Welp, I figured I’d be reporting from our new rig this week, but no dice…it’s still at the dealer getting serviced. I guess RVs have recalls on them all the time (comforting, right?) — a light switch here, a transmission there — so the dealer is making sure that everything is up to date before they toss us the keys. Last I heard was that it could be Monday or Tuesday next week before it’s ready for us.
This past Tuesday, we took a family trip to Fry’s Electronics. Emily had saved up enough cash for her own iPod Touch, so she was eager to make her purchase:
I’m not sure why it was so much fun going to Fry’s, but it was. That place is like a carnival of electronics.
The rest of the week was school and work as usual. A big achievement though was getting our first iPad app finished and off to Apple for review (the app is an SLR camera simulator intended to teach people how to use an SLR camera…it’s basically a pimped out version of something I’ve had online for a couple years). Now we’re just waiting to see if Apple accepts or rejects it.
By Friday, the girls were eager to start working on their Christmas stockings:
I thought everyone’s turned out great. I was very proud of them:
Plus, it was a fun night. Everyone was in a good mood even though it was late (10pm is usually “grumpy hour”) and we even had Charlie Brown-esque Christmas music playing in the background. For the first time this month, it felt like Christmas.
On Saturday, we spent the afternoon in Monterey, starting with a picnic lunch at this nice little park:
We tooled around on a surrey for an hour. It was a lot of fun and a lot of exercise (5 passengers but only 4 peddlers):
We were in Monterey a few weeks ago but it was pretty drizzly that day. This time, it was a beautiful day and the weather was perfect.
After we left Monterey, we took the “17 mile drive” through Pebble Beach which has several scenic stops along the Pacific coast.
Finally got to see some whale spouts:
…and the famous “Lone Cypress:”
More cool scenery:
There’s nothing special about this house (other than it being awesome) or this particular photo, but ever since we’ve been in California I’ve been struck by the grandeur of some of these houses. There are big houses in Indiana, sure, but these are like celebrity mansions with butlers and stuff. And there’s hundreds of neighborhoods of these. Everywhere:
Natalie has become obsessed with cleaning the floor around the kitchen area. She’ll sweep it a few times a day and then get down on her knees with a wet washcloth. I thought the day when my kid would do random house cleaning would never come.
Today we spent most of the day in Santa Cruz, mostly at the Seymour Center at UC Santa Cruz. It was basically a science and marine biology learning center-type place. I thought it was great, and the girls seemed to have a good time. Here’s a skeleton of a blue whale that beached itself in 1979. I should have gotten a different angle here to capture how enormous these animals really are. Almost dinosaur-like:
Em got to pet this shark:
More hands-on sea life:
On the way home, we picked up a Sunday paper. Amy’s really been into reading local California news lately, especially since we’ve been around silicon valley. The business section is particularly interesting, as it talks about what Facebook, Twitter, Google and the likes are doing like it was (and is) local news. It’s times like this that I feel a million miles away from Indy! 😉
I’m officially on Christmas vacation starting tomorrow, so I’ll try to do a few things around the RV to get it ready to turn in to the RV dealer. But we’re otherwise just crossing our fingers that the new RV will be ready by Tuesday so we can move in and get on with our travels. We’re planning on meeting Amy’s sister Sherry and her boyfriend Clint in Vegas next weekend, so we need to get heading that way.