Grace has another acting gig for the next few days. She is in a local production of The Pirates of Penzance. She is one of the daughters and is having a blast with it.

Yesterday we went to Katie and Randy’s wedding at the LA temple. It was a beautiful ceremony and they make a cute couple. Mom and Dad run a gourmet market in town, so the grub at the reception was AMAZING.

Dylan and Grace made me steak and baked potatoes for lunch. At church they gave Dad’s Root Beer to all the dad’s. It’s made with real sugar like the Pepsi Throwback…tastes way better than HFC.

We took the boat out Thursday afternoon to make sure it’s running smooth for Powell later this summer. Happily she ran like a champ.

Put up some photos of Greece on FLICKR.

Finally made it home at 1 AM this morning after ~16 hours of flying and 5 hours of waiting around airports. Had a wonderful time in Greece and Turkey.

Here is a quick list of cities, sites: Greece: Corinth, Epidaurus, Nafplion, Olympia, Athens, Sounion, islands of Crete, Santorini, Kos, Turkey: Ephesus, Istanbull (sort of), back to Greece: Thessolonikki, Meteora, Delphi and back to Athens all in 13 days. More details and photos to follow…

We drove up to Lincoln, CA for the weekend to spend some time with Boatmans. For all that Ty has been through, he looks great. He is energetic, witty and fun to be around. Turns out the nurses were watching him on the security camera while he played hockey with his cousins. They knew he probably shouldn’t be doing it, but they could tell he was loving it and couldn’t bear to tell him to stop. So there he is with his IV tower, central line going into his chest, mask over his nose and mouth doing an outstanding job as goalie in the play room. He is undefeated!! Shannon and Grace spent all day at the hospital Saturday while the boys played with the older cousins at the house, then went over to the hospital for the afternoon and evening. We cheered on the Canucks together. How cool is it that the hospital has the VS channel? Sunday morning his white blood cell count made a stunning bounce and he was released from the hospital. He had been in for 11 days and was thrilled to go home. It was great watching him run into the house and out the back door to see the puppies and check out the new hot tub. He still has a long road of treatment ahead, but judging by his determination and the support of his family and friends, he can handle it. Love you Ty!!

Gavin got a penalty in his game Saturday night for tripping. Dylan also got a penalty that night for hooking.

Grace’s birthday week is over. She had dinner with cousins at downtown Disney, family birthday dinner at her favorite Chinese restaurant and friends and their family over for dinner on her actual birthday.

The temp got up to 100 degrees yesterday!! It’s some kind of out of season Santa Ana thing that will go away tomorrow. It’s only 97 degrees today and tomorrow and the rest of the week is supposed to be in the upper 70s.

A win tonight advances the Canucks in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Dylan and Gavin had sucessful hockey games this weekend. Grace started volleyball with Shannon as assistant coach. She’s a natural at it and has found her new favorite sport. Mom was a HS volleyball star and couldn’t be more proud. She also started practices for the Pirates of Penzance. She is singing with the school choir, too. Thought we were going to dodge the American Girl thing, but she suddenly got interested just in time for her birthday.

Shannon and I saw Mamma Mia at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood Friday night. It was fun, but the production value was pretty low compared to the MM we saw in San Fran 7 years ago. That was the original Broadway cast.

Local signs of slow down:

Next to the 10 freeway in Fontana there are nearly 2 miles of Union Pacific locomotives lined up end to end. They’ve been idle for several months now. Near Anaheim there are miles of idle train flatcars near the 91 freeway. Only 5 films are scheduled to be shot on location in LA this YEAR. Last year there were 15. There are 2 retired air force bases in the Mojave Desert ~50 miles from where we live that have 100s of commercial passenger jets (United, American, Continental, etc) that are being mothballed until business picks up again. We drove by one of the storage areas on the way back from Mammoth over Christmas. It was weird to see rows and rows of commercial jets parked out in the middle of nowhere.