Dixie & Marks Annual Trip

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

On Friday, January 17, Dixie and Mark arrived for their annual visit. I love that they have this conference every year and that they make the extra effort to come to San Diego for a visit.

They arrived in the morning and we just sat and visited until Lisa got home from work. We then headed out to the Point Loma lighthouse.

We checked out the visitors center adjacent to the parking lot and then the museum adjacent to the lighthouse, we climbed the stairs and took a look at the light and then we watched a beautiful sunset.

When we were done at the lighthouse we headed on into Point Loma and had dinner at a restaurant in Fishmans Landing.

On Saturday we headed down to check out Balboa Park. Lisa and I really wanted to see the newly renovated Botanical Gardens but we also checked out the organ pavillion and most of the country houses plus a couple of museums.

On Sunday they came to church with us and then headed up to Las Vegas right after an early dinner.

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Worms frozen for 46,000 years in Siberian permafrost came back to life as the soil melted.

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Youth Fireside

Monday, February 17, 2025

Sunday (Jan 5) we kissed Kira and her kids good bye and then we tried to recover our house before the youth fireside that evening. We try to have a fireside for the youth in our ward every month or two but this fireswide was being broadcast from Salt Lake. We were trying to find a place where we could have it. When no one was volunteering, I talked to Lisa and she agreed that we could have it at our house.

The only problem was that after having dozens of kids in the house for two weeks the house was not ready to receive guests. To make matters worse, our Chinese kids were all coming home from their Christmas break in China so we had to do their rooms as well.

When I came home from my meetings, I saw Linda Bessey cleaning our toilet. I guess when they announced the fireside that evening at our house she knew that the last of our kids were leaving that morning and figured we would need help. She showed up on our doorstep unanounced. What a good friend. In the end, the house was beautiful when every one arrived.

Our next problem was that way more people arrived than we had planned on and people were tucked into every corner. It was a bit miraculous but in the end I think only me and one other person didn’t have a seat.

After the fireside, I asked the young men to haul the folding chairs into the back yard so we could have room to maneuver. Many of those young men had been to my backyard back when I first started to work on my yard. It was fun to see them reminising. They were pointing to where they had dug out a tree trunk or where they had dug up brush and where they had helped to haul out a huge pile of dirt. I was glad that they were able to see what finally became of their hard work. My back yard is beautiful, but it only happened with the help of a lot of people. Especially the Andrew family.

--------------------trivia--------------------

NASA's Parker Solar probe hit a speed of 692,000 kilometers per hour. That is fast enough to travel from New York to Tokyo in under a minute.

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Palm Springs

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Out of the blue, mom got a text message from Monetta Smoot. She moved to Utah several years ago so it was a bit of a surprise. They had a condo booked in Palms Springs but had to leave early so she thought of us and asked if wanted to use the rest of her week.

By this time we were down to just Kira and her three youngest kids and we thought it would be fun. We got there early enough of Friday evening that we could relax a bit and enjoy some time in our own semi-private hot tub. That was nice.

The condo is a part of a huge hotel complex. I think it was a Marriot. Part of the hotel has part of a lake inside of it and they gave boat rides around the lake. The boats actually pass right outside our back door. Do you see the goose inside the hotel?

Around noon on Saturday we headed back to reality but we had Peter and Many over for another one of their rootbeer tasting activities.

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The son of a pro ball player is eight hundred times more likely to make it in the majors than some other random kid.

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Muscle Beach

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Since Charlotte arrived from St Louis after Christmas, and would have been travelling alone, Brandon & Ally asked Ronnie if he would travel with her. This would be less stressful for Charlotte and would give Ronnie time to spend with his son. Ronnie really wanted to see Muscle Beach (at Venice Beach) so we planned a trip to Hollywood. On Jan 2nd we headed up to Muscle Beach. The plan was to see Muscle Beach then head over to Rodeo Drive and then to Hollywood Blvd and check out the Chinese Theater and the Stars on the sidewalk. I also wanted to see the HOLLYWOOD sign.

From Hollywood we planned to head on over to downtown Los Angeles. We wanted to see The Angels Flight Railway, The Last Book Store and the Grand Central Train Station and eat at Phillipes because they are all supposed to be cool. We were running out of time so we dropped Angels Flight Railway and Grand Central Station and chose to eat at Phillipes and check out the bookstore.

Muscle Beach was quite interesting. You have to be pretty confident if you are going to work out there.

I did think that this body builder looked pretty good.

While chekcing out the shops at Muscle Beach, we came across a street show. It took a lot longer than I wanted to be waiting, but it was a great show. The grand finale was this guy jumping over the backs of eight men. The guy third from the left is Ronnie.

