Ventura Harbor

Last Sunday, we spent the day at Ventura Harbor. They have a huge marina where you can park your boat, or catch one to whale watch or visit the Channel Islands (a national park). There are also a bunch of restaurants where we didn't eat because they all take cash only and souvenir shops. One of the big reasons we went, however, was because a historically accurate replica of Christopher Columbus's ship the Nina was docked there. It is really a very tiny ship and it's hard to imagine actually crossing the Atlantic on it. The current crew have put in some modern conveniences like bunks, a kitchen and a modern compass. Plus they get to live in the hold area, while Columbus's crew slept, ate, etc. on deck all the time. The 1/18/09 pictures show our tour of the ship. There are also pictures of our afternoon at the beach near the harbor. It was super-windy...blowing sand up off the beach into our faces...but gorgeously sunny and warm and we all had a lovely time!

We found out while touring it that the Nina was leaving the next morning "at first light" and Chris decided it would be very cool to watch it sail out of harbor. So on Monday morning, he got up way before "first light" and headed out. The crew of the Nina interpreted "first light" somewhat less strictly than Chris did, however, and he ended up hanging out for several hours while they all stood around drinking coffee, getting groceries, then finally loading up a bunch of ice and getting under way. He was hoping to see the ship drop its sails and really sail away but it turns out she has a secret engine underneath and they used that even after they got out of harbor. Oh well. The 1/19/09 set of pictures are from the Nina's departure.

PICTURES 1/18/09
PICTURES 1/19/09

Holidays in KY and OH

On xmas night we flew out of LA to visit our family and friends in Kentucky and Ohio. After stopping at Chris's sister's house for the afternoon (and a nap for the boys), we headed down to KY to visit my family. We basically neglected to take ANY pictures until the very very end, so I will tell you that we had a great time and did lots of stuff including: have a big dinner party with my Mom, Dad, sisters, Grandma, two aunts, an uncle and several cousins, go to Jungle Jim's (the coolest grocery store in the world...or at least Ohio), and to the GAP outlet, hang out with the dogs, have dinner with my oldest friend, go bridesmaid dress shopping with all my sisters (for like, THREE hours!! It was so fun!) and open presents! We also managed to hit a couple of our favorite back-Midwest restaurants: White Castle, Skyline and O'Charley's.

Btw, if anyone else took any pictures of us, I'd love to get a copy!

Then we headed back up to Chris's sister's house in Columbus. We had a great time there as well with Mom and Dad, both Chris's sisters, brothers-in-law and our two nephews. On New Year's Eve we enjoyed a very big buffet of food, the brothers doing the traditional Deep Fry Everything and Anything, and some party hats and horns for the kids. We headed to Mom and Dad B's house for New Year's day and more presents. We finished up the week by heading to COSI, a hands-on science museum in Columbus. I personally thought the most fun, however, was had just playing with our two nephews and watching the four cousins play together!

Chris needs me to mention, for the benefit and jealousy of some of his coworkers, that we got to eat Tim Horton's doughnuts and bagels in Ohio. They were really yummy!

PICTURES 1/15/09

Holidays at Home

Here are some pictures from our Christmas in California. We opened all our presents to each other, and some that Gma and Papa B had brought out before the holidays. Since we were leaving on xmas night, we opened them all on Christmas Eve and since nobody, including Chris, could wait, we were done by about 8:30AM! Besides, I had to have time to do the laundry. :) The beautiful wooden signs with the kids' initials on them handmade by Chris were a big highlight. Apparently we didn't take any pictures (probably just video) of xmas morning and Santa. But the last few pics are of Virginia showing you around their new cardboard house that Santa left. He left a bunh of other nice stuff too...but you'll have to wait for the video.

PICTURES 12/25/08

A new computer, a new website.

Hi, all. Well, the difficult financial times and the fact that my MacMac could no longer handle the volume of digital music, pictures and video we were throwing at it has forced me to turn to the dark side and get a PC. :) Well anyways, I like our new HP (big monitor, real keyboard!) and Picasa has been doing a great job with all our digital pictures so far, so it's all good. Picasa likes to upload pictures to it's own web albums and I'm not going to fight it. So for now I will be replacing our old web page with this new blog and including links to Picasa web albums. Let's see how it goes! At the end of each post, I will type the word "PICTURES" and a date and link it to the album.