Beautiful Day!

Today was another gorgeous day. Tim made us strawberry pancakes this morning. We spent the morning reminiscing about the time we first came out to California and how things have changed so much for us recently. We're really settling into the bay area now. It is a very difficult place to assimilate to since it is hard to find communities to belong to.

Dorrie came to get us at around 12:30pm. We went over early because Ansel was leaving for Washington State again to work as a firefighter. I'm glad we went earlier than planned because little bun get very fussy in the evenings. Aoife really liked it there. She spent time with Dorrie and Dave without too much fuss. Dorrie made us some chickenburgers and asparagus for lunch. And for the piece de resistance Dorrie baked : Rhubarb and Strawberry pie a la mode! Delicious!!! Here is Dorrie cutting the pie. We spent the rest of the afternoon in Dorrie's garden. She has a wonderful garden filled with native California plants that she planted. Aoife liked the sun too, but it got too hot for her and she enjoyed having Dorrie hold her by the breeze coming in the front door. It was a wonderful afternoon and we said goodbye to Ansel until August.

Dorrie told us about a recent trip she has made to the mormon temple's family history center where she found an ancestor who sailed on a boat from Belgium in the 1800s. This sparked additional discussion of Tim's family history including Hans te Neues whose family apparently farmed in Germany near the town of Neuss on the Rhine river in the NW of Germany in the 1600s. The theory is that this name eventually permutated into Nice and is the origin of Aoife's last name! I guess the three of us will have to visit Nuess, Germany sometime (I checked on Google Maps and it does still exist)!