The day after Christmas Shannon’s sister and family (husband and 4 boys) came to town pulling a Toy Box trailer full of 2 quads and 5 motorcycles. The next day, along with Shannon’s brother Dave, his two kids and their Christmas quad and motorcycle, we headed off to Johnson Valley which is a huge tract of BLM land ~25 miles this side of Barstow. Final tally: 3 dads, 7 boys, 2 girls, 3 quads and 7 motorcycles. It was a blast!! When we got there it was FREEZING cold and windy. We set up camp, rode for a while, then built a fire and had steak and potatoes for dinner. We watched Harry Potter 5, then went to bed. I slept in the Campervan. The propane heater kept it at a comfy 70 degrees while it dipped below freezing outside. I put nobby tires on my KLR 650. It is better suited to street riding, but it performed admirably on some pretty rugged trails. I bashed the skid plate pretty hard several times and at some point I smashed a bracket that connects the rear brake pedal to the frame. Should be an easy fix. At the end of a 20 mile ride we had a “race” across a dry lake bed. I got up to 70 mph and held it there while Don caught up to me and blew by at 90 mph on his new Yamaha WR450F. I thought about assuming an aero position and chasing him, but passed on that idea. Dylan loved shooting his new pellet gun and riding his cousin’s Honda 80s. Gavin launched his rocket that he got last spring and loved flying around on Hannah’s quad. Grace’s riding was limited to a short ride on my bike with me. She was all about archery and watching movies on this trip. I told her I would pay her $2 if she could hit a box with an arrow. Seemed like a safe bet, but she quickly got the hang of it and I had to cap her payout at $10. The weather improved over the next two days. We climbed a pretty sizeable peak with the boys. Back home the ladies shopped, went out to eat, went to movies, built furniture, hung paintings and relaxed.

Check this out!!!

…appears to have gone viral and crashed?

We had a fun marathon day at Disneyland with cousins and Papa and Lolo Wednesday. Tuesday was a pretty rainy and there was more rain in the forecast, but it was the last day before the holiday blackout days for our annual passes, so we took the kids out of school and went anyway. We showed up at 9 AM and left around 9:30 PM. It wasn’t very busy, so we got lots of rides in and a couple shows: Billy Hill and the Hillbillies and Aladdin. Aladdin is way cool. It’s a quality, Broadway-like performance in California Adventure. Very well done, lots of cool effects and very fun. We went on California Screamin’ (my Disney fave) twice including once in the front row. Hulk at Universal Fla is still my absolute favorite ride ever, though we haven’t made it to Tatsu at Magic Mountain, yet. Grace got some face time with the princesses. The weather cooperated. We missed a short cloud burst while we were on Indiana Jones, but other than that it was sunny, a few clouds, and it misted for 20 minutes or so.

Saturday Grace and I went to our annual Nutcracker ballet. Grace was excited that her teacher was bringing her daughter to the same show. We went to our favorite Chinese restaurant for lunch then headed to the show. Grace saw her teacher and got a chance to chat before the show. It had much more of a “community production” feel to it compared to Oregon Ballet Theater. OBT still crushes the Nutcrackers of Ballet West (UT) and the San Francisco Ballet. We were on the 8th row, so we got a great, up close view. Also on the plus side, it was 5 minutes from home, we parked close and it was 70 and sunny. Grace still had to wear the red coat, cuz she just looks so cute in it. Plus the temperature dipped into the low 60s as we were leaving.

The boys went to the Getty with cousins and Shannon had a quiet house for ~4 hours.

Saturday night was the church Christmas party. PRIME RIB!! It was fun and the food was amazing.

Shannon, Dylan and Gavin saw the Kings-Canucks game at the Staples Center last night. Kings won 4-2.

Gavin’s soccer team won their last two soccer games of the season yesterday. Gavin, who played defense all season, got to play forward in the first game. He scored the game winning goal, his first of the season. He had an assist on the other goal of the game and 5 or 6 beautiful passes. Suddenly he felt a lot better about soccer. He played goalie the last quarter of each game. Let one past and had an awesome save. They lost their first playoff game, so these games were for final placement.

It rained ALL DAY Thursday. I guess it was the wettest storm in 3 years. It’s supposed to be back up to 80 in a couple days.