Christmas in Acton

We were in Acton for almost four days, arriving late Friday, December 23rd and leaving to come home around lunch time on Tuesday, December 27th. I'm really behind in posting, so this is going to be a quick rundown of our time away.

Our first day, Christmas Eve, was pretty low key. We hung out with Tom and Krystle and the kids; since both kids were pretty sick, we wanted to give them a bit of down time before all the Christmas activities were in full swing. I spent most of the day in my pajamas, playing with the kids, watching TV and catching up on blog posts. It was actually a really nice way to start the holidays, and even though I wasn't sick, I too enjoyed the down time :)

After dinner, we all got ready for our traditional Christmas Eve - going to church and then gathering at my parents house with family.

Nolan, all ready to go to church...
Krystle got Abby all dressed for church, and then had her sit on the couch so she could go get ready herself...it wasn't long before this happened...

Christmas morning was at Tom and Krystle's as well, and my parents and Aunt Mary joined us for the chaos ;)

I was taking a picture of Nolan in his new nightgown, I mean his new hockey jersey, and Abby got up and ran over to be in the picture too!

Another Christmas tradition in Acton is to go to my Uncle John and Aunt Jody's house for brunch on Christmas day. Brunch was amazing, as usual, and it was great to spend time with some extended family - our visits to Acton are usually quite busy, so we don't always get to see extended family.

We had Christmas dinner with my parents and Aunt Mary, and it was another great meal prepared by my mom!

Boxing Day has become shopping day - Curt and I didn't really get anything too exciting, but my mom got a new TV! My dad stayed home to look after Nolan, so he and mom decided on a TV they saw on a flyer, and then Curt and Tom made sure she got what she needed.

Tuesday morning we enjoyed our last few hours with family - Curt and I got Nolan a hockey game for the Wii, and he wanted to give it a try. Once Curt and Tom got the game all set up, this is what happened...
Curt and Tom playing the game while Nolan, dressed in his Blackhawks jersey, goalie pads and goalie helmet, watches and cheers on his dad! ha! Curt did try to get Nolan to play, but he just wanted to watch.

Curt and I ended up making a shopping stop on the way home, and had better luck on this second round of Boxing Week shopping then we did on Boxing Day!

The 17th - Birthday and Christmas

December 17th was a big day - it was my birthday AND we got together with Curt's side of the family to celebrate Christmas!

The day started out like any other Saturday, coaching. I'm not big on my birthday, especially now that I'm getting older, so no one at skating knew it was my birthday :) It was our last Saturday session before Christmas, so Santa visited the little kids - it was nice because I didn't have to worry about an actual lesson plan, once Santa gets on the ice things get a little crazy, and after he leaves we just play games with everyone on the ice. The rest of the day was lessons as usual.

After skating, I made a quick stop at home to get changed and gather things to take to the party. Curt and I had agreed that we wouldn't do birthday or Christmas presents this year because of our trip -then, before we went away, we found out that a local jewellery store was having a liquidation sale so we went to check it out. Curt ended up getting a new wedding band (his original band has two diamonds in it, and they keep falling out; after it got fixed this last time, he decided not to wear it so he doesn't loose the diamonds). While in the store, we found a beautiful tanzanite ring and Curt insisted that we get it! So that was supposed to be it, however, he went back to the store and found a blue topaz pendant (December's birthstone), and got that for me too! I know, I'm spoiled.

After opening my gift, we were off to Curt's brothers house for our early Christmas. This get together was just for the immediate family - Curt's parents, his two brothers and their wives, and our five nephews.

Once we were all there, the first thing on the agenda was opening presents! We stopped exchanging presents with everyone a few years ago, but my mother and father in-law still buy for everyone, and the aunts and uncles buy for the nephews.

I forgot my camera, which is really unfortunate because I would have loved to take pictures of the boys opening their gifts. Curt made some really cool gifts for them - they are big fans of superheros (Spiderman, Batman, Superman), so he printed some images from the internet onto transparencies and framed them...the boys were pretty impressed!

My in-laws gave me, among other things, some coffee for our new Cuisinart Keurig, and the storage drawer that I wanted for keeping the K-cups handy and organized.

