Thanksgiving thanks

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

We are spending this Holiday with Bill’s family in the mountain, like we do each year. He has a big family; four of his siblings are here. Ben and Eva are having a blast playing with their cousins. Bill’s mom lives in the Big Bear area so the weather is quite different from San Diego…it is cold and wet! We even had a hail storm yesterday. Personally I’m loving it, it reminds me of Switzerland, plus I don’t feel guilty staying inside for the WHOLE day. After living in San Diego and Modesto for all these years we are not ready for cold climate, my children don’t even own a sweater! We have a lot to get ready for our skiing trip in February!

We’d like to send our thanks to all of you for reading our blog and leaving little notes to let us know you visited us. You are the ones who motivate us to keep blogging, thank you!

Also a very special thank to our blog designer who created this blog and taught us patiently how to use it. Without her we wouldn’t have a place to share our adventures…thank you!

Sylviane

Fish and lobster!

Last night me and dad were hoop netting
and we cot 22 lobsters and 2 fish in
the hoop nets! All of the lobsters were too small to keep.We saw krill type things
in the boat. We could only keep one
fish it was a calico bass.
I’ll tell you what those krill things are when I find out. We saw some blue and turquoise glowing spots too.
ben

Huge bat ray!

Two days ago me, Eva and dad went hoop netting.
The first thing we cot was a small sting ray, later we cot another.
Then latter I hauled the hoop net and I said: “its heavy.”
And dad said: “your doing grate.” Once I got it up we were
getting splashed. We looked to see what it was… it was a huge bat ray!
ben

Lobster fishing

Bill and the children are gone lobster fishing. They took the hoop nets and the bones and head from the bass that Bill had caught last night (let's say early this morning...if Bill can't sleep he'd rather be fishing!) and bundled up to stay warm. Eva was yawning big tonight at the diner table but she still wanted to go. Both were so excited! They love fishing... I personnaly enjoy eating the fish but it's about it. The bass was delicious, by the way, especially that Bill did all the cooking...what a guy!
I would have taken a picture of my mighty fishermen but couldn't find the camera...sorry!

I'll let you know if we'll have lobster omelette for breakfast tomorrow but for now I'm gonna got read a good book and enjoy the silence!

Let me know if you have a good book to recommand....now I have more time to read!

Sylviane

the open ocean

We saw 3 seals on the ocean . On the boat there was no wind, we needed to roe. I rowed too.

Eva

a job for Ben

Last month in malibu we wanted to go to the beach so Dad got some keys and locked the bus and we left. But when we came home the keys Dad took
where the wrong ones! So Dad put me on his shoulders and he told me:
"Go in the window but don’t bump the mirror, and give me the keys that are on the pop-up counter". so I went through the window and gave him the keys.
Ben

Hoop nets!

I was like a kid with new toys last night. I went to West Marine and picked up a few things that have been on my list for a while now. I wanted a flare gun, air horn, and running lights so I can go out at night. I even found good hoop nets at a good price so I got two of them. Um, one for Ben and one for Eva. Gotta tell ya, I am happy they have hoop nets now!

The store only had the red and green running lights, I did order the white light (it shines all around, 360 degrees) and should have it in a few days. Last night I turned the red/green light fixture to face to the sky even though it is designed to face foreword. When it is facing foreword the red and green can be seen only for a span of 120 degrees each. This means that the back third of the boat shines no light. By turning the running light vertical the red and greed each span 180 degrees. Having the lights span 180 degrees may not be a strictly legal way to display the lights, but it was safe.

I simply had to take her out last night to see if I would get lucky with a bit of wind. With luck I may find a breeze to push me out to the mouth of the bay to test out the hoop nets. After some bobbing around for a few hours, completely enjoying the view, I ended up rowing back to the boat ramp……. with no bugs in the goodie bag.

Tonight we get another date night! Heading out to see a play called “defending the caveman”. Looking foreword to seeing it.

Bill

Man overboard!

Yesterday when I was sailing with Eva and our friend Ari, on the way back I
was standing on the bow holding the rope and I lost grip and fell into the water
but before our boat was too far I got hold of the side. I couldn’t climb back onto the boat so Ari helped me.

Ben

Campfires

There is something about campfires that is good for the soul.

Every night we sit as a family and Sylviane (sometimes it’s me) reads a book out loud before the kid’s bedtime. We have been reading the series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little house on the prairie and such) lately. The other night we had a campfire going and decided to read out by the fire. Eva, especially, seems to like the fires.

Bill

Legoland

Yesterday we made a visit to Legoland and had a nice time. Grandma and Grandpa came to our campsite on Sunday so they came too. Sylviane and I even got a date night Sunday! We hit the Hard Rock Café for some drinks and food, then headed across the street to see "Burn After Reading", anyone else seen it? After the movie we stopped into a very pleasant Spanish restaurant call Sevilla. The cool thing is that the Spanish atmosphere brought back lots of fond memories for Sylviane. She went to Spain often as a kid on family vacations and also went there as a young adult. We discussed how awesome it would be to travel there.

Saturday would have been Dad’s 84th birthday. Brought back some touching memories for me. We all sang happy birthday for him.

I bought some wheels that strap onto the bottom of our sail boat so I can just push it down to the boat ramp, then back to our RV spot when finished sailing. I like to be able to just go whenever I feel like it and not have to load it on and off the car. The kids and I have been out sailing several times, I even took a midnight sail by myself one night, very cool stuff!

I am spending more time than I expected at this point to wrap up the church project and there are still plenty of bus project that need to get done. I try to tackle a few when I can. I did get my computer/work desk installed last week. Now I have a work station that allows me to be more efficient. We even have the printer working. Next on the list is to adjust some of the plumbing, and get an awning set up over our slide out.

Bill

San Diego

San Diego is a great place to be. There is so much to see and enjoy. We have been quite busy but I bet that you have noticed...we haven't had time to blog!

The weather during the day is like summer time. We are enjoying the pool, beach, bike rides, sailing trips on the bay...

During the week the kids and I went to sea world to spend the day. We used to have a year pass when we lived here before Modesto so it was nice to go back to our favorite places like the bat rays pool. It was feeding time so they were all staying near the edge and we got to pet them on the head and hold on to their wings and go for a ride....well, not quite! We also spent a long time watching the manatees eating lettuce which reminded me of a story that my good friend Sophie had told me. They were watching the manatees being fed a bunch of lettuce when her oldest son, who was little at the time, asked her: "Mommy, when do they add the salad dressing?" ....too cute.
Did you know that the manatees were the creatures that the sailors, after spending many days at sea crossing the Atlantic, mistaken for mermaids??
We got a little too cold waiting for the Shamu (killer whale) show to start so we decided to go to the playground instead and come back an other day to see it. We live so close to sea world we can bike there which we'll probably do next time to save the parking fee!
The kids each pick an animal that they saw during the day to do a report on. Ben chose the bottlenose dolphin and Eva the sea otter.

Another great thing about San Diego is our old friends...it's so wonderful to be back!

I better go to bed...I've got a birthday party to go to tomorrow!

Sylviane

The church

This is a picture from Modesto....it is the church that Bill has been working on for 2 years. Gorgeous, isn't it? This picture shows many of his great accomplishments....see them all? The best ones aren't the biggest in size!

Sylviane