Paul and Bethany and family have moved to Santa Cruz, Cali, for what they hope is their LAST year of school: Science Communications at the granddaddy of them all.
Santa Cruz is widely regarded as an epicenter of hippie-ness. This is not totally without merit.
But the campus is amazing: a student union building in the middle of a primeval forest of Redwoods, Cedars, and sasquatch habitat?
We had two reasons to visit at this time: Reason 1, the advent of Charlie Paul Gabrielsen, the university's newest fighting banana slug.
Charlie--or "Tarlie," as Alice says, is a bouncing baby bruiser, who came into the world at 9lbs, 10ozs. The Oakland Raiders talent scout keeps calling for an appointment.
But he is a sweet-tempered kid who does all of the basic stuff that babies do: eat, sleep, coo, cuddle, and fill diapers.
We also got to spend a quantity of quality time with Grace and Alice.
Grandpa got his hair done.
While Grace was at school we had shapes practice.
When we had the chance, we went to the beach.
On a sunny day, we took Alice to see the sea lions. She was quite captivated by them.
What does a sea lion say? "Oort! Oooort!"
They lazed about in the sun and griped at each other a lot. Some of them went for a swim; very large and furry banana slugs of the sea.
We later took Grace to see tide pools at Natural Bridges State Park
The tide was ebbing, so we got to see lots of wild life, friends, anenomes.
Also, those rock stars of the fishy world.
One night we had a sleepover at our motel. We watched a Barbie movie, the Princess and the Pop Star! And ate popcorn.
A watched pot may never boil, but it turns out that a watched bag of popcorn pops very satisfactorily.
There was another reason why we came to Santa Cruz, but we couldn't stay for Thanksgiving, so we had a thanksgiving meal a few days early. I forgot to take a picture of it, but here is a very near facsimile thereof.
We had to leave way too early, but had a fun time. As a parting shot, here is Alice, always in motion, running in from her hair-tousling nap, saying, "I coming!"
PS: There is a Thanksgiving Pt II: Weehawken still to come...
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