Family Album: You can go home again.

When you lived your entire childhood in the same house in the same sleepy town with the same boring parents, you can’t wait to move several time zones and a myriad of zip codes away.

But after finishing college and starting a career and then watching the world get turned upside down and inside out by a wannabe plague, heading back west and switching out those 10000 zip codes for the sunny 90000’s doesn’t seem like the worst idea.

In fact, what the heck, maybe bringing friends to visit at home for a weekend could actually be fun! The house is the same except for older and shabbier, and the parents – well, they’re really old and shabby, but even they look better when you get a relaxing, sunny 80-degree weekend. With apologies to Thomas Wolfe, it turns out you actually can go home again.

First stop is always the chicken yard, so everyone figures out right away that they’re not dealing with sophisticated folk here.

“Just us chickens”, says Lily.

Friends Wilson and Will had never been to Santa Barbara before so the challenge was on to compete with Brooklyn and Columbus. Brunch at Scarlett Begonia got us all off to a good start.

And we were joined by very special guests Victoria and Marie-Christine!

Our pool was the place to be that afternoon:

Freddy hung out with Lily…

and with Victoria…

Daniel and Wilson…

And even Peter managed to show up for a cameo appearance:

They tried out some of the new restaurants in town

And Daniel enjoyed a visit with Granny.

And since Daniel will be ten or twelve time zones away for his birthday, we squeezed in an early celebration:

I think they all had a good time…especially Lily, of course!

Best of all, they all promised to come back!

Same time next year?

Happy Birthday, Daniel – love you so! xoxo

All things on earth point home…

– Thomas Wolfe