we had some good snacks and wine.  The lady made us a cake in Tupperware in 8 minutes in the microwave and it was really good...definitely easy!

Friday we went to Yuma to pick up our new tow car (dinghy)!  Because we are South Dakota residents if we take possession in California they want sales tax and registration fees including a new fee of $200 for a new vehicle...WHAT!  So the salesman drove to Yuma, one of his guys followed him and we had to drive our truck!  We got to Yuma, went to a notary, signed the form for taking possession in Arizona and got it notarized and then we had our car!  Jeri and Stach had offered to ride over with us so we had lunch at Cracker Barrel and then Jeri and I headed back to San Diego in the car and Ted and Stach in the truck.  By the time we made it back to the dealership, it was time for dinner so we ate again with them!  A long and tiring day considering we were doing nothing but riding (and lots of talking by us ladies)!  This is our 2013 Ford Focus with manual transmission for easy towing with four wheels on the ground!

Saturday was baseball playoffs.  Ted had gone on Tuesday night the first night of the playoffs and Trent's team won and again on Thursday.  On Saturday the game was very exciting and his team was playing the team that was in first place.  Trent was pitching and having a bit of a hard time but in four innings he kept them to two runs.  His team had scored four runs.  The other team caught up and went ahead in the fifth inning.  In the sixth inning the score was 8-7 (them).  Trent got up to bat, two men on base, had a real easy swing and OVER THE FENCE the ball went!  We were all jumping up and down!  It was now 8-10 (us)!  This was his second home run and his first with his North City team. Unfortunately in the bottom of the sixth they went ahead 11-10 and won the game.  Trent's team came in second in the playoffs!  Boy was it exciting!

Here is a picture of a picture of Trent in his North City uniform!

Saturday evening was Mallorie's (Jeri and Stach's granddaughter) play.  She is a senior at Horizon High School and her Dad, Tony directed the play.  The play was Bye Bye Birdie!  Tony updated the play a bit with some neon and cell phones!  The kids did a great job and Mallorie played the mother of Albert Peterson, Conrad Birdie's agent.  She was really funny and we were really proud of her!

This is Mallorie after the play (she normally doesn't have blue old lady hair):

On Sunday Ted and I were busy packing up "stuff"!  We rented storage so when we turn in our Fifth Wheel and pick up the motor home we won't have very much to switch over.  We have about 19 boxes in storage so far!  We took the boxes over to storage, got cleaned up and headed to Harbor Island.  Stach was having a birthday on Monday and he decided to have his birthday dinner on Sunday evening and he chose Tom Ham's Lighthouse.  We didn't know it but they had been closed and have remodeled it!  It looked nice but the changes in the menu were not favorable.  They are quite a bit more expensive!  We all found things to eat and our dinners were very good.  It was a beautiful afternoon and evening:

Looking back at beautiful downtown San Diego!

Susan and Ted...Jeri & Stach!

Aren't they cute!

The birthday boy loves his seafood!

We arrived back up at Wilderness yesterday.  It's a bit warmer up here and today was a little windy.  We took the truck in today for the last oil change and filters!

Birthday celebrations, home runs, a fun play and a great friends..."Ain't Life Grand!"

Happy Mother's Day to all the Mother's!

It has been a busy week in San Diego!  Since we have no cell service here at the campground (unless you walk up the hill behind the activities center and sort of stand on one leg lol), so last Monday we ran errands and made lots of phone calls.   Most of the calls had to do with registering the new car in South Dakota, a temporary tag and changing the insurance!  With a used car there was already a license plate and we would have just had to register the car within 30 days.  With a new car, we had to get a temporary tag in order to be able to drive the car.    We had to change the insurance from the Fusion to the Focus.  When the insurance company pulled up the VIN number for our car it wasn't in the system.  This meant a call back to Perry Ford and they confirmed the number I had on my contract was correct.  Finally the insurance entered it manually.  We are keeping fingers crossed that it is all okay!   We will probably find out for sure when South Dakota actually registers the car.

On Tuesday Peggy Price and I had a really nice lunch at this little bakery/deli in La Mesa and then did some shopping.  It was a fun day.

