Flooding in the Balboa Fun Zone & Ferry

Rarely do you have to drive "up" to get on the 3-car ferry.


Yes, this is not good.  High tides plus 2 weeks of persistent rain is a bad combination.

Rachel - 10 months and growing up way too fast.

Our son, the Underline(r)

Das Boot

How'd you like this to be your view on Christmas Eve?  

A little background.  Our family has been long time sailors, but alas, the wretched sea lions defeated our recent sailing endeavors by repeatedly climbing on my Dad's sailboat.  Grrrrr.

  

If you've read my blog for long, you might remember this. A few of these big guys on my dad's sail boat and let's just say you'd be sunk.  It's a long story, but what it came down to was that my dad sold his sailboat and started looking for a boat with higher sides.  You know, the "no seals are allowed on this boat" kind of sides.  

So... my Dad did the unthinkable and started looking for a motor boat (gasp!) and bought one this week.  Yeah!  My devoted Mr. Garland got to help dad pilot the boat 30 miles to it's new home in the Newport Harbor.  It was a tough job but someone had to do it.

  

The devoted Mr. Garland (sitting) with the former owner of the boat.

My dad at the helm. So many switches and controls, so little time.

 Some sights from the open ocean:  A bi-plane buzzed over the boat and turned his smoke on.

The Hunnington Pier.

An off-shore oil rig.

A large (but mostly empty) container ship.

Home sweet home.  My dad can't wait to grab a good book and take a nap on his new boat.

Hopefully he won't have any sea lions joining him.

Christmas Morn

My parents joined us for Christmas this year.  

My Love and me.  We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas-y Kiddos

For Christmas, all our sweet Rachel asked for were her two front teeth.  She got what she asked for... and more!  She's got 1-2-3-all FOUR front top teeth busting through her gums, all at the same time.  Yikes.  Talk about painful and drool everywhere.  She's being a trooper though.

Boy did we have fun today celebrating Jesus' birthday!

Christmas Eve

This sweet kid-performed Christmas play made me smile.

Also, this digital nativity story was pretty cool too.

I adore these two sweet sisters.

Happy birthday Jesus!

Merry Christmas!

Balboa Christmas Boat Parade Weekend

This year's boat parade was wonderful... again.  This was the most interesting float we saw.  Dad called it a 'lamp' but it was quite the shapely and leggy 'lamp' with those blue high heels.  Hmmmmm.

It was really tough to take photos of moving boats with Christmas lights on them... at night!  This was one of my better shots (or so I thought)... there were plenty that I had to delete, though.

It rained most of our time in Orange County (and it continues to rain).  We're getting quite the soaker this week.

Mom, Sarah, Jeff (holding Rachel), Zac, Josh and Dad on our viewing perch, the neighbor's roofed front porch, sharing a plugged-in-and-turned-on-high electric blanket while the rain came down and the boats came by.  Mom made great food for us... all boat themed meals (potato boats, celery boats, mushroom boats, avocado boats, etc.).  Leave it to my mom, she's so great at that sort of stuff.  So much fun... thanks Mom and Dad!

You'd think we lived at Legoland.

We basically do.

Here's a cute "Elf Yourself" surfing Christmas ditty just in case you have 59 seconds to waste.

December 10 on 10

Ever since 10-10-10, I've wanted to participate in this 10 on 10 photo assignment (basically, take 10 random photos on the tenth day of each month).  I thought it was a fun way to document an otherwise normal (and even perhaps boring?) day with photos.    To see the beauty in every day life.  Well, here it is, nearly Christmas, and I took photos almost 2 weeks ago on 12-10-10 but am just sitting down to post them now.  I find it nearly impossible to be very timely on taking photos, downloading them and then posting them to my blog.  Oh well... I'd like to continue this, but don't be surprised if you see my January "10-on-10" photos posted in May sometime. Or maybe never posted at all.  Sigh. 

(the traveling wise men - in a new spot every day - who knows where they'll show up next?)

It's tough to get 6 smiles... all at the same time.

(Christmas photo outtakes.)

The "good" (or at least the "as good as we could get it") one coming soon.

La Jolla Children's Beach

We visited the much talked about Children's Beach. The controversy is that it's supposed to be a Children's pool, but seals really like it too. So who wins?  (Dad, I know your opinion on this one!)

Here you can see people on the beach, with people also on the sea wall.  It really is a beautiful spot.

On the sea wall... we saw several seals sunning themselves on the rocks below.

And I just realized that all 3 of these photos show the back of Zac's head.  Not intentional at all.  Ha.