This week’s Marvin’s mumbling will focus on a trip to California to visit my son, Jace, and his family. Jace turned 50 on Aug. 21, and his wife, Jill, celebrated an unnumbered birthday on Aug. 5, and they are celebrating their 20th anniversary on Aug. 26.

I arrived Aug. 14 in time to spend Aug. 15 — the fourth anniversary of Karen’s passing — with family. Their three girls, Kali 17, Quinn, 16, and Raena, 14, all attend Los Altos High School, 2,200 students and began school Aug. 10.

I spent my time enjoying Kali horseback riding three times, escorting the girls to tennis and cross country and school and back, and morning breakfast and evening meals. It reminded me a lot of my time teaching and coaching and being an athletic director in high school with early mornings and late evenings. What a busy time for both students and parents.

I did have time during the day to enjoy Stanford’s equivalency of Aggieville in Manhattan and Massachusetts Street in Lawrence, three different days purchasing and uploading a new Verizon phone. I also needed a vehicle and purchased a 2015 BMW/Mini Cooper.  I will have to leave it and later fly out to watch the girls play tennis and run cross country when they start their seasons. Then, I will take a road trip home to Sabetha. I got to experience my first driverless ride in a Waymo to pick it up. Then, I gave it a road trip up in the mountain to a Mountain Winery Venue for an outdoor country music concert by Tucker Wetmore. I also used it to run quite a few errands for my daughter-in-law, Jill.

I scared her when I informed her that they had an opening for a Deacon at a Lutheran Church that hadn’t had a Pastor in 10 years. Her instant remark was, “do they have a parsonage?” For you who don’t know Lutherans, that is a home provided by the church for a pastor and she was taking no chances of me moving in with them.

I also enjoyed a lot of free time on the weekends with my granddaughters and their friends. Probably one of the highlights of my whole trip was the fact that I — after about two months of having heart, lung issues and being at the KU Medical Center twice — was informed by my son that he thought I was my old self again. But he did suggest, “lovingly,” that he thought my hearing might have diminished. So, I went to the veterans administration here and made arrangements for hearing aids. But the good news is I always had wanted to own a BMW. But after I turned 80, I had begun to think I would just settle for a BM. Now I have both.