California Vacation - Day 2 - Santa Cruz

Day 2 of our vacation found us relaxing on a Sunday morning at the Woods home. After a leisurly morning reading the newspaper and playing Katamari on Playstion 2 we ended up in beautiful Santa Cruz Boardwalk. It's a Boardwalk located right on Santa Cruz Beach with amusement rides, games and great fair-type food. Craig was pleasantly pleased to find fried cheesecake.

This year the boardwalk celebrates it's 100th year in 2007 and is the only remaining major seaside amusement park on the West Coast. To find out more about the rich history of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk click here:

Http://beachboardwalk.com/03_press_bw_history.html

Hallie of course had a ball. She loved riding all of the rides and even wanted to ride the "BIG" kid rides. It was hard for her to understand that she is too little and that is one word she hates to hear about herself.

Here she is enjoying a ride on Pete's Dragon

Hallie would have stayed all day if she could have but even with all the joy she brings there is only so many times you can watch her go round and round on rides. And there is a limit on how much fried grease Craig can consume in one day.

More to come tomorrow or in a few days.

Ciao, M.

Our Little Mermaid

I've been dying to use this kit that I purchased from Kay Miller Designs. She creates the cutest scrap kits for kids that I've ever seen. Yesterday was my golden opportunity when the neighbors invited us over to swim. Not being much of a swimmer Hallie had to use her vest but she still had a great time and ended up all prune-ie in the end.

Hopefully I'll be able to get back to the vacation posts sometime late this afternoon. Lots still more to show, tell and of course scrap.

M.

Hallie's Favorite Cat

If Hallie has a favorite cat in this world it has to be Artamis. Artamis belongs to our friends the Woods in CA. Poor Artamis put up with Hallie's constant petting, touching and in general, mild harassment.

Here's the two of them together

If Artamis has the gumption and the patience to put up with Hallie he's got to be one cool cat.

Damien Rice - 9 Crimes

One of my favorite sad songs at the moment.

Our Vacation - Day 1 - Saturday, August 8/11/2007

Man, who was the dummy that booked our flight that left on Saturday at 7:55 in the morning? Oh yeah, I would be that big dummy who wanted to get an early start. So much for having a relaxing vacation. We made it to the airport by 7:00 a.m. but then had to spend 45 minutes in the security line because it was so backed up and incredibly long. By the time we made it to the plane almost everyone had boarded.

Finally, we were getting on the plane and I heaved a huge sigh of relief. As we headed up the isle of the plane to our seats there was a brief argument that ensued over who was going to get the window seat. As many of you know Craig is not fond of heights and if he must be submitted to such torture he prefers to sit by the window. Why I'm not quiet sure I've figured it out but if that's what the husband wants then that is usually what the husband gets. Oh, but that was before we had the demanding 4 year old in our life and on a plane. You can clearly see who won the argument. Did you have any doubts? I didn't. My money is usually on the little one.

It's funny how a little scrawny 40 pound four year old can triumph over her own father. What poor parents don't do for a little peace. Poor Craig had to while knuckle it during the plane take offs and landings. Thank goodness there was no turbulence on the flight or it just would have pushed Craig over the edge.

Here she is sitting at the window enjoy mommy's iPod and taking a gander at what I believe is the Grand Canyon outside of her plane window.

Once we were finally in Sunny Cali we decided to have a easy day and just relax and do lunch. The Wonderful Woods took us to one of their favorite California BBQ joints, The Central Texan BBQ located on Merritt Street in Castroville. The Central Texan is a great little place with sawdust on the floor and Texas artifacts on the walls. The owner, Don Elkins, is a real character. He smokes all of his own meats and makes his own sausage, which we were lucky to be offered a free sample of. It was my first time trying homemade sausage and while I'll say it is an item I would probably wouldn't ever order it was good.

If any one knows good BBQ it's the Woods. They've just returned from a fifteen day, 4,500 mile southern states BBQ tour. As Andy tells it "from Texas to North Carolina, the unifying theme of our journey was a mutual love of awesome BBQ."

Here are the Woods, Andy and Jenny posing with Hallie Well, the Woods do know their BBQ as the Central Texan rocked. Craig enjoyed a huge plate of beef brisket while I tried the pork plate. The meat was succulent, tender and tasty but the best for me was the beans. I'm not usually a huge bean fan but these beans rocked with onions, and tender morsels of meat mixed in. I could have easily eaten two bowls of them but I was stuffed from the meal. We did take a dogie bag home but never got the chance to enjoy the leftovers. Hopefully someone else did. It would be a shame to waste BBQ as good as that.

Now here's a little piece of trivia that I bet most of you don't know. Castroville is the Artichoke Center of the World. This small town lies in the heart of California's Central Coast farm country less than 100 miles from San Francisco and less than three miles from the Pacific Ocean and public beaches. It also host the worlds largest artichoke. If you are interested in finding out more here is a link: http://www.beachcalifornia.com/castrov.html

That's it for our Saturday. We spent the rest of the day catching up with our good friends and enjoying their gracious hospitality.

We're B-A-C-K !!!!!!

Hi Everybody,

We are finally back from a wonderful week of vacation in CA. No phones, TV, newspapers, computers or the world wide web. We had the best time and it was very hard to drag myself into work today. Lucky Craig of course had the day off and got one extra day to recoup.

There's lots of stories to tell and pictures to show and scrapbook pages to do so tonight's posting is just a tease of what there is to come. Scraping our vacation memories and good, OK mediocre storytelling, takes time and we all know that is something I have very little of anymore.

Here is a very quick page of Craig, Hallie and I out on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. It was so nice and we even met a little friend who I will include.

My friend Jenny kept yelling at me not to "flash" the poor thing with my camera but I don't think that I was really doing any harm. At least the sea lion didn't seem to mind as much as Jenny. If it did it was way less vocal about it.

Anyway, how could I not take a picture of that cute little face. And it is an amazing picture of an animal that we Floridians never get to see out in the wild. It was amazing to see the sea lions and harbor seals just frolicking while swimming out in the ocean.

OK, there's more to tell but not tonight. It's almost 11 p.m. and I am still feeling the effects of jet lag. Even though I hate to say it I'll be glad when my body catches up to Florida time versus CA time.

Look for more postings during the week and a whole slew of new scrapbook pages this weekend. That's the plan for now Stan.

Ciao'

Hump Day, what it means to me on Augsut 1st.

It's Wednesday and Hump Day. Hump Day means I suppose that we are half way through the week, half way there or almost to the weekend. There is hope in sight. Normally hump day passes me by with out so much as a second thought or glance but today is different. Today Craig and I had a Dr. appointment to see why we where having so much trouble conceiving. My Dr. is the wonderful Dr. Todd, the man who brought Hallie into this world. He isn't quite sure what the problem might be but he is sending me to the lab to do some blood work to see if I truly am ovulating or not ovulating at all. Based upon that test and lab work he is going to put me on a RX that should help us get pregnant.

It hasn't happened yet, and I might be building myself up for more disapointment but for the moment I now feel that we are half way there. I feel there is hope in sight for me to finally get pregnant. I have fretted over our situation silently mostly, wondering what we were doing wrong, or what was or is wrong with us that this isn't working. I don't know those answers and most likely will never know if Dr. Todd's plan works for us. It's just nice to feel that I am almost where I need to be. Thanks Dr. Todd

.