California Vacation pics - 1

Better late than never, here are some pics from our trip to San Diego.

Parker did really well on the plane. She was VERY excited to get to California. In the pic below, she's reading the seat-pocket brochure with the instructions for evacuation. Parker *loves* instructions.

Happy and cheerful on the plane. She has to sit by the window, and Bob sits in the middle and does kid management. I sit on the aisle and dole out gum, snacks, magazines, coloring books, ipods and toys. We put some episodes of her favorite Disney shows on the video ipod and that really helped burn up some time.
The view outside the window isn't flash glare, it's fog. The day we got to San Diego it was so socked in with fog that the pilot had to make 2 approaches to land. But since we were coming from 100 degree heat, we were thrilled to see fog, clouds and highs in the 70's.

Day 2 on the beach. It's amazing how much entertainment miles and miles of sand can be.

This was the day of hole digging. Parker and her cousin spent pretty much the whole day digging a huge hole. I think Bob might have given them a head start though.

We're baaaaack

We just got back from our annual trip to California. The high there was usually about 75, lows in the 60's. The high in Dallas today, according to the temp readout in the car on the way home from the airport, was 105. That's a hot welcome home.

I'll try to get some pictures posted from the trip soon ( in between doing the mountain of laundry and battling an overtired jet lagged kiddo) .

Summer Vacation 2008

We made our annual trip to California a couple weeks ago. We left early on a Saturday morning, and finally got home Sunday night, 8 days later. We had planned to get home the Saturday before...but because of storms in Dallas, our flight was canceled as we were boarding the plane! Luckily, quick-thinking Bob started dialing the 1-800 number as soon as he heard the word "canceled" and we were able to get on a flight the next day. So we rented a car and drove back to Escondido to Bob's cousin's house and stayed another night there. It was nice to get to spend some time on the beach, and also to see other areas of CA....citrus trees, mountain views, etc.. Avocados are 5/$1 there.

Incidentally, the directions to Bob's cousin's house sound like this: "you take the 5 to the 8 to the 163 to the 15". For some reason, in California, they put "the" in front of their highways....instead of "I" like we do. I thought the Texas folks might find that regional difference interesting.

We stayed in a condo in between the beach and the bay (Mission beach/bay) - it had a nice courtyard where Parker could play with her cousins, and was about a half a block from either the calm water of the bay, or the waves on the beach. Parker preferred the waves, surprisingly, but she tired out pretty quickly. This year, instead of going home for naps, Bob's sister loaned us her 'nap tent', and Parker would crawl in it when she was tired of the sun or wind or of being awake. It worked really well.
Bob's sister and her family also came down, and we had a lot of fun visiting with them, and Parker loved playing with Lexie. So all together, Bob saw his Grandmother, 3 aunts (or 1 aunt and her 2 sisters....how does that work?), his uncle, 2 cousins and their husbands and their kids, and his sister, brother in law and niece and nephews. Phew! Lots of folks!

Here are some pictures. There are many more uploaded to a web album if you're interested.
http://picasaweb.google.com/CGPost/2008SAnDiego?authkey=TZKRuENfbvk
Hopefully you can just view it without logging in or anything. If not, email me.

Family portrait



Playing in the waves at the beach.

Parker and Bob going to the waves

Parker and Lexie playing with baby dolls

On the swing

Chasing waves with Mackenzie and Bob