Granddaughters are the BEST! Before the entire family arrived, several of us decided to get haircuts. (Well, I suppose Tammy decided for Ellie & Hayley, but I was quick to jump on the bandwagon.

It was fun to watch them practice their sitting still techniques (especially tricky for 5 year old Hayley) as they interacted with their stylists while I waited my turn. Ellie was just getting a trim, but Hayley was getting a full hair cut. And believe me, that takes a lot of concentration for a 5 year old! They both did great, but the most fun (for me, anyway) was watching them use my camera as I took my turn in the chair. Here are some of their shots -






(Hayley said this was so I would KNOW there was a sink there. She’s always thinking, that girl!)

I’m not sure I see you as a blonde, Ellie!
There were lots more, but these were the highlights. Trust me.
In the end, we all felt pretty darn special with our new (or mostly new) “do’s”.

I love these girly girls!

Well, the bags are packed and we’re pretty ready to go, but since we don’t actually leave for our Christmas in Columbus until the wee hours of tomorrow, I thought I’d do a quick post about a lovely drive we took on Christmas Eve day. Here’s a map of where we went (for those of you map enthusiasts!)

We started at the red dot at the bottom of the map and followed the dotted line clockwise. (The red circled area is where our January project is and where we are leaving our house while we have our Columbus Christmas. Los Angeles is just out of view to the left.)
So, the drive.
Pretty much we went through mountains and valleys, big roads and small roads, straight roads and winding roads. We saw snow and palm trees, ate lunch next to a giant dinasour, and generally had just a fine day.





We’re getting pretty high, until finally -

Snow!



I really loved this little lake we passed – You’re lucky I only picked two of the pictures I took there!
We began winding our way down the mountainside – can you see the beginning of some civilization there between the peaks?

We made it to I10 – and had lunch at a resturant that had these fun neighbors -


Not every dinasour has a fire escape, you know!

Back to I10 –

Then on to the “Palms to Pines Highway” -


And believe me, that was one winding road!

Yikes!
But before long we were back in a valley -though it wasn’t quite so green -

And finally back to our sweet “resort” campground, where we were blessed with this lovely Christmas Eve sunset -

I hope your Christmas was delightful – our’s is just around the corner!

When you live in a 300 sq. ft. home, you have to be very careful with your accessories. If they are small – that’s a good thing. If somehow they nest together, that’s a better thing. The same holds true with Christmas decorations. Instead of boxes of Christmas “stuff” that I would haul down from the attic each year, I now have one large shoe box. And even that was pretty much left alone this year since we were going to be alone (and moving about) during the holiday and our Real Christmas celebration is going to be next week and at our son’s home. But I couldn’t resist getting out this one little bit of Christmas (and special thanks to Josiah and Abigail who gifted this to me last year!)-

Small – Check

Nesting – Double Check

Tells the Story – Check and Double Check!

May this Christmas morning fill you not only with the wonders of family, holiday treats, and gifts under the tree, but may this be a day of true rejoicing that God loved us so much that he sent his only son as a baby to complete His perfect plan of redemption.

For today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
Luke 2:11

OK, so we’re officially on our way to see the kids. The only problem is that from the time we left Indian Hills to the time our plane leaves from LAX we had about a week to kill. A week. We could have stayed at Indian Hills for a couple more days, but we had an early Monday morning appointment to have the alignment checked on the house.
(And just as an aside here, do you know how they check the alignment on a 40 ft. motorhome?
They drive it over a pit, with the front tires on little itty-bity planks. Well, they might not have been quite so itty-bity since they did, after all, support the house, but there wasn’t much wiggle room, believe you me. And they forgot to tell me to get out of the rig before they started driving onto these little half bridges. Good thing the driver couldn’t see me, cause I was quite the nervous Nellie, let me tell you! And then, when I did go to leave, I realized the steps went to – uh, nowhere! I did eventually climb out, and in the end the news was good – there were no big alignment problems. Before we knew it, they had backed Lizzie safely off the little planks, and we were back on the road. However, we still had 6 days to kill before we were to head to our slightly late Christmas with the kids and grandkids.)
Since the wheel alignment was over early in the day, we thought we might take in one last San Diego sight – the Birch Aquarium (part of the University of California, San Diego campus.) It wasn’t anything huge like the Baltimore Aquarium, but it was very interesting and well done. I did have a little bit of trouble with the whole CO2 increase that they were somehow able to chart from 32 million years ago, but all in all it was a good stop. And if you thought my zoo pictures were pitiful – try taking pictures of moving fish through glass.


