Jeff Gardner's Birthday in Ventura California

Derek and I waffled back and forth about whether to fly out to Ventura for Jeff Gardner’s 40th birthday bash. Most of the high school buddy couples were invited. Finally, a week or two before the big bash we decided to join in the fun. The guest list included Gardners, Stoddards, Hunters, Geoff Hill (Aleena stayed home to get her kids off to their first days of school) and one other neighbor friend couple of the Gardners. 

 

Steph said she would keep the kids which required running Liv back and forth to COPA and taking her and picking her up from her Music Man performances. We flew out the same time as Dad on Lynn on a Sunday morning right after sneeking into Chase’s ward’s sacrament (due to COVID we weren’t technically invited to attend) for his farewell address. Jeff rented a house right on the beach and wouldn’t let any of us pay him a dime for it. There were many a great walks on the beach.

Every day we were in Ventura, Jeff had competition type games with prizes that were focused around his own personal life trivia. I won one of the games which earned Derek and I lunch purchased by Jeff. 

 We played a lot of baseball on the beach, did some sun set walks, some boogie boarding. I did one 6 mile run on the sand which felt fantastic at sea level. One day we played pickleball.  

Also Jeff gave us all birthday swag bags which included an Indians hat for everyone.  So one day we all wore our Indians hat and people kept asking us if we were part of a team..."Why yes...TEAM JEFF!"  

We did a lot of shopping (to Derek’s dismay), ate some fantastic food, and played games at night and made Frozen Yogurt runs.

 We cruised around town in a 14 passenger van driven by Chris Hunter which was awesome. And then, we all flew out together back to home and our kids. We had to wear masks on the flights and everywhere we went, but it was still a great COVID vacation together.  

And the kids had a blast with Steph and Jon and Chase.  The never called missing me once to my dismay.  Steph took the boys to see Liv's Music Man show.  She bought them army playsets from the dollar store right before and they happily played with those to help pass the time.

And Uncle Jon said Liv was a great help shopping.