After presents we had a great dinner - turkey and ham, and all the trimmings! Thanks to my MIL for preparing everything, and to my BIL and SIL for hosting, again!

Once the boys were in bed, the adults had an really nice evening - the boys always end up in the basement playing poker, and the girls end up upstairs chatting. This year, our girl chat revolved around Pinterest and blogging :) It was a great evening, and as always, both Curt and I reflected on how much we enjoy hanging out with his brothers and their families - we really should do it more often!

San Diego - The Other Stuff

Road Trip to Los Angeles

On Tuesday, we took a little road trip and went up to Los Angeles to visit friends. You may remember that one of Curt's friends, Peter, lives in Pasadena - our last trip to California was to be at Peter's wedding. So, we went to visit Peter and his wife Shauna and have dinner with them.

We arrived downtown L.A. around 3pm, and after a quick visit with Pete at his office, we went to check out some of the different districts downtown.

Right across from Pete's office is Pershing Square, home to 'Downtown on Ice'. Although I would never actually skate on one of these 'ice surfaces', I can't help but stand and watch the 'skaters' for a few minutes, and it's always a good photo op!

We ended up checking out the jewellery district and the fashion district while we were downtown. I wasn't impressed - I'm just not a city girl I guess.

We went back to meet Pete at 5pm, when he was done work - then we went up to check out the rooftop bar and patio at his office building. It was chilly, so we didn't stay for a drink, but again, there was a good photo op.
We had a really nice evening at Pete and Shauna's - they made us a delicious dinner and then we played some cards and visited. It was great to have a chance to visit them, especially because they're not coming to Ontario for Christmas.

Coronado - The Hotel

On Thursday, following our round of golf at Coronado Golf Course, we went to see the historic Hotel del Coronado.

Whenever we travel, I check the book '1000 Things to See Before You Die' for local attractions - Hotel del Coronado was one of the places listed for the San Diego area. I didn't know much about the hotel before reading about it in the book, and online, but it did look familiar when I saw pictures of it (it has been featured in movies and books).

Does it look familiar to you?

The place is HUGE, so I had a hard time getting a good picture.

While checking out the grounds of the hotel, I found the perfect spot to coach figure skating...

Not too shabby, right? Finish skating and you're steps from the beach and ocean! However, you can see how wet it is...it was a beautiful sunny day, so the ice was getting pretty soft.

Downtown San Diego

Thursday was a pretty busy day - after spending a good portion of the day in Coronado, we then went to check out downtown San Diego (well, parts of it anyway).

We had talked about checking out the U.S.S. Midway - an aircraft carrier turned floating museum (it has over 60 exhibits and 25 restored aircraft) - but our time was limited, so we just took some pictures from afar.

We also got to see the statue 'Unconditional Surrender' - a 25 foot statue that commemorates a famous WWII photograph.

After taking a few pictures of Curt and I standing beside the statue, I admitted that I wanted to be one of the typical tourists and take a picture of the two of us re-enacting the kiss...

I didn't do a very good job of matching the nurses pose.

And with that, I'm done my posts about our trip to San Diego! I'm way behind in posting these, but I know I will be glad to have these to look back on. I LOVED San Diego, and I know I will always have fond memories of this trip!

San Diego - SURFING!

That's right, Curt and I went surfing!

Curt has talked about trying it out on a number of our trips (Myrtle Beach, Florida and the last time we went to California), but it has never actually happened. I've never really thought much about it, and just assumed Curt would try and I would watch - but I'm so glad I decided to try it with him!

I'll be honest, I was terrified! We tried indoor surfing in Florida back in January, and it was the most painful experience ever. I knew the ocean waves wouldn't hurt as much as the forced pressure of the indoor waves, but I still thought falling would hurt. And, I don't even like going swimming in lakes in the summer because the water is too cold, so I figured I wouldn't make it past my ankles in the ocean in December. But, it wasn't painful at all, and the fact that a wet suit can keep you so warm is amazing!

