pioneers

Once upon a time, in a land known as OB, a young couple in love embarked on an adventure to find a new home in which to live in sin cohabitate. They looked and they looked and they looked and they loooooked, growing increasingly desperate and discouraged. And then one day, as they drove down a lane called Larkspur, they heard the unmistakable sound of a friend beckoning: "What the hell are you two doing here?" Alas! It was our friends Scott and Cori, and they were sitting in the front yard of this, their house:

We joined them for a beverage, and after explaining our predicament, were overjoyed to learn that these very fine folks were soon planning to vacate this there house and relocate their own love connection... to this, the back house:

Well, you can't really see it. But I don't know who lives there now and my girl was horribly offended by my taking of these photos without knowing who lived there. The open door is the laundry room that divides the two houses. Yes, those one and a half windows apiece constituted each of two entire homesteads.

And alas! The front house where we then perched would soon be vacant. Scott picked the phone right up and called their landlord, then put us on the phone and lo. We made ourselves a deal. I'm not sure exactly how long we lived in those tiny houses, but man oh man did we ever have ourselves a big time. The party ended when Scott and Cori had to go getting all grown up and married on us, and they soon moved away to the land of Temecula, where visiting entailed directions like "turn left at the feed store." They tell me that they've lived there for 19 years now, so either they are drunk/wrong/stupid or I am old. You choose (carefully).

The last time we were at Scott and Cori's was for her baby shower

That's a big baby!

Until Memorial Day weekend, when we made our triumphant return! We still had to turn left at the feed store, but there was a whole kingdom built up around it, where our dear friends have found themselves a lovely little slice of the inland empire to call home.

See that nuclear reactor looking chimney thing in the middle there? More about that next time....

Looook, they're still in love! And he's still doing the cooking.

Scott and Cori are handy people. The are the quintessential do-it-yourselfers. See this part of their house? The tall bit with the ladder thing? They did that.

And see the plants on that ladder thing? Those are hops. They use the hops they grow to brew beer. Really yummy bear that makes you drunk and gassy. What more could one want?

And that nuclear reactor looking chimney thing is a pizza oven, and yeah. They made it. And they use it to cook the pizzas they make with the dough that they make. But wait, I promised more on that later.

but here's a hint: yum

Fortunately for us, they also make babies, and they were considerate enough to make two of the same flavor that we were making at the very same time.

girl flavor

boy flavor

We had a really fun night of eating and drinking and catching up and drinking and eating and laughing and eating and reminiscing and drinking.

Then we went to bed, and in the morning, we had a little something to eat. And drink.

Homemade cinnamon rolls. they probably stomped the grapes for that champagne. But *I* made the fruit salad.

And then we geared up for a ride!

Can you see what's down there on the far end?

Tandems! Oh, yeah. They made them.

We set out to explore the local frontier

Raise your hand if you think I belted out "Daisy, Daisy" at the top of my lungs. Ad nauseum.

You are correct.

We took a little sojourn to visit with some neighborhood horses. Cori had had the foresight to throw a few apples into her rucksack.

Some of us were smitten

apologies for the blue hue of these cell phone photos, the lighting was set to "incandescent," which obviously means blue.

Well done, pioneers!