After leaving Round 2 at the Airstream dealer/service place, we made our way Southeast to my cousin’s new house in Tracy, CA. Again, the change in landscape as you travel across a state is crazy to me. From the Bay area traveling East, you travel from an Oceanside landscape to dessert. It’s nuts. However, in this dessert, it’s all farm land and there are truck fulls of produce that pass you on the highway. It’s also pretty crazy to me how our produce is transported. It’s basically just Cuties or tomatoes or green peppers loose loaded into the back of a truck. Thousands of them. How do they not get crushed or bake in the sun? They aren’t insulated or covered. Just hanging out in the back of a giant truck. Very strange. There are also lots of windmill farms, which is pretty neat.
We got to Tracy around 2pm and it was the “quiet time” in my cousin, Jenny’s, house. She has three little ones: Emily is 4, Jacob is 3, and Matthew is 16 months. One was napping, one was a school and one was being shy when we arrived. However, that changed quickly and holy moly…I don’t know how people do it! All of them are on different schedules and have different demands. She seems to handle it with ease, but I’m not sure I could. I must also say, it has to be REALLY hard to be a kid. Everything seems to be the end of the world, from the fact that your mom won’t let you have chocolate at 9am to your balloon flying away (this happened and resulted in a complete meltdown until I sprinted down the street after it) . It also must be nearly impossible to understand your emotions and feelings as a tiny tot. For example, the three-year-old “loves” dogs. However, the way he expressed his “love” included biting Luna and grabbing fistfuls of her skin and fur any chance he had to be within arm’s distance. I’m sure his excitement just gets the best of him, but I did scoop him up and try to explain why that was a terrible idea. He squirmed in my full body restraint and screamed “I’m STUCK!” the entire time, so I’m not sure I got through to him. Luna tolerated him to the best of her ability, but it gave me a little anxiety. I became more of a helicopter owner than usual. I’m sure that’s hard for many of you to believe, but it’s actually possible.
My mom’s brother, Tony, and his wife, Marge, and youngest daughter, Allison, came and met us at Jenny’s house. My uncle helped me to back the camper into its temporary resting spot, which didn’t exemplify my best abilities, but he tried to make me feel better about the embarrassing attempt before he took over. We went to an early dinner with them (which is an adventure with three little ones) and then came home, played with the kids, and then ventured out to visit my cousin, Anna, at work in Modesto. She couldn’t get the night off so we went to her.
After a short visit with her, it was pretty late so we headed home and headed to bed. It was great to take a shower in a full sized shower, for sure!!
Jackie’s flight was at 1pm on Friday, so we left around 9:30am to get her there in time. I was headed into San Francisco to visit a friend (Stop #17) for the day and night, but returned on Saturday after picking Mom up at the airport in San Francisco on Saturday afternoon.
It was Jacob’s third birthday party on Saturday, including a bouncy house, Cars themed everything, and a Vietnamese feast. Jenny’s husband is Vietnamese and much of his family has immigrated from Vietnam. As Jenny described it, Asian parties mean there is endless food. They just eat all day. It’s fantastic! So when Mom and I arrived, we were fed well; spring rolls, shrimp balls, egg drop soup, ribs, wings, and many other delicious things! Some I wasn’t adventurous enough to eat, but what I had was great.
It was wonderful to spend a little time with my cousins, aunt and uncle. Just makes me wish we had all grown up closer to one another. Guess all we can do is make the most of the time we have together now.
Lesson of the Day: Get takeout to make eating stress free for everyone when you have little people.
L&K Take America 