Surfing was our Wednesday morning activity - we had to go first thing in the morning because that is when the waves are best! So, we met our instructor on the beach in Carlsbad at 9am. We started with some instruction on the board while on the sand, but we were in the water within 20 minutes probably. Although there wasn't a lot of instruction, I would totally recommend paying an instructor (we rented the surfboard and wet suit and got our lesson as a package). The best part of having someone with us is that he knows the waves, we would lie on our boards and wait for the right wave - he would tell us when it was coming, tell us to paddle and then push us into the wave so we would have enough speed to actually catch it and get up. Curt managed to figure this part out by himself, but I was so focused on just standing up, I wouldn't have managed to catch a wave by myself.


I have no idea how many times I had to try, but I did eventually get up on the board!!! I was pretty excited and threw my arms up in celebration, which made me fall :) Curt got up too, a lot sooner then I did, obviously!

Trying to get up...
Up, but looking VERY unsteady!
Looking like I know what I'm doing!
Curt on one of his many times up!
Curt, looking like a pro.
After our surfing - I had a lot of fun, but I was pretty happy to be out of the water at this point, I was getting pretty tired!


And as if surfing itself wasn't cool enough, we also had a pretty close dolphin encounter while we were in the water!

Curt and Justin, our instructor, had a dolphin swim within 10 feet of them!!! I was headed away from them, trying to catch a wave, so when I realized what was happening I was about 50 feet from the dolphin, still pretty exciting! Even Justin was impressed they got so close - he said that doesn't happen often.

We didn't get any pictures because we didn't have our camera in the water with us at that point. It all happened pretty fast anyway, so I don't know that we would have been able to catch it at the time.

But, after we finished surfing, we were driving down the coast and saw some more dolphins so we stopped to take pictures then.

One of the better pictures...you can actually see more then the dolphins fin.
This was, without a doubt, the highlight of our trip! We're already planning on trying it again in March when we're in Florida.

San Diego - Golf - Round 2 & 3

That last post was getting a little long so I decided to break up my golf post :)

We played our second round of golf on Thursday, and we played Coronado Golf Course.

The views at this course were almost as stunning as the views at Torrey Pines. Torrey Pines is elevated, so you get cliff side views of the ocean...Coronado is at sea level, so you get a totally different ocean view.

A few photo worthy views...

One of the other amazing views you get throughout the course is of the Coronado Bridge; Coronado has an island feel, but it's actually a peninsula - the bridge takes you across San Diego Bay.
Curt making his second shot on the 18th hole...good thing it was low tide!
Just to prove that I was there...and because I like the palm trees :)
We played with two men, George and Steve, and really enjoyed their company! George had to quit after nine holes because his back was bothering him; Steve played the full round, and because he was a local, he had lots of interesting local knowledge to share with us.

Notice the buildings in the background? The locals call those 'Taco Towers' - when they were originally built, none of the locals wanted to buy them (they are ocean front, but pretty ugly), so the builders went to Mexico and sold them to wealthy Mexicans!
I think our round at Coronado was probably my favourite round of the trip. Torrey Pines was amazing, but I was playing so poorly it was more about the experience then the golf. I played a lot better at Coronado, and it was a great experience, so it takes first.

Our third round of golf was on Friday, and we played the course at our resort. We were originally going to play another round at Torrey Pines - this time the North Course - but decided to keep our last day of vacation a little more low key. Playing the resort course allowed to sleep in and have a relaxing morning, which was nice.

The course was actually an executive course - I think there were 11 par threes! It would have been great to warm-up on this course, we did things totally backwards.

Curt, loving life!
No ocean views at this course, but plenty of mountain views!
And, this always happens...we have hardly any pictures from our last round! Oh well, there is no shortage of pictures in this post anyway!

San Diego - Golf - Round 1

We played three rounds of golf on this trip, and we played at some pretty spectacular courses. Our first round of the week was on Tuesday, and we played the South Course at Torrey Pines - home of the 2008 U.S. Open!

Torrey Pines is a municipal course, owned and operated by the city of San Diego, but because it has hosted the Open and hosts a yearly PGA event, it's quite popular! As a result, they have a different way off booking tee times, you don't just call the Pro Shop, and it seemed pretty complicated.

