For the second year in a row we went to Big Trees, this is a magic place, one of only 3 locations in the world where these types of trees grow to such huge sizes. This time there was a bit of snow on the ground still from the previous storm, but all in all it was a beautiful day. Brenden had fun crawling in and out of the cracks and caves in some of the trees that have fallen. Though the ground was slippery, no one fell, though there may have been a close call that ended in a squeal. Try and see if you can find Brenden in the tall picture…..yup those sure are some big trees.

And then there was 6 flags……..we left early in the morning for Vallejo, we got to 6 flags discovery park before the gates opened so that we would not have to deal with the crowds. It worked, though there were never very many people there but every one was having fun. Brenden and Kevin went on several fun rides including one called the Medusa (Brenden’s new favorite ride). The tallest x-mas tree in the world was there, over 125ft tall and weighed 24,000 lbs and came from Oregon, it was quite a site. There were lots of loonie toons characters there as well Brenden and Kevin had some fun with them...kinda made Kevin feel like a little kid again (ok…he was never little). Brenden did a little rock climbing and we all watched the dolphin and Orca shows…Those were really cool. We wanted to go to the butterfly exhibit, but it was closed for the season, so needless to say will be going back when the whole park is open.

New Year's Eve

For the New Year celebration we all went over to a friend’s house for the weekly soup night, this year it just happened to fall on New Year’s Eve. On soup night everyone who comes brings a food dish or wine to share with the rest of the party goers. We brought a fruit basket with our own little twist (though we may have had a little help from the good old internet) so needless to day there was a lot of great food and fun. One of our friends, Jay, like to build things…..he brought one of his creations to help ring in the New Year with a bang. His creation, a small cannon just for making noise, and it makes a big boom. His son did not like it that much; I guess it was too loud.

After Christmas we thought it would be a good idea to go underground for a while. No we weren’t hiding out from anything; we went on a gold mine tour. We went 600ft. below the surface and saw some really cool old mining equipment and even saw some gold in the walls. When we got done with the tour we wanted to find a little gold of our own, so we did some gold panning and found a few “flakes” of our own.

Christmas 2007

Well it has been an eventful couple of weeks, Kevin has been off on vacation and enjoying every minute of it. I guess it all really started with Christmas, well a few days before when the extended family came up for a nice brunch and gift exchange. Christmas day was a warm sunny day, I know that is not what we usually what want, but we take what we can get. I was a great day filled with a lot of great gifts and lots of good food. The house was decorated in the usual Jeannette fashion (very beautiful for those of you who have never seen it). Dolly even got in to the festive spirit.