It's Christmas Eve!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Happy Birthday Cindy & Leslie,
and the rest of you Christmas week birthday folks!

Happy Holidays!

It's hard to believe we've been in our home for one year as of Dec 21st! Time flies!

We fixed up and sold our condo, had a bunch of fun guests in the Spring, worked insanely on our yards all summer, drank a few drinks by the pool, took an RV trip up the coast all the way to Monterey, survived the fires which roared all around San Diego County while we were gone, hosted some more fun visitors in the Fall, I was more than swamped with my Soldiers project for 3 months, took a cruise for Rick's birthday, and now, celebrating Christmas. What a year!

Life has been very good to us this year, not sick, no accidents, and we hope you all able to enjoy these holidays with loved ones, family, and friends.

Just a reminder: Our home is located in Vista, California. If you still have our Carlsbad, CA, address, that is our condo which we sold. (I know it's tough with us moving twice in 2 years!)

Check out Santa's Blog I found, it's really fun! http://clauschronicles.blogspot.com

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Mexican Riviera Cruise

We just returned from a Mexican Riviera Cruise! Ronee and Bob went too. We celebrated Bob's 60th Birthday, and Rick's 58th during that week.

Here's some pictures!

If you look real close you should see the cliff diver here in Acapulco - there IS a guy in mid-dive! (click on pic to enlarge it):


Z-land:




Happy Birthday Rick!

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Paul & Mary Visit

The Schunders are here.... busy busy --- here's some pics for now.

Sunset at the Simionis:



At "Torrey Pines State Reserve"











At the wineries:



Look at the size of THAT diamond ring above!

At the "Wild Animal Park":

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CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS FOR THE TROOPS! Check out my "Aunt Nancy" BLOG!

; HEY, IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN!

Want to help??

Check out my new "Aunt Nancy Adopt-a-Soldier" Blog!

Here it is!
http://auntnancyusa.blogspot.com/

I wish I would have thought of THIS a year ago! It's sure helping though, with the 500 new emails I've received in the last few weeks due to DISNEY'S "FAMILY FUN" magazine publishing my website in their November 2007 issue about Christmas traditions!

This picture is of the 18th Military Police Brigade with stockings many of you helped provide! They were passed out after their Christmas Eve candlelight service on December 24, 2004. The 18MPB just returned to Iraq last month for their 3rd deployment there! They could sure use our support!

Consider helping even just a little -- maybe an extra Christmas card or two this year.....

Take a look at the new Blog and tell me what you think!

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN! A boy and his dog...

GOLDIE:
"She ain't nothing but a houndog!"


Guess who!

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Almost back to normal

San Diego is getting back to normal this week. Here in Vista, other than some ash making everything a bit dirty, we'd hardly know anything happened while we were gone.

Certainly there is NOT a quarter inch of ash on the ground as our neighbor described... well, OK, maybe in some corners where the wind blew it. And, we'll probably get more ash off and on over the next month or so.

Here's what we found when we got home. There is a very thin, just dirty looking, bit of black on everything. You can see some gathered around the step by our pool.

Rick spent some time hosing down the patio, and cleaning the pool filter which was packed with soot. We had to wash my car, and clean some of the driveway where Goldie lays down. Plants and the house have soot on them, but, our normal ocean breezes should clear that off. A good rain WOULD be nice!

Here you can see black at the bottom of our pool where the "creepy crawler" vacuum had not yet cleaned. I'm sure it was totally black bottomed a week ago.

The hurricane category 2 level winds did blow things around, and THAT's what made it so awful during the fires. But for us, we lost one umbrella that we left open, one fell over, and one, also left open, is just fine! That's it!

Dang, this umbrella cost us $6.00!!! :-)

I suppose if you click on the photo to enlarge it, then look real close, you can see our chairs were covered. There is also some soot in the stamped impressions in the concrete.

Paul and Mary: come on out!!


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Visiting Frank's "The Tile Studio" in Monterey

We were able to stop in Rick's cousin, Frank Di Mercurio's tile shop in Monterey. We surprised him! His brother John lives down in San Diego/El Cajon. Their Mom and sister came in from Detroit for a visit last month. Their Dad, Bud, worked with Rick's Dad, Desiderio, in the tile business in Michigan.

What COOOOOOL stuff Frank has! Take a look.... can't wait to go back when we can stay longer! I could spend some money here! :-)

Now, if you dare, ask Rick about the Truck ride back to Vista!

After our week of adventures, we are ready to get home and see our house. We saw several burned-out areas along the I-15 just 10 or so miles before our neighborhood. Apparently, one fire jumped 14 lanes of asphalt and concrete in the wild winds. We saw homes with splashes of red/pink fire retardant on them. Our home is OK; just dirty and soot is everywhere. It smells more like a campfire here than the places we stayed during the week.

Here's the day by day events of the fire:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071028/news_lz1n28inferno.html

Here's a Google Fire Map.
Our home is located almost exactly where it labels our city "Vista", inland from Carlsbad, along the 78.
I think Google is updating the info daily.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&ie=UTF8&om=1&msa=0&msid=114250687465160386813.00043d08ac31fe3357571&num=1000&ll=33.151349,-117.111511&spn=0.823223,0.997009&z=10

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Further North: Big Sur, Carmel, Monterey

Night-time card games in the RV. (Ever play "Skip-Bo"?)



Tall Redwood trees at the campground




Golf anyone? Pebble Beach




After 80 HOT degrees the day before in Carmel,
the weather changed quickly!

Meanwhile, down in San Diego, schools and businesses are closed, and the fires kept raging. Should we have returned????? We have no TV, internet, or even cell phone service here in the Big Sur campground we are at. Once we drove into Carmel, all of our phones started buzzing with messages from worried friends who could not reach us by our home phone, and it took many tries to get a cell phone connection (plus the Officials were asking people to keep phone lines clear). Of course me not being on the internet really added some fear!
I stopped in the Carmel Library, used their internet for the posting below.

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RV Travels up the Pacific Coast to Santa Barbara

Wayne and Gunde Stewart, our neighbors, traveled with us and were the best tour guides! They have lived out here 35+ years. We toured "The Getty" museum, the Santa Barbara Courthouse, the Mission, stopped to see the Monarch butterflies that come in this time of year, and the giant elephant seals who also make a stop for a few months in the Fall.


"The Getty" in LA -- Gunde and I think we should build a reflecting pool like THIS between our houses at the top of the hill! (Rick says: "Put it on THE LIST")



The Santa Barbara Courthouse is worth the visit!
r


We stopped for lunch at Moro Bay

REALLY BIG Elephant Seals! (Not like those little guys down in La Jolla!)


Our campground sunset over the ocean -- we could hear the waves crashing all through the night (OK, AND the train.)

Butterflies (can't see much here). Sometimes THOUSANDS cover the trees in Pismo Beach.


Everyone knows where HAPPY COWS live!


Meanwhile, back in San Diego, the fires rage on. We thought long and hard about turning around and heading back, but everyone suggested we stay put where we were safe. Roads are closed or dangerous everywhere anyway, and we could get stuck trying to return. We had each other, Goldie, and our 2nd home with us, so in a worse case scenario, we would still be OK.

So, we continued on.

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