We wanted to play in the afternoon because there is a reduced twilight rate - so, we had to show up first thing in the morning to get our name on the waiting list (we got there just after 8am to sign up then we went and got breakfast and did some shopping), then you have to make sure you are at the course around noon when they start calling names for the twilight tee times. There is really no guarantee that you'll get on, so, we decided to go to the course on Tuesday, that way if it didn't work out, we could try again later in the week. And, although it all seemed pretty complicated, we got on that first day...and, we got off at 12:40pm, the second twilight group!

Curt making a great bunker shot on the third hole - the signature hole.
Making my birdie putt on the third hole. I missed the birdie, but made the par putt!
Just south of the course is Torrey Pines Gliderport - so, we saw a lot of people out paragliding along the cliffs. We looked into doing this before our trip, but it was a little too expensive!
A picture of the scenery...and Curt and I.
We finished our round just as it was getting dark and we got to see a beautiful sunset while we played the last few holes.

In hindsight, we should have played Torrey Pines later in the week - had we known that the different way of getting a tee time was actually pretty easy, we would have done things differently - it would have been nice to have a little warm up before taking on such a course (especially considering we haven't swung a club in a few months). I didn't play well at all, but I decided just to stop keeping score and enjoy the experience...that was a good decision! Curt played really well though, he shot a 92!

San Diego - Welk Resorts

First, a little note to add to my last post...the adventure we had getting to airport, and catching our flight, pretty much ended there - we didn't have any other major issues. We were told that our car rental reservation had been cancelled because we showed up late, but they still had cars on the lot, so it wasn't really an issue. That would have happened even if we had caught our original flight though, so we can't really complain (we didn't realize that we had to give a specific time of arrival, so we just entered 9am on our online reservation; they cancel the reservation if you're not there within six hours of that). Our original reservation was for a Jeep Wrangler, but because they wouldn't give us the deal we found online, we ended up with a Hyundai Elantra. I think we're pretty practical people, so we realized it was probably a lot better on gas anyway :)

Our trip to San Diego was another Timeshare getaway, and once again, we were VERY impressed with our accommodations! The resort we stayed at was part of Welk Resorts - we stayed in the Mountain Villas, the newest units on the property! I think this is probably my favourite of the three places we've stayed now; however, it may have to be tied with Stormy Point Village in Branson, just because the two resorts are so different - you can't really compare the two.

First, our room...

A view from the front door.

A view of the sitting area. Those pictures on the wall were amazing! I would have loved to bring those home with me.

Our bedroom! Soooo nice. And you'll notice this is the second fireplace in our unit! We used both of the throughout the week - it cools down quite a bit in the evenings, so it was nice to have those on at night and in the morning.

We also had a full kitchen. We enjoy this aspect of staying in timeshare units rather then hotels; it allows us to have a few meals 'at home' so we can save money by not eating out three times a day.

Needless to say, we were very comfortable here for the week!

Now, for some pictures of the pool area...I wish we could have taken advantage of this area a little more. We had some pretty busy days on this trip, so we didn't really get to lounge by the pool. And although we had great weather, it wasn't really hot to the point that you needed to go for a swim to cool down (although our last day there was pretty close).

The pool and members clubhouse/presentation center.

A few of the Cabanas available for rent - these would be great if you were staying there in the summer!

Look closely...notice the water slide just beyond the pool! No, we did not go down the slide :( We were usually at the pool in the evening, to use the hot tub, so the slide wasn't open.

We did take advantage of the hot tub...I think we used it every day!

Another area we didn't take advantage of, but thought it was great...the kids splash pad! Curt took the liberty of turning on the water, even though the water was freezing, so we could see how everything worked.


Although the pictures don't really do it justice, hopefully you can get an idea about how beautiful this place was! I would love to go back, but, we have a lot of other places we want to visit too! How are we supposed to choose?!?

Let the Adventure Begin

To my faithful readers: I am WAY behind in blog posts, so, I'm cheating...I'm going to try to get caught up over the next few days and I'm going to back date my posts until I'm back on track.

I actually wrote this post on December 3rd while I was on the plane, so here it goes...

