Spring Trip Santa Barbara

Next we drove to Santa Barbara, CA since Peter's Aunt Elizabeth was turning 100! Isn't she cute, just like a little bird, chirping things like, "I'm 100 years old!" and "Do you like my yard?"

In this picture she is wearing the apron that I made for her. Blue is so becoming! She has lovely blue eyes.

She also delighted in telling the story of how Peter and his brothers were so naughty once while his parents were on a long trip that the babysitter quit and Aunt Elizabeth had to move in with her own children and dog and take care of them. She quickly subdued the boys with a trip to the bakery and had no trouble after that. Aunt Elizabeth is formidable!

Aunt Elizabeth still lives in her own home thanks to a good caregiver, her devoted and amazing daughter Claudia, and her son Warren who comes from Oregon when Claudia travels. Warren is also the fixit guy. They have another sister, Sue, who lives too far away to help out day to day, but visits whenever she can. Sue was there too, that was fun.

Peter, Aunt Elizabeth and Claudia.

So we had two nice birthday dinners--during one at Ruth's Chris, the manager and servers kept coming by to wish her happy birthday. They made her a beautiful chocolate dessert with a candle. Aunt Elizabeth was as gracious as a queen as she accepted their congratulations. When they asked her secret, she said, "I eat lots of sugar!"

It was kind of dark in there!

 Aunt Elizabeth's fabulous yard

Cousins breakfast--Peter, Sue, Warren, Claudia

Claudia and Sue took me on a girl day to a great yarn store and Sephora. They are so nice and let me use their arms for perfume testing when I ran out of my own arm space.

So that was Santa Barbara, we packed a lot into a day and a half.

Next--Arizona!