Wednesday Ted and an appointment at Kaiser Physical Therapy.  He is making progress with his exercises which was good news.  He still has a way to go and I generally nag...I mean remind him to do his exercises!  In the afternoon Jeri and I got pedicures, they always feel so good!  Then we grabbed some food and Ted, Stach, Jeri and I headed to the ballpark for a playoff baseball game.  Trent's team lost and really did not play up to their potential.

On Thursday Ted had lunch with his friend David Prime.  After he got home we went over to a self-storage place and rented a 6 x 10 storage space.  We have started packing up stuff we don't need in the RV so we now have a place to put them and it will make the change over from the Fifth Wheel to the Motor Home go more quickly.

Friday night Jeri and Stach made it out to Jamul for dinner at Filippe's.  We had one of their great pizza's!   Jeri is trying to eat gluten-free so she had the antipasto salad.  It was a good dinner and conversation!

Saturday we took five boxes to storage and then headed to the baseball field for another playoff game.  Trent's team got ahead in the beginning and managed to hang on and win 7-6!  Trent pitched the first four innings and did a good job.  He played center field that next three innings.  Now his team will play again on Tuesday!

On Mother's Day we packed five more boxes for storage and then met Peggy Price at Claim Jumpers for a late lunch/early dinner!  The place was jam packed but we found a spot in the lounge and shared Caesar salad, potato cakes and a chicken quesadilla.  We had a good and humorous waitress and a lot of laughs!  We found we had another reason aside from  Mother's Day to celebrate and which was that Peggy had been offered a job by a company that she had wanted to work for.  We had lemon cake to celebrate, any excuse for dessert!

A happy Mother's Day..."Ain't Life Grand!"

Dinghy!

Notice that is spelled dinghy and not dingy!  I am not referring to myself but a tow car for our motor home!   We stopped by a Ford dealership last week with no intention of buying a car...yeah right!  We had not done our home work on tow cars but we saw a nice clean little 2011 Ford Fusion.  So we asked some questions of the service department on it being a tow car and was told "it will be fine"...yeah right!  We did our homework and found that we needed a car with a manual transmission or a hybrid to be able to tow the car with all four wheels on the ground.  Fortunately the dealership worked with us and since we had not taken possession of the car yet, we made a new deal on a 2013 Ford Escort with manual transmission.  I think we will be happier with this car and it really isn't too much smaller than the Fusion.  We will get good gas mileage and should not have problems towing it.

We got back down here at Pio Pico on Tuesday.   Trent had a baseball game so we went to it and his team just couldn't do anything right.  It was a tough game for them both in the field and up to bat!    On Thursday night they had another game and it was like a different team showed up.  They were playing really good defense and hitting well and won the game!  On Friday night he played with his Jr. High School Horizon team and they also had a really good outing and won their game.

On Saturday Trent's Rec team had the first game of their playoffs.  It was such a great game and very exciting.  His team was behind for the first 3 innings but went ahead in the fourth inning.  In the sixth inning they tied it up and in the bottom of the sixth, Trent's team pulled ahead again.  Trent pitched the top of the 7th and only needed seven pitches to get the other team out!  It was fun to watch both teams battling!

Saturday evening we had dinner at Season 52 in UTC.  You definitely need to have reservations on the weekends!  We had dinner with one of my former co-workers Bill, and his wife Jany.  It was fun catching up with them, seeing pictures of their little granddaughter and hearing about their upcoming vacation plans.  We really enjoyed the restaurant.  All of the main dishes are under 475 calories and fresh food.  Everything was delicious.  They have a fun dessert idea.  They bring out a tray of shot glasses and they have pecan pie, carrot cake, mousse and more.  They are all $2.50 and they are all 275 calories or less.  We had really good service and enjoyed ourselves.  It's a little pricey but is a fun night out!

Jeri and Stach's granddaughter had her senior prom on Saturday night.  Jeri took Mallorie to her hair place and got her hair and makeup done for her.   Here she is at the shop!

This is Tim and Mallorie ready to leave for dinner and the prom!  She looks so pretty and is even sweeter on the inside than she is beautiful on the outside!  She's turning into a lovely young woman!

Yesterday was a day of rest and laundry and I did get one big box of things packed up for the move, which is still a month away!  But you have to get started some time.  I think we are going to rent storage for two months so we don't have to try and move everything while we are at the dealership exchanging RV's.  

A beautiful young woman on prom night..."Ain't Life Grand!"