Fun day in Santa Barbara

Thursday, Jan 1st, Amy, the kids and I drove to Lakewood to spend the night at Kathy's house. Actually, Kathy had Jessica's 3 kids there and invited Ella and Robert and Alisa to come over also, so there were 8 cousins in all, sleeping on air mattresses in her living room. Amy decided to join Ray and Brandie at their quiet home for the night and I stayed at Kathy's. We got up early and headed for Santa Barbara. We had decided to go visit the Natural Museum there because Cameron has a report to do on a California Indian tribe and chose the Chumash Indians who are from that area and this museum has an entire exhibit on the tribe. We were also able to visit the Santa Barbara Mission while there, which will be the next project Cameron will have (to build a model California mission). Both the museum (and surrounding grounds) and the mission were beautiful and worth the trip, but we also went to the SB Zoo and enjoyed that too. The drive to SB is nice and we all enjoyed the day. We went back to Ray and Brandie's and spent the night in the Middoughs' empty home (they drove kids back to AZ). Then Saturday we stopped by to see grandpa and grandma. Amy had not been to their new home and she loved it. We had a 2 hour visit and then had to head home. We got home early enough to catch up with housework and laundry and get ready for church and, unfortunately, back to school and work tomorrow.