San Diego Vacation - Part Four

Sunday, June 20th, Father's Day found us missing Fred.  When we planned this trip, the dates that would work best were either going to coincide with Father's Day or Fred's birthday, this year they are only a week apart, so we decided to go earlier and be back by his birthday, but we will miss Father's Day.

Before we leave, we had purchased a couple of giftcards, one to Be-Bops and one to Subway and put them in cards and then hid the cards. We figured we would call him first thing and tell him where to look. :)

We had to be up and at them that day as we were meeting up with my cousin Jennifer in Del Mar at 9:30. She arranged for a private surfing lesson for Connor at 11:00 and we were following her to where we were meeting Andy, the instructor.

Got to see where Jennifer, her daughter, Kendall live with Jennifer's mother, my Aunt Bette. Beautiful, beautiful home that Bette has owned for quite a while. It's just down the street from Tony Robbin's estate which used to be Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball's estate. We left there and headed up the PCH to Encinitas, or more specifically Leucadia to the Encinitas Surf Shop where Jennifer proceeded to spoil the shit out of Connor by buying him a new hoodie and a couple of t-shirts. We also stopped by the Leucadia Donut Shoppe for some freshly made donuts to take to the beach with us.

Jennifer led us to Grandview Beach where we met up with Andy, Connor's surfing instructor.  It was so much fun watching Connor learn how to surf!  He is a natural!  He was up standing on the board in no time and was having a blast!  The day was absolutely beautiful!  Clear blue skies, warm breeze and the the pacific ocean just calling to us to play -

While we were at the beach, we noticed that a bunch of people with surf boards were coming down the beach toward where we were settled. Some were carrying flowers and most had there boards. My cousin said that it was a memorial service for someone that was obviously a surfer and loved within the surfer community. They conducted a short ceremony on the beach before a bunch of them took their boards and paddled out to past the point break and got into a big circle. One guy was on standing on a board paddling around them. They threw flowers into the middle of the circle and then paid their respects to the person who passed away, afterward they were done, they all went surfing for a while before heading back to the beach. It was a pretty cool thing to witness.

Later that day, I found this has washed up on the beach -

We also had to put up with commercials at the beach -

Here's my favorite photo from that day - My son begging to have another surfing lesson....LOL!

Three hours at the beach was plenty for all of us, so we packed up our gear and heading to Newton's son, Nick's house who lived right up the street.  He was having his dad over for Father's Day and we went over so we could meet everyone.  After that - back to Fallbrook, a trip to the grocery store for food and snacks and a nice relaxing evening with friends!

More later.....