Playing Catch-up

I keep putting off posting because I have a lot to tell and it will take a while, but then what I have to tell just grows, so here's a summary for the meantime.

We went to So Cal for New Years. Dan and I have been organizing group trips to Tahoe every other year, but it just wasn't in the cards for us this time, so we went to see him and Karyn instead. Flew down the 28th and back the 2nd. Had a fabulous time.

We stayed at the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn, which was fairly nice. They have 'kidsuites', which means bunk-beds, so Rachel was quite happy. Thursday we went to the LA Zoo, which was pretty nice. I took around 400 pictures, although I deleted a lot along the way and stopped just as we were about to leave with a full 1Gig CF card and 284 pictures. I went out to get in line before Dawn's father got there and walked back in with him to find Rachel and Dawn.

Rachel saw us (maybe pointed out by Dawn, but I'm not sure) when we were probably a hundred feet away and came running over top speed, yelling "We're over here" the whole way, to give Grandpa a huge hug. Not exactly calculated to hurt his feelings, as my mother likes to say.

Friday night, while Rachel went to dinner with Grandpa, we went to a really nice dinner with Dan & Karyn. Then Saturday we had brunch with Dawn's family before Dan and I made dinner at their place for a little New Year's Eve party. Rachel loves Dan & Karyn and not only got to go to sleep in their bed but wound up spending the night there, because Dawn was so tired I just decided to let them sleep. Dan & Karyn were on the air bed & I slept on the floor.

Sunday, we went to visit Brett & Cecilia and their kids and his mother Carol. We had a wonderful time with them, as we did last year right before heading home after Christmas.

Since we got home... Rachel either has another cough or the one she's had for a while got worse. I'm not really sure which. I spend a few hours Thursday afternoon attaching flexible plastic piping to two of our downspouts and running it out to the street in hopes that it will prevent any more flooding of our back bedroom.

Dawn and I are both trying to return to some semblance of reasonable eating, as well as working on getting in a better exercise habit. The house is such a collosal mess that my plans for riding my bike on the spinner aren't happening yet, but I did go walk for a while the other day.

Happy New Year to all!