They did have a great seahorse exhibit which included some of these guys -


How cool are they?
The rest of the day we spent in the local Costco parking lot. For excitement we moved to a Walmart parking lot for the overnight. The rest of the week did not look too promising to me. Ah, but things were about to change!
We set off, driving up The 15 (as they say out here in California) -

We remembered an Escapee’s campground outside of Tamecula that we had visited last year when we were in the area. (Escapees is a national group of RVers – probably the largest in the country – that has many campground/resorts across the country. Most of the spots here are long-term residents who have bought into the resort, but there are usually a couple of spots available for us transient types.) Since we are members of Escapees, the camping charge is quite reasonable and we decided to give it a shot. We got their last available spot – and we LOVE it!
It was a little out of the way -

But look at the view we are blessed with -

We walked around today – it was cool, but bright and sunny, and were very impressed with this resort.

A little chilly for a dip, but the thought of hanging out in those deck chairs certainly was appealing!
Looking up from the clubhouse, here’s a view of just a couple of the almost 300 spots.

And here is our little spot -

Sweet.
Along with the pool there were also tennis courts, shuffleboard courts, pickle ball courts (I’m just reporting here), hot tubs and spas. The clubhouse was a meeting place for all kinds of activities – games every night, ice cream socials a couple times a week, lots of group dinners, a small library, a jigsaw puzzle in progress, and a fresh pot of coffee going all the time. But I confess, that THIS is the room that really caught my eye -

SOoooooo much better than a Walmart parking lot!

Ah, while our friends and family on the East Coast were getting hammered with an early winter snow storm, we were enjoying a lovely weekend, complete with blue skies and temperatures in the 70′s. This was our final weekend in the San Diego area and we had lots left that we wanted to see and do.
But before I share our weekend adventures, I wanted to share the view we get every time we leave camp. It doesn’t matter if we’re heading into San Diego to go to the zoo, or just driving to Jamul to pick-up a newspaper, when we crest the first hill, this is what we see -

Now to be honest, we can’t always see the Pacific Ocean for the “ocean haze”, but even without the shimmer of the ocean, it’s a very impressive view.

The spot where I took the picture from is also the spot where we can get cell phone coverage. Yep, it’s a pretty popular hangout!
But I digress.
We got a late start on Friday (due to having some work done on the truck), but since it was such a beautiful day we decided to drive out to Coronado.

We pretty much drove through Downtown and crossed over this beautiful bridge to Coronado.

Even the view crossing the bridge was delightful -


And looking back at the city after crossing the bridge-

Coronado is home to (among other things!) the Hotel Del Coronado, a true Victorian hotel built in 1888, that somehow has managed to keep its doors open through the years. The film “Some Like it Hot” with Marilyn Monroe was filmed there, and today it is a true “high end” hotel experience.


We thought we’d check out the interior, but first we passed this -

We were a little puzzled, but within minutes, it looked like this -

Oh, right. Ice Skating. Southern California. Yeah, I get it.
($25.00/3 hour session – including skate rental. Just so you know!).
We opted NOT to go ice skating, but continued on exploring the beautiful hotel -


The place was all decked out for Christmas -

We ended our time in Coronado with a lovely walk on the beach,


and then took the “long way” (down the peninsula) back to downtown and our next destination – The Gaslamp Quarter.

I was glad we got to the Gaslamp Quarter, but in all honesty, it wasn’t really our cup of tea. Apart from some interesing architecture

it was all pretty much expensive (and delicious, I’m sure) restaurants with a couple of pricey shops in-between. It was an interesting walk, but we didn’t come close to using up all the time on our parking meter. Good news for the next guy!
After a quick stop at an In-N-Out Burger joint (a little more our speed), we called it a day. We needed to rest up for our big ZOO day on Saturday!
So – the San Diego Zoo.
Lots of folks had recommended the San Diego Zoo as a MUST SEE for our time in the area. We were delighted when we were given two guest passes since we weren’t sure we were going to be able to spring the $70.00 needed for our two tickets. It’s a beautiful zoo – and we were exhausted by the time we left just after dark. I’m not very happy with the pictures I took, but here, without too much commentary, is a selection of Zoo Pictures.


(how come they are never looking at the camera?)

These guys spend a lot of time sleeping.

I think zebras are amazing.

The closer the camera got

the more amazing it was!
Sorry, but evolution just doesn’t work here.

This panda wasn’t looking at something on the ground.

She was sound asleep high up in the tree.
I hope she doesn’t roll over!

For all his humps, I thought he looked kinda cool.

Who you lookin’ at……?

And of course, the flamingos. Some of the ducks just come for the free lunch program!
We got there early in the day, when the view from the tour bus looked like this -

And when we left, it looked like this -


Yep, a good (and long) day.

---

After church today we packed up the house, ran the vacuum cleaner, dumped the tanks, and bungeed down the coffee pot. We have a week to kill before we get on a plane to see the kids and grandkids for an after-Christmas Christmas. Could be an interesting week.
But the good news is that wherever we might be driving, it most certainly won’t be in snow!

Stay Warm, Friends!