This is Rodeo Drive. From here it looks pretty much like any other fancy street, but the names of the shops are all big names and you can’t just walk into many of the stores. They need to come to the door and let you in.

The stars on the sidewalk. We didn’t have time to stop and check them out.

The Hollywood sign on the side of the mountain.

The bookstore was very cool. I couldn’t possibly describe all of the fun little things they have done like making tunnels out of books but the amazing part is that the book store is in what used to be a bank.

 They even have books in the big walk-in vault.

Phillipes was amazing. The place is famous for their Beef Dip sandwich so that is what I went for. It lived up to its reputation. If you’re ever in Los Angeles you should check it out.

They even had old-fashioned phone booths. We found Santa making a call in the middle phone booth. I suppose when this place first opened back in 1908 these phones booths probably really worked. 

We got home very late, and Brandon and his family were leaving early so he made them load up the van before they could go to bed. They were NOT happy, but I think he was smart. They would have been much more upset if they had to load it the next morning at 4:00AM.

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A Scram Jet could fly from New York to Beijing in 19 minutes

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New Years Day

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

On New Years Day we had a relaxed morning and then headed to Old Town to donate 
at the Giving Machine. This year we bought some chickens and some school supplies.

We wanted to hang out at Old Town for a little bit so Brandons bunch headed to go tide pooling while we checked out Old Town and then we went to join them.

Unfortunately, google maps was confused with the name of the beach and we ended up at two different tide pools. Because low tide was so late in the day, we didn’t have time to relocate so we checked out two different tide pools.

As always, there were a lot of sea anemones.

We were lucky enough to find a few good sized star fish.

It was too hazy to see much of a sunset but the lights on the pier were quite amazing.

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Abalones (a snail) have 5 butt holes

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New Years Eve

Monday, January 28, 2025

On New Years Eve, Kira and her family and Brandon and his family decided to get some family pictures done. Kira’s bunch headed out in the morning and Brandon and his bunch headed out in the early afternoon. They both went to Balboa Park. I’ll try and remember to share those pictures once I have them. While in picture mode, Lisa and I decided to get a picture of us with all the grandkids who happened to be there.

Coincidentally, we were just at Kira’s house, and saw a picture of Lisa and I with all our grandkids back in 2014 (or somewhere around that time). At that time Kira and Brandon were the only ones who had grandkids. It is interesting to see the difference between a picture of mom and I with Kira and Brandons kids then and ten years later.

In the evening we played games and partied. We also danced as you can see in the picture above. Well, some of us danced.

Some of our activities were dancing, a ring toss, tossing rings onto the reindeer antlers,

catching donuts on a string

and then we cheered in the New Year.

---------------------trivia--------------------

there are more possible moves in a game of chess than their are atoms in the universe

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Beach Day

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Sunday, Dec 29, was just a normal church day. Well, I guess it wasn’t normal for mom, she gave a talk. It was my month to conduct so I am the one who asked her to talk. She wasn’t exactly thrilled and as we got into the very busy time with the kids who were home, she was even less happy, but, she gave an amazing talk and had so many compliments on it that in the end I think she was glad she did it.

It was even more special since two of her kids and several grandkids were there to hear her.

Monday was beach day. We went to the Del Maar beach because they have those beach chairs with big balloon tires for Evan.

Most of us had a ton of fun. The weather was beautiful and winds were calm but the water was VERY cold.

The kids loved playing in the sand.

The adults loved the sun.

A few of the brave (or foolish) headed into the water.

Once we were numb, though, the temperature of the water could be ignored.

The waves were perfect for body boarding. A bunch of us braved the cold water and had a ton of fun in the waves.

Peter and Many joined up with us.

Poor Alley has had stomach pains since she arrived in San Diego. At the beach the pains got so bad that she couldn’t ignore them anymore. She headed off to the VA hospital for some help.

As it turned out, all they wanted to do was give her some pain killers. Ally forced them to do more testing, and finally, the doctor diagnosed her with some random unrelated problem. I don’t remember what.

In the end she had the test results sent to her VA office in Texas and then she joined us at home. The Texas office ended up giving her a call and told her that she had gall stones and she should never been released from the hospital. From here it gets very complicated because in the end the VA hospital in Texas hasn’t done anything either so I don’t really know what is going on.

On our way home we stopped at an ice cream place so we could be even colder than we already were. 

Once we got the kids settled in, the adults headed out for dinner at a very swanky restaurant.

Other than missing Alley at the beach, it was a great day.

--------------------trivia--------------------

Piranha are actually timid fish. The chance of a human being killed by piranha's are infintisimally small.

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