The Promised Burbank Post

Well, here it is! These pictures were all taken throughout our stay in Burbank, so I’ll keep them in order, by date taken, and add captions here and there on what’s going on in the pictures!

It was hard to leave home :(

On our 2^nd day down south, we traveled to Simi (Valley) with Grandma to say hi to Aunt Diane and Alicia (Uncle Alan was at work and Tyler was at school).

We received many gorgeous homegrown beefsteak tomatoes!

Alicia loved their homegrown pumpkins that they would use near Halloween (the tradition of carving pumpkins… I’m happy we’re not doing that anymore! And boy is it ever messy!)

These next few pictures were taken while we were first setting up our garage sale in Grandma’s backyard. My Aunt Debbie’s business partner, Pete, offered to let us use his three E-Z-Ups for the week, which we found one of them not to be so “e-z-up” as the word might imply!

In this picture, we were attempting to put up the “not-so-e-z-up”.

Ah yes, the carnivorous squirrel. Long story behind this one! The four cousins (Richard, Garrett, Derek, and I [if you haven’t already read in past posts] grew up together and were constantly together, so we have many, many, many memories and stories behind us) actually have “fond” memories about that skeleton that the squirrel is snacking upon. It’s kind of gross, but we grew up watching that thing decay in back of my Grandma’s shed. The boys always used to scare me with stories about what it once was and that it might still be alive (why do boys have fun teasing girls like that?!). Well, I could tell you more about our many rendezvous’ with that decayed species, but I’ll spare you for now ;)

Here’s a couple pictures of our garage sale set-up…

On Friday, Derek (20 - on the right of me) pleasantly surprised us with his presence and dropped by to pay us a visit! I was so happy, as I was closer to him growing up… but alas, he since created his “own life” and so we haven’t seen much of him in the past 2 years (approximately). So we took this opportunity to take a cousin photo, though we missed having Garrett :( I have to say that Richard and I are closer now than before, and he’s really enjoyed spending time with us when we go down to visit. He’s come to appreciate family much more since his illness (he has been suffering from what the doctors think is/was encephalitis that brought on terrible seizures about 5 years ago which the medication is now holding at bay).

After the last day of the garage sale (last Saturday), we celebrated Richard’s 24^th birthday (wow!) and had Costco pizza and a rich chocolate, chocolate cake (I told everyone I would get them back on my birthday with a vanilla, vanilla cake and vanilla ice cream :) ).

After eating, Richard and I took Tyler and Alicia into the living room and taught them to dance ;)

Me and Ah-wee-cia cuddled on the couch.

Tyler, me, and Alicia :)

When we got home, Dad and Garrett were standing on either side of the driveway waiting for our arrival. I immediately fell into Garrett’s arms, as did Mom in Dad’s. Then we swapped partners, and then we had a group hug :) We just hate being apart! We stood there hugging each other and saying, “I love you!” and “I missed you!” and just enjoying each other for about 5 minutes until we decided it was time to unpack a bit ;)

Garrett made us a homecoming dinner yesterday and it was delicious! He mastered barbecuing while we were gone and he was very proud about it, so he made us hamburgers and they were yummy!

For once our homemade burgers didn’t fall apart or crack and he learned to turn them like a professional! ;)

Well, that's one way to flip burgers ;)

Well, that’s it for now! I hope you enjoyed the update and photos :) Take care and God bless ‘til next time…

We came home to beautiful fall colors!