SoCal

We drove to southern California over the Christmas break.

Being the burger connoisseur that I am, we had to stop at Peggy Sue’s 50’s Diner, which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave desert.

 

 

 

        There’s a park out back with “diner-saurs”!

 

 

It rained steady for the first 3 days. But that was actually a good thing because there were hardly any lines at the theme parks. Family consensus on the best rides: California Screamin’ at Disney California Adventure and the Simpsons ride at Universal Studios.

 

We toured Hollywood Boulevard, including Grauman’s Chinese Theater with the handprints and footprints of the stars.

Natalie Wood’s hands were exactly the size of Emma’s.

A collection of some of my favorite actors.

 

 

The Walk of Fame is also on Hollywood Boulevard.

It runs for 15 blocks on both sides of the street. We walked some of it.

 

 

 

Then we drove through Beverly Hills,  down Rodeo Drive, (didn’t buy anything) and over to Santa Monica.

 

 

 

 

 

The next day we left LA and headed for San Diego. Stopped at the mission San Juan Capistrano on the way. The swallows weren’t home.

 

 

 

  The church was destroyed by an earthquake in 1812.

 

 

A little further down the coast we stopped at Oceanside. The pier is the longest wooden pier on the west coast.

 

The pelicans were expecting handouts.

 

 

Took a cruise of San Diego harbor. That’s the carrier USS Ronald Reagan in home port at Naval Air Station North Island.

The San Diego – Coronado Bridge has an 80 degree turn, designed to lengthen the bridge to 2.1 miles so it can have a gradual grade for traffic, yet reach a height of 200 feet for naval ship clearance.

The cruise ship Carnival Splendor is the one that had an engine room fire last month and was adrift for several days. Here it is docked for repairs in the harbor.  Also in the harbor is the USS Midway. She was decommissioned in 1992 and is now a museum.

 

 

  On Christmas eve we were at Coronado beach.

 

 

 

 

And spent Christmas day at the San Diego Zoo.

 

 

 

After meeting on Sunday, went to the Cabrillo National Monument on Point Loma. It’s named after the Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo who first sailed into San Diego harbor in 1542.

 

 

Spent a night and the next day in Las Vegas on the way home. Stayed at the Stratosphere hotel. We rode the “Big Shot”, located on the the spire at the top of the tower (1,149 feet high).  It launches you up the spire and you free fall down. Terrifying and fun!  It’s the highest thrill ride in the world.

 

 

  Christmas decorations in the lobby of the Bellagio.

 

 

      The Paris hotel from the Bellagio.

 

 

Here’s a video of our adventures.

 

 

   Click on the map to see all the pictures, with GPS locations.

Halloween!

Emma and Sophie and their friends ready to start trick or treating.

They grew their own pumpkins in the back yard this year.

School Pictures

The kids got their school pictures back last week. I’m creating this post with Windows Live Writer, one of the components of Windows Live Essentials 2011 which released a couple of weeks ago. Live Writer has been around for a while now in earlier versions but I never got around to trying it. I must say, so far it’s pretty cool and certainly easier than using the Blogger tools directly. We’ll see what happens when I actually click “publish” though…

Another great component of Windows Live Essentials is Live Mesh, which is fantastic if you’ve got computers scattered all over (home, work, etc.) and want to keep files in sync, or remotely access the desktop of a computer that’s located where you are not. It’s been available in beta form for a year or so, but is now actually released. Oh and did I mention that all of the above is free?

Back to the kids, all of their school pictures for years K through present, are still located here.

Breck 2010

Gracie and Tom came out to visit from Virginia and we had a fantastic week in Breckenridge. Sophie and Emma switched to snowboarding this year, and we finally convinced Grace to try it, so all seven of us were snowboarding.







Here's a little montage of the week.




And here's a bunch more pictures from the week, complete with GPS tags.