Useless bits of info brought to you by Greg&Annie: Travels...

We are back in the blogging business folks!

Admittedly been a little lazy at updating the posts but I noticed we have had a lot of visitors from near and far (some of you DR forum readers too!!) so time to get back on the horse.

Late last month while I was slaving away at work I sent a text message to Chris (Greg's brother) asking if he thought he might be coming up to PDX for Christmas. He sent me this message back saying, Call Me. Uh oh. What? Why? So I actually took a break off the floor because my spider senses were tingling telling me something not so good was up. I was right. Earlier that day he had reported for duty at his naval reservist weekend drill and was told he and 2 others were being mobilized for active duty in Iraq with a deployment date of Oct. 22nd. I'll tell you what, this had been a pretty good week until I heard the news. Greg had just gotten the promotion the week before and now this. We chatted for a bit and then I realized I better go back inside to work and take some calls. Later that night I called Greg to deliver the bad news and we waited to call home to Santa Maria as Chris hadn't relayed the news to their parents yet. ug. It was a long weekend and we were both filled with dread and a general nauseated feeling.

We decided if this is what is happening we better spend a little time with Chris. It would have been great for everyone to come up north but since the reality of that was slim to none we planned an unexpected jaunt to CA. So, plans were made, a car was rented, a budget established, vacation dates secured, and off we went. We left Friday Oct. 5th.

While we were down we figured we would spend a little time with our other 1/2 of the family in the valley. It was perfect timing since Karnig was (and now is!) turning 9 and had a birthday party already planned out for that very same weekend. Belly was so excited to visit! Matter of fact as soon as she heard there was going to be a bounce house at this party all she could talk about was her cousin is having a birthday party and she gets to go! hahaha.

We stayed over at Sheila's for the night and hung out with one very emo teenager Alex and the now moving independently Shayley. It was a nice night and also perfect timing as it was Sheila's birthday on the 8th. I guess if we are going to come down we might as well make it as worthwhile as possible and get everyone's birthdays out of the way. :o) The next day we drove into our old haunting grounds, Visalia, and spent a couple hours visiting Grama Rachel and Aunt Candi. It was a nice visit and great to see that everyone seemed to be doing well. Matter of fact, Grama was looking pretty great. We scooted along to Dinuba and met up with the partiers and we had a great rest of the day. Belly enjoyed visiting and playing with her cousins (especially Melina!) and eating cake.

Santa Maria was the next stop. We spent three days hanging out with the family, enjoying some quality time with Chris. We had a great day at the beach in Avila (hands down coolest day ever at Avila-- great weather and more sea lions doing tricks and hanging out than we have ever seen here. It was amazing!), spent a day out at VAFB, and the last day we had a low key day while Belly spent a solo afternoon with Nana and Papa and the Greg cooked up a delicious lamb shish kebab dinner for all of us including his Grandma Tognetti, Annie and Corey.

We left Thursday afternoon to head back home after having lunch with Greg's mom and dad. Greg and his dad were able to clear up some long standing father/son stuff so after we left Greg felt pretty good and felt like the trip was complete. Nice. The trip back home was pretty uneventful, good weather and traffic were nice for a change.

Check out some pictures below of the trip. We miss everyone and can't wait to see you all again. (Hopefully next time will be Christmas in PORTLAND for Greg's mom and dad).