the picnic visit

I forgot the picnic bag, so all I had was my own sandwich and the carrots which were in the cooler. All the cookies were missing. So in Oroville we drove around looking for the Trader Joe's. But then we stopped by the Chamber of Commerce to ask, and there was no Trader Joe's after all. We went to Raley's and looked at the ingredients of all the cookies--not a single type of cookie there met our requirements. We were discouraged. But we bought bananas, and we bought Erik some dark chocolate covered almonds.

Then we went to Oroville's Chinese Temple. Our favorite thing was the large round doorway to the Moon Room. My other favorite thing was all the clothes--there were mannequins wearing old Chinese clothes and old white people clothes. I found both fascinating. I'm not the kind of person who's into fashion at all, and I don't pay much attention to my own clothes (most are hand-me-downs), but these old clothes fascinated me.

The puppets were really cool too, but I only caught a glimpse of them--we had to run to the park where we were meeting A and her kids. So we met A and her kids--Erik left to take a walk by the river. We had our picnic. A brought lots of sandwiches, including egg salad sandwiches, but they had celery in them, and celery is my bane. They forgot their cookies too! So we were without cookies, but only for the time being.

After the picnic, the kids played in a large round sandbox that has a water spigot in it. They seemed to have a great time, and the little child got her pink Hello Kitty dress soaked. She liked running through the water, splashing.

Then we went to A's house. I wanted to meet the animals. So she took me in her truck, the 15 miles that take quite a while to drive because a lot of it's twisty turny. Also, some of it's on dirt road. So we got there, and I met the cats, the dog, and the three horses. I pet one of the horses (the old small one) and fed a carrot to another.

Then we ate a lot of cookies. The older daughter had baked carob chip ones especially for me. They were so good.

Then we went down to the creek, which was dry, but it was very nice to take a little walk in the woods. It was getting dark, and I felt that it was getting close to the time we were supposed to meet Erik. So we got back in the truck and drove the 15 miles to town. We met Erik at the park. I was surprised he hadn't been kicked out because the park closes at sunset. As A and I hugged goodbye, a truck pulled up and honked at us very persistently. It was the park person kicking us out.

It was wonderful to go to a new place, to see my friend and her kids, to spend time in nature, to eat good cookies. I'm very glad that Erik gave in and took us to Oroville.