OH ELLEN!

How lucky are we? We've got each other, a beautiful family and amazing friends. John and I finally made it up to Santa Barbara were we spent an amazing day with Ellen. I thought I was jonesin' for time with her, as it had been since last November since we'd seen each other; but John had it bad! It had been 27 years since they'd seen each other! Inexcusable! Needless to say the reunion was brilliant. We had the best time ever, sharing old and new stories, discovering Ellen's beautiful garden, eating a fabulous dinner and sleeping under a blanket due to the cool mountain air in Painted Cave. The next day we headed down to Hendry Beach and had a lovely lunch of lobster tacos followed by a walk on the beach before heading home. Thank you Ellen for being such a wonderful friend to both of us.

Sean"s visit

We had the pleasure of visiting with our long time friend Sean Russell. He was in the Desert for a golf tournament and he stopped by for an anticipated reunion. We enjoyed catching up and sharing old stories of ACHS and Moorpark , particularly of the glory days of Speech and Debate. We look forward to seeing Sean and Julie next time we're in Camarillo.

Our Old School

We thought it would be fun to post these pictures from the 1975 Alacran, our Alma Mater's yearbook!

Here's John performing at half-time with the Stage Band. He's wearing a Panamanian hat that Laura's Mom brought back for him. Dig those sideburns! His Mom forbade him to grow a beard, so in typical John fashion, he pushed it as far as he could go by growing the most impressive mutton chops and forgoing the goatee!

The group picture is of our Speech team...John is in the top row, 6th from the left. Laura's in the bottom row. 2nd from the left. We had such a great time competing all over California with John kicking ass in Debate.

We've had fun reminiscing about our high school experiences. We were such lucky kids to have lived how we did with terrific parents that trusted us and gave us the freedom to explore Southern California together. Between Speech and Band, we made so many trips to L.A. and visited so many museums, attended concerts from the L.A. Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, Led Zeppelin at the Forum to Bob Dylan at Universal (ALL of the Concerts attended together are a subject of another entry!). We are definitely the product of how we were raised and the life we lived and we are grateful. Like the Jimmy Buffet song says, 'We are the people our parents warned us about'!