Spring Break!!!

Michael and Katie had a track meet on Saturday the 3rd so we couldn't leave too early. We got going and made it to Wendover for the boys to attend the Priesthood session of General Conference. David is now 12 and old enough to go.

While the boys were in the church, the girls colored Easter eggs. Things have been a little crazy overbooked lately and this almost didn't happen. Can you believe I let them do this in the motorhome? I almost can't.

Here we are Easter morning. The Easter bunny found us all the way in Winnemucka, Nevada. What an amazing bunny. We brought our internet thing (real technical jargon!) so we could listen to General Conference on the road to California.

We reached the bay area Sunday late afternoon and went to see the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier turned museum. Here are the kids in the pilot house being captain.

It was pouring when we got there and were glad most of the tour was inside. The flight deck wasn't, obviously, but we braved the elements and got a behind the scenes tour of areas roped off from a bored docent. Cool.

Luckily the weather was fine the next day. We got passes for the cable cars and rode to our heart's content.

Hang on!!

We hopped off the cable car and walked down the crookedest street, Lombard.

Next, we walked to the other cable car line and took it back to Chinatown.

If you haven't been to the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory it's worth the stop. There are three women sitting at these rotating griddles, cooking the cookies and then they fold fortunes into the cookies. Pretty cool.

This is it. The whole place. wow.

On to Dim Sum. Yum.

I went to high school for two years in San Francisco and dim sum is one of my fondest memories. I couldn't wait to have a steamed pork bun. The rest was good, too.

Love the hat!

We went to get tickets to visit Alcatraz and it was sold out for both days we were there so this is as close as we got. Luckily, we visited Alcatraz a couple of years ago and so we didn't have to be totally disappointed because we have seen it before.

On our last visit, we missed this, however. The line was horrific and we didn't have the time to wait. Our trip this time was very relaxed and we had time to sit and enjoy the better things in life.

How is it that food is such a big part of our life?

Next we went to the Exploratorium. It is a hands on science museum with over 400 exibits to play with. We were there for three hours and saw most of it.

Whoa, a lot of us.

uh, Katie, you might want to move.

Who is this? Can you tell? This was a kind of divided two way mirror. You and someone else sat on opposite sides of the mirror and it showed you alternating slices of your face and theirs. It was weird when you moved up and down and then you were looking in their eyes, your nose, etc.

Thirsty anyone?

That night, we went to see Wicked. It was great, of course.

On the way back to the motorhome on BART, David was hanging from the bar, swinging with the motion of the car. He was trying to hang on from stop to stop, people were smiling, chuckling and then even cheering him on. How is it at 11:30 PM anyone has the strength or energy to do such a thing?

The next day, we started our drive down the coast. We stopped and went to the beach. I'm not sure where we were, Carmel, Monterey, somewhere. It was windy and therefore chilly but the kids had to get in.

Somehow I got two of these in here, oops.

It was a gorgeous beach!

My pictures are out of order but oh well. We decided to drive on Highway 1, not knowing that it was HOURS long and there was no way to get off the road and back to normal roads without just suffering through the fright. Of course we were on the ocean side of the skinny, winding narrow road in a huge monstrosity of a motorhome with 700 ft cliffs just inches to the right. We did stop several times to look over the edge and to breathe easy for a few minutes. I let Nelson drive and had to go to the back and stop watching for a while since no one had brought any Valium. Just kidding, maybe the ride was just fine for everyone else. In spite of the treacherous nature of the drive, it was spectacular scenery.

Here we are at the Carmel mission.

More driving pics.

Any guesses?

We stopped along the road to see a beach that was covered with elephant seals. They are pretty funny to watch. They push, shove, "yell" at each other and then drop to napping immediately I guess from exhaustion, laziness, who knows.

Next we went to Solvang. Here is their reproduction of the Little Mermaid statue in Denmark. This is a Danish settlement and the pastries were awesome.

Next we stopped in Santa Barbara. The kids found a big pipe running out into the water and climbed really far out onto it.

The little blips on the right are them on the pipe.

Caroline loves to make sand creations.

Our last stop in California was the Ronald Reagan Library. This is the real Air Force One he used when in office. This is a pretty impressive presidential library, I'd recommend it. I wish I could say that we went to Paris to visit Jordan, but no. This is Paris, Las Vegas style. We stopped for crepes and kept going.

When we got to St. George we stopped at Green Valley and went for a swim. It was so warm on our vacation, I can't wait for it to be warm here!

We had a great time!

By the way, I have a couple of other posts I just did to catch up that aren't showing when you scroll down, so click on older posts to see those, too! I guess that happens when you have an epic post about Spring Break!

swim banquet and art show

I guess swim season is finally over. We went to the swim banquet and were entertained by Michael and his co-captain as they handed out captain's awards along with stories about each swimmer. It was really fun to watch them, they were a hoot! The girl captain's gave out their awards, too, but with not as much explanation or fun. Katie got a swim cap spirit award and Michael got Senior Swimmer of the year. Michael and Katie were both awarded an Athletic Varsity Letter. It was sure a fun season!

