Well, vacation is almost over but I managed to squeeze in a day trip up into the hills behind my daughters home in Milpitas Ca.

Very dry obviously, but still beautiful.

Enjoy

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calaveras res

Calaveras Res

Christmas time is a joyful time of year, especially for the children. We buy gifts and special treats that delight the little ones, and ourselves as well. For each of us Christmas can be a time of Joy, and also a time of sadness, for lost loved ones, or friends far away. Debbie and I are leaving shortly to visit family in California, and we look forward to the joy of sharing in their lives, even for few days. As some of you know, I lost a friend last week to illness, so for me, this Christmas is a time to reflect, on Gods provision this past year, I still have a job, on His sufficiency to persevere through sometimes difficult circumstances and on His sovereignty to know what is best, even when I don’t. It is also a time to reflect on the Joy I have in knowing each of you. Some of you I know well, and some not so well, but I have a love for each of you, and a desire that you will experience the Joy of Christmas in a special way this year. So I hereby give you my personal blessing, and I pray that God will fill each of you with a joy that only He can.

Debbie and I drove up to Lampasas after church today to attend the memorial service for a long time “best friend” this afternoon.  The best friend is in quotes because the pastor that gave the sermon at the service talked about how Ken treated everyone he knew as his best friend.  All Ken had was best friends.  Kind of interesting if you think about it.  Ken was a best friend to everyone.  Anyway, it was a great service and I took lots of pictures, far more than I am posting here.  I just hope I didn’t irritate anyone with all my clicking at this difficult time.  As you will see from the photos, Ken was well liked, as the place was pretty much full.  As I looked at the collection of photos at the service, I saw several people that I know, but that I didn’t know that they knew Ken.  So, I apologize to everyone that sees these pics, but didn’t hear about the service.  We will try to do better.

Second party of the day was our New Life Riders Christmas Party, held at the community recreation center of one of our members.  nice facility, kitchen and meeting room with plenty of seating. We had a good crowd, and had a pot luck.  All I can say is we are really lucky, cause pot luck provide plenty of great dishes, from brisket and sausage to spicy macaroni, to to… you name it we might have had it.  We did the usual gift exchange, and I think everyone went home with something useful, and some people got some really neat stuff.  Anyway, we had a great time, and we presented CMA oculars to two new members. We are growing like gang busters!  Anyway, here are the picks;  P.S.  if you see some funny pics, with two guys together, really, they are just smelling me to see if they want to take the gift exchange gift I got. Honest!

We went to Lone Star BMW this morning for their annual Christmas Party.  Great time as usual, the BBQ was wonderful, and the cookies were never ending and highly varied.  They also gave out a 1,000,000 mile award to Ardys, this cute little old lady that had just finished riding her BMW for one million lifetime miles.  Now she must reeeeaaaly like to ride.  Finally, Debbie won a helmet.  Pretty nice actually. Ok, here are the pics;