I am back from my work/vacation trip to the west coast.  I had an amazing trip full of learning, sightseeing, thinking and soaking up nature.  There is too much about this trip I want to share so instead of cramming all I can into a cheap summary, I’d rather focus on pieces of it throughout the coming weeks in several posts. 

With that said, all in all I learned a lot while on this trip, not only for work, but about myself and the world around me.  Since I was basically alone for 8 days, it allowed me lots of time to think and reflect about my life.  Where I’ve been, where I am, and where I’m going.  And what better place to do some thinking than in the beautiful settings of the Pacific coastline, the central valley and the Redwood forest.  I simply marveled at God’s creations every time I turned a corner.  How blessed we are to live in a world full of these gorgeous places and how blessed I feel to have had this opportunity to visit a few of them.

But for now, I will simply return to my daily tasks of work, house cleaning, paying bills, and feeding those adorable creatures (the cats) on my back porch steps every night.  My main focus right now though is laundry – piles of it.  When I get a spare moment I will begin my California trip post series.  Stay tuned…  

I’m here in california and typing this up on a small handheld device. So needless to say this will not be as long as my usual posts.

But I’ve just finished up a work conference and moved to a smaller town, different hotel, and picked up rental car.

The conference was great, the scenery is beautiful and the adventure of it all is pumping through my veins. But I’ll write more about all of my experiences when I return home at the end of the week.

I did want to mention one quick thing though. Despite the 3,000 mile distance, oddly, I feel even more close to all my loved ones. This is a thought that I will expand on more later as well. But, in short, my mother, grandmother, friends and even those who have already passed on, I feel them all with me while I’m alone here in california. As I watched the sun set over the vast Pacific Ocean tonight, I thought about each one and how much they (you) all mean to me.

Anyway, like I’ve said, I’ll write all about this more later – for now I just wanted to say howdy from california.