Blogs from Santa Barbara, California, United States, North America - page 5

Still lots of back tracking to do but for those of you not interested in house renovations and baby photos- look away now. I know this isn't strictly a 'travel blog' but we are half way round the world and many of our friends and family are interested to see what we've been doing here and to see how Kyla is growing up. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once the birthday celebrations were out of the way we needed to start getting the house fit to live in. Gary and Milena were due to join us in one weeks time and would be staying in the house. Stan and I decided to move in giving us more time to do the finishing off jobs. We took a mattress from Sharon's appartment and added a few upturned boxes which was all ... read more

Wednesday - Day 4 Well we have moved on and started our road trip. Once again though, up at stupid o’clock, so got on the road early off to Malibu, to look at which ‘summer house’ we would like to buy, we wish! There were some stunners, but so many hidden from public view. Hubby has actually driven for the first time, but think I better put ‘L’ plates on him if he attempts driving again, & he had the cheek to criticise my driving when I started! I cannot believe the size of the ‘Outlet’ shopping villages here, they are the size of a small town, not a village, you know it is big when you have to drive the car between the shopping zones; got some bargains though, but would have needed all day ... read more

September 17th 2012 I am sitting on a Delta Airlines writing this blog, it’s the first time I’ve had a minute to myself for ages!! In a few hours, five, to be exact, we will be home in Manchester. I had wondered whether to write travel blogs this time as we were not actually travelling but several friends requested that they wanted to ‘follow us’ so to speak. We have spent the last couple of months helping to renovate Sharon and Scott’s new condo so there was little time to write blogs. In between renovations, however, we took odd days off to explore the surrounding area, so now I have a lot of backtracking to do. Appologies for clogging up your in box if you don't want to keep getting links now we're back home but ... read more

The purpose of our trip to California was to meet our expected grandchild. Well she's here!! 20 days early but both mum and baby are doing well, little Kyla couldn't wait to arrive. One minute we were on our way to eat dinner in a restaurant overlooking the harbour the next minute we diverted to the hospital and she arrived into the world just over 3 hour later! She's gorgeous, I know I'm biased but she IS!! We're now running around frantically to get everything ready for her to come home tomorrow. I think I'm going to be busy for a while! We were expecting to have 3 weeks to get to know our way around here but it's amazing how fast you can adapt when needed.... read more

After a three and a half hour delay at Manchester causing us to miss our connection in Atlanta we finally arrived in Los Angeles and managed to meet up with Sharon. However our luggage didn't make it but luckily it arrived at Santa Barbara airport next morning. We have three months now to catch up on some family time and look forward to the birth of our first grandchild in July. On Saturday we watched the summer Solstace parade in Santa Barbara and have spent the rest of our time so far dining out overlooking the harbour, chilling out on one of the many beaches and swimming in the beautiful pool at Sharon's inlaw's Condo complex. Watch this space for news of the new baby's arrival!... read more