Now that we are home again, I can put the rest of the pictures from the trip to Tahoe on the website. Here are a couple of movies. Sam jumping in the snow. Margaret’s ski lesson. Margaret is one that falls down in the beginnig, then gets smaller and smaller.
Today we had a gingerbreaad house party. Four friends of Katy’s and Margaret’s came over an they all made gingerbread houses. Elizabeth made the houses from kits, but the kids glued a bunch of candy to them with icing. They all had fun. Also, check out Sam’s new Bolivian vest. Friends of ours gave it to him. He has only taken it off for baths. He slept in it the first night.
The whole reason for this trip was to see the change of command on the Nimitz. The son of a friend of my dad’s from college was getting command, Capt. Ted Branch. The ceremony was about an hour long and our kids were wonderful. They were all dress up and behaved very well. After the ceremony on the deck of the carrier, we had lunch on the hangar deck and then had a tour of the carrier. It was very interesting. Katy liked riding the elevators most of all. Sam liked driving the boat as well as the fact that the arms on the chairs in the radar control room went up and down.
After the ceremony today, the kids came back and played on the beach some more. Here are those pictures together with the ones from yesterday.
Day one of the trip to southern California. We spent most of the day in the car. We drove from Los Gatos, made a quick stop to see Venice Beach (Pokie had never been, and it is one of the few places that is exactly like it is on TV). We saw the necessary things in Venice Beach. We saw street performers and muscle beach and the kids played on the play structure on the beach. We got to experience the real L.A. as well. We were stuck in traffice for a couple of hours between Venice Beach and Anaheim. Finally, we ended up at our hotel across from Disneyland. Len and Pat came down and had dinner with us and we took a quick trip through Downtown Disney. The only store we went in was the Lego store. We also went through the Grand California Hotel. Probably the best description of it is, “Disney’s version of the Ahwahnee”. Right as we were arriving back at the hotel, we were treated to a good view of the fireworks over Disneyland. I think it was the first time Sam has seen fireworks, somehow he knew to say, “Oooh, aaah” and “That one is pretty”. We will see plenty of Legos on Sunday. Disneyland tomorrow.