I would first like to apologize for not posting any updates of our little girl for a long time. She is getting so big, so fast and I have not posted anything so that everyone out there can watch her grow too. This is bad because Cynthia and I have a lot of family that do not get to see her very often. I hope that everyone did not stop checking out this blog for updates. I promise to create entries more often than I am now. You're probably saying, 'Gee, you're gonna do an entry more than once every two to three months???' Well, it is a New Year's resolution I plan on sticking to.
We had a great holiday season this year starting with Halloween at Calico Ghost town. For Thanksgiving we had the opportunity to go to Marque and Sarah's house where we got to spend the week at their Cabin in Timber Lakes outside of Heber City Utah. We stayed home for the Christmas season so we could both spend time with our families close by us. Then to round out our holiday season we spent New Year's at Jim and Samantha's to help Hailey celebrate her birthday.
I am going to do a series of entries to document each of the holidays, one at a time. Otherwise this entry will be more of a novel. So, check back every couple of days for an update. I am going to start with Halloween:
We started the Halloween celebrations at Bates Nut Farm, which is a big family farm in the hills of north San Diego County. They have a permanant store where they sell, get this, nuts and other items like candy, crafty things and homemade fudge. Every year this farm transforms into a sort of fall festival where they mow their corn field into a maze, have horse drawn hay rides around the farm for the kids, small carnival rides and games, farm animals on display and a huge pumpkin patch. This is the main reason we go there. They have the best looking pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns. They also have a scare crow making contest, which we will participate in next year. We picked out a couple pumpkins, enjoyed the 85 degree weather and enjoyed some kettle corn. Grace had a great ride in either the stroller or the Baby Bjorn (baby backpack) on my chest. We thought we covered her completely with the sun block, but she still got a little red. Our first lesson in a baby's sensitive skin.
She found it . . . The perfect jr. sized pumpkin!!!
Grace is searching for the perfect pumpkin.
I guess Grace was not in the mood for modeling her Halloween costumes. I suppose it could have been the 85 degree weather.
Bate's Nut Farm has a huge collection of giant pumpkins, but they were kind of small this year. Most years they have pumpkins big enough they could be
carved out and turned into a crib for Grace.
We had a very busy October, and it wasn't just Halloween celebration. We had a trip to Knott's Berry Farm, which for the record is way better than Disneyland, for Madyson's birthday celebration, had a birthday party for Mom and made good use of our trailer by going to Carlsbad State Beach and Calico. We did not have a free weekend all month, but that was just fine with us. We got to relax on our camping trips.
Grace was checking out the waves before she hit the water. Just trying to find a good point to paddle out.
I have such a beautiful wife, don't I? She is such a fun girl up for anything.Even an upside down roller coaster. By the way, Sunday morning is a great
time to go to Knott's. Not a single line in the whole park.
Well, there is more for our October, but I'm getting frustrated with this program and loading pictures. I'm going to start a new entry with pictures of Grace in all her costumes and Halloween gear. Bye for now.
She's queen of the world!!!
Our friends, Nick and Sabrina, showed us Geo Caching. For those who don't know what it is, people put little capsules or other treasures somewhere and log the GPS location on a website. Geo Cachers then log the GPS coordinates and search for the item. They are usually hidden pretty good, so it took some looking. We were unsuccessful finding this one (above).
I don't mean to brag, but I found this one. I wasn't able to get it out of the hiding spot, but Nick figured it out. There was a one foot long wire attached to a medicine bottle. Some of the items have just a piece of paper where you log your name showing you found it.
Everyone is looking for the next one. We actually met up with a couple that was there looking for the treasure as well. Nick and "Armando" started talking about how many they found and where they had placed some of theirs'. It was crazy. . . Nick said he remembered finding Armando's cache somewhere in the mountain (I think that's where it was).
This was the first one we found under the cover at the base of the light pole. You can see Nick holding the log, which was in a canister the size of an old 35mm film camera.
The gulf coast isn't the only ocean that has these beautiful structures littering the water. They actually are pretty impressive structures. 
Looking down the Bolsa Chica coastline. There was a rain/wind storm the night before, which made for a beautiful morning after. 
. . . And cold! I'm sure she would've loved a heated blanket then.
I thought it was going to rain again, but instead it made for some great sun rays. 
Long Beach looks good,,,from here. I purposely left out the docks and Snoop Dogg's neighborhood. But then again, you can't see the ghetto from the shore. 