Caroline's first love is pottery. Here she is with a bust of herself in the end of the year art show. Awesome Caroline!

A fish with bubbles...

and a piggy bank! The art show was at the SCERA theater and we went on our way to see Les Miserables. We have sure had a musical theater week. We started by seeing Into the Woods at Canyon View Monday night, then this and next week we get to see Wicked in SanFrancisco! Love it!

Prom asking and answering

Michael asked Jenna Bowen to Jr. Prom. She is a soccer player so he got a soccer ball and wrote the letters of his name in the white sections of the ball and left it with a note on her porch that said "I have seen your (candy bar) Twix on the soccer field and would have a (soccer ball - think ball) if you would go to Prom with me". Here is her answer.

Today at swim Katie has just started her warm up and was coming in to the wall and saw her name underwater. She came up and the coach and a few others were smiling and watching her. She went back down and read the whole sign that was hanging in the gutter and weighted down, a prom invitation!

Here's the back side. The letters to Andrew Harrison's name are in the red boxes. She answered him with an Easter egg hunt. She wrote YES on a paper, cut it up into jigsaw like pieces and then put the pieces into plastic eggs. She left a basket on his porch inviting him to search for his answer while we ran around frantically hiding eggs. His mom came from across the street as we were in the midst of planting eggs and said "Who's getting egged here?" then covered her eyes and said"I didn't see anything!". Caught in the act! I think the creative asking and answering process is a Utah thing. We never did anything like this in Alaska but it sure is a fun way to get asked out for a dance.

Remember my Spring flowers? Well, it's exactly that around here. The snow keeps coming and then it's warm and then it snows. I think we are all ready for warm all the time.

Pineview Invitational

Katie is on the Orem High track team now and has been running the 3200. She got to go to St. George for the Pineview Invitational. She got a new PR at 13:54:32. Katie hasn't been in track for 3 years but is starting up again to keep herself conditioned during swim's off season. Here she is with Grandpa Lorin and Nana Kathy who came to watch her race. It's so great to have grandparents who come to support!

Go Katie, go!

Politics and...I won!

Now don't get all excited thinking I ran for some office and won. No, that's not my thing. I'll get to the politics part later.

Lately I have become addicted (literally) to the computer. It's a serious concern because we are having less and less clean clothes and home cooked meals around here. I have discovered I am having too much fun perusing blogs, and a lot of them are cooking blogs. See, I am not totally negligent. We are in a food slump and I have been trying desperately to find new and exciting things to cook. Well, I have found a lot of new things I would love to eat. Now comes the disconnect. I would actually have to plan, shop and cook to eat those things. Hmmm, I really just like to eat, I don't like the cooking part so much.

On to my major award. These cooking sites I have become addicted to checking in with every day have a lot of give-aways. So, I entered a few and I actually won one! It wasn't the lovely le creuset dish or the gorgeous red kitchenaid mixer but the.....Bush's beans gift pack! I know, you are all so jealous. If you want to check out my name in print along with a color picture of what I get, here's the link

http://www.shewearsmanyhats.com/2010/03/spicy-black-bean-corn-chowder/

Pretty exciting times we are having around here.

Now, the politics. Last night we went to a caucus meeting to support a neighbor who was interested in serving as a delegate. Michael had to attend because of a school assignment and we dragged David along as well. He is working on the communications merit badge and one of the requirements is to attend a public meeting. It was actually quite entertaining and cool to be able to explain what we were doing and why and how the political system works to David up close and personal. This is as grass roots as it gets.

I have been to caucus meetings before and they seemed a lot more stressful. I think because when I have attended in the past, Nelson was wanting to be voted in for some position and I am always nervous about things like that.

There were 104 people signed in last night and a lot were neighbors we know. The banter and tone in the room was light. Michael has registered to vote and was able to vote last night because he will be 18 by the next general election in November. He thought that was pretty cool and so did David. David wanted to vote, too. Sorry, 6 more years. Even though this meeting lasted almost 2 1/2 hours David's comment was something like "this is kinda interesting!" and he really did say it with enthusiasm. We had fun.

At the end of the voting they ask for volunteers to help as committee members. The boys asked what it meant to do that and Nelson reminded them of all the times he had piled the kids in the car and drove around passing things out, helping out at elections, and lo and behold, they seemed to remember those times fondly. Nelson raised his hand to volunteer as a committee member and then Michael did, too! It was so awesome! They wrote his name down on the board and cheers erupted from the crowd. They were calling out "All right, Michael", "Way to go Michael", clapping and cheering for him. It was really cool to have all of these adults who have watched him grow up support him like that. So, there was our evening, along with track practice, a piano lesson, a soccer game, an orthodontist appointment, lifeguard certification training, and then scrambled eggs and toast for dinner at 9:45. Do you see where I need help in the dinner department lately? Whew, can I have a break down now? You gotta love life.

Spring's a Bloomin'

It's always fun to see what surprises arrive in my yard every spring.

Happy Spring!