What a fun holiday.

We arrived back home last night at around midnight, after a very fun few days in SoCal to visit my sister, her children, and my father. They live in Orange County.

In spite of the trip back taking 16 hours door-to-door due to a major flight delay, we had a great time. We’ve returned to some snow and ice. Familiar territory.

I had a few observations from my trip:

My children travel well. Maybe it is that they’re older, or they’re more used to flights. But, when I informed them that our connecting flight was going to be three hours delayed, they shrugged it off, immediately turned on their devices, and started to read or stream. I didn’t pick up any frustration or anger. Just a lot of peace and acceptance.

L.A. is diverse. Wherever we went, there were many varieties of people milling about. When we went to a shopping mall (yes, I was dragged to it), I think about half of the people were white. There quite a few Asians and Hispanics. There were quite a few mixed-race families. It was good to see all that.

Cousins connect. My children and my sister’s children connected right away, even though they had not seen each other in a few years. Everyone seemed very comfortable with each other. The good chemistry was instant.

In-N-Out Burger is the bomb. You may have heard about it. You may have been there. A privately-owned company with locations out west, I think they have the best burger out there. My favorite, the “Double Double” is up top.

Food can be memory. My sister went all out and cooked some dishes from my mother’s repertoire. It was food I had not tasted since my mother passed away many years ago. Delish.

SoCal is beautiful. We visited the beach. It wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t that cold. It felt great to be outside. At one point, I saw a hummingbird buzzing around some flowers. It is in the middle of the middle photo up top. The song “Walking in L.A.” kept going through my head.

Still, I prefer Boston, with its fly fishing, skiing, people, and entrepreneurship. Good to be home.

Hope you all are enjoying your holidays.