For each of the past several years Dave and Jan (sometimes with Caroleen Suzuki, college student guest at the Balsley home) have made year-end trips to the Monterey Bay area for family visits.  The new 2017 year got off to a busy enough start that there was no blog entry about the end-of-year 2016 visit, but it was a very pleasant visit as always.  The Monterey area is always is almost always a pleasant place to visit just because of its physical beauty.

A drive north to the San Jose area provided the opportunity to connect with Jan’s cousin Linda Rollo and her husband David in their new setting in a retirement community in the hills east of San Jose.  We look back to 2016 because Dr. Rollo and Linda were in Florida during Dave and Jan’s 2017 Christmas trip to the central California area.  The view from the Rollos’ back deck reveals the nice surroundings in their new setting.

And a meal together in the community club house restaurant was a pleasant experience – as visits with the Rollos always are!

Dave and Jan’s 2017 visit to the Monterey area provided numerous nice opportunities to connect with family – like the walk along the beach at Seaside with Dave’s sisters Jan and Jewel and Jewel’s husband Rick.

We all enjoyed lunch together after the beach hike at Seaside’s Googie Grill, a restaurant we have enjoyed several times now during visits to the area.

We also enjoyed family meals at the Black Bear Diner, just across the line from Seaside in Monterey (where only sister Jan took a good picture which she posted on Facebook), and at sister Susie and Horace’s house – where Dave grew up and where nephew Jared, his wife Joy, and son Daniel live as well.

Another family visit along the way for Dave and Jan was a lunch visit in Santa Barbara where Jan’s aunt Edna lives in a nice retirement community.

Whether he said it first or not, Dr. James Dobson (of Focus on the Family fame) said something to the effect that “no one ever says, as they are approaching the end of their life, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.'”  What a blessing it is to be able to spend time with family members we love!