The Great Family Road Trip: Days 9 and 10

My heart is full.

I know that's a cheesy way to start a blog entry.  But SURELY you know I am cheesy.  Full of Cheese.  I am the sappy, emotional, cheese queen. Change my name to Brie.  Maybe Camembert.  Maybe even a sassy goat (cheese).  It all fits.

I joke about my boundaries being fluid, but it's true.  I just don't separate my home from my work from my life from my soul.  It merges into one big mess and it makes me so, so, SO happy.

Saturday was spent registering for the conference and taking the kids around to explore the Exhibition center--as well as connecting up with the PhD project and discussing sending a representative from our program to recruit students there, too as well as hanging out with Dave's old roommate, Heidi, and her son, Landon.

Sunday, we spent the morning and the afternoon conferencing and meeting with students/colleagues, with a trip to the beach to see Dave's cousin, Jo D and her family in between. 

And dinner with our marathon (and all around) friends Catherine and Orrest afterwards.  (I'm practicing my new sitting-with-hand-under-chin pose here.  Need an open mouth smile though.  And yes, there was a picture of all our families together on the beach above, but I looked like a turnip and I have editorial powers on this blog!)

What a day.  We couldn't even stay up to see the Disney fireworks from our balcony last night.  Have I mentioned that yet?  We're staying at the Desert Palms Suites and if you have a room on the upper floors on the back of the hotel, you have a PERFECT view of the Disneyland fireworks every night.  We strongly recommend trying to swing that if you need a hotel in Anaheim.  

I think Dave and I are still amazed at how much SoCal still feels like home.  Especially for me and how much time I spent in the OC when I was in grad school at Claremont.  And especially, especially how DRIVING here is SO MUCH BETTER than driving in Charlotte.  There are more cars here and certainly more lanes.  But sweet baby lemur, you can anticipate what folks are going to do on the highways here and the merges and lane changes are logical in Southern California.  None of that is true in Charlotte.  

Although, I have to be honest.  My favorite thing to freak my SoCal friends out is to tell them this:  We live in Plaza-Midwood in Charlotte.  It's a cool place.  We have great restaurants and things to do in our 'hood.  And if something takes more than a 15 minute drive for us, we have to think long and hard about whether we are going to do it.  

Our friends' reactions here range from slack-jawed to laughter.  As one friend said, "We can't even get out of our neighborhood in 15 minutes here!"  

Yep.  #truth

Today is a big conference day along with a UNC Charlotte OS reunion/meet up tonight.  

Tomorrow, we leave.  It's going to be weird to leave home to head back to home.