It’s our first day of vacation, I expected it to only be a day of travel; however, it’s already been an adventure worth blogging about.

We arrived in Acton last night and spent the night at Tom and Krystle’s; this morning, we had a chance to visit with Krystle and the kids (Tom had to work), and my mom. We left for airport around 9:15am, plenty of time to make a 12:20pm flight….or so we thought!

The drive was going great, and we both commented on how it always seemed to be a quick drive. Then we got to the border, and things CHANGED! There is a lot of construction happening on the Canadian side of the border, so at one point, we were down to just one lane. We were crawling along, but figured once we got past the bottle neck, we would be fine. Unfortunately, the bottle neck last a lot longer then we expected and even when it did open up in to more lanes, things were SLOW! The clock was ticking, and I was getting nervous.

Beside us to the right there was an empty lane – yes it was blocked off with pylons; yes, it was clearly marked ‘Trucks/Commercial Vehicles Only’…I don’t deny any of that. I joked with Curt that we should cut into that lane and fly through. Then, we noticed a Saturn Ion do just that…then it was a Lexus…the last straw was when we saw a minivan in that lane…that was enough to make Curt cut through the pylons! We fell into line behind the Lexus and minivan. Our rationale, we were desperate! It was getting so close to our flight time that we figured we either pay a ticket for using the wrong lane at the border (not sure if that’s what happens, but that’s what we told ourselves?!?)…or, we miss our flight and have to purchase new tickets (again, not sure what would happen if we actually didn’t make the flight, but we figured it would involve forking out more money to get on a new flight).

So, we’re sitting in line and along comes a Border Crossing official…he spoke to the driver of the Lexus, who then handed over his passport (which scared us, a little), but then he walked to the van and spoke to them briefly. When he made it to us, and asked if it was commercial entry, Curt stated ‘no’ and we were in trouble! He wondered why we had gotten into that line, but took no sympathy on us when we told him we were going to miss a flight…his response, he told us that if we had made it to the booth, the agent would have made us ‘go inside’ and we would have been busy explaining ourselves for at least an hour and a half. After some more stern lecturing, he told us we were getting a ‘huge break’ and he was going to let us merge back into the lane to our left.

Well, at his direction, we merged in front of a vehicle with two ladies in it….and, the passenger felt it was necessary to give us another lecture?!?! She was complaining that she had been waiting in line for an hour, and we shouldn’t get to merge ahead of her… Curt was driving, so he left his window down and listened to her yell at us...I think he was just smiling and laughing at what she was saying. I was already a little annoyed by this point, and couldn't stand getting yelled at by some random person. So, I leaned over and stated that we had also been waiting an hour, and as a result, had missed a flight…I think I then thanked her for letting us in front of her…or something like that?!?!

After the normal questioning from the Customs Officer in the booth, we got another little lecture, but it wasn’t too bad (and besides, we were getting used to them by this point)…and, we were on our way!

Curt did his best to get us to the airport QUICKLY, but, it was to no avail.

We started the self check-in process at the Southwest counter, but when Curt entered our confirmation number in the computer, it quickly told us that we had to check our bags in at least 30 minutes before a flight. At this point, the ticket agent turns his attention to us and asks what flight we were trying to catch…when we told him, he remarked that ‘seven minutes before a flight takes off is not adequate time to check-in’! Here we go again, another lecture! How many is that today?

Thankfully, he then proceeded to search for a new flight for us and we explained what had happened. Within a few minutes, he was able to tell us that we would be able to catch a flight at 2:20pm, it would take us to Phoenix, Arizona…once there, we would have a 40 minute layover, and then we could catch a flight onto San Diego. I don’t think I relaxed until I heard the magical words ‘there will be no extra charge to you’!!!

So, from there, things proceeded as they should have originally. We grabbed a bite to eat at the airport (Curt had a beer, and I was tempted to join him, just to calm my nerves). Boarding the plane went well, although Curt and I didn’t get to sit together (not something we could complain about, given the circumstances). I’m typing this in Word as the plane descends into Phoenix, I’ll post it to Blogger when we have internet access and we’ll see if I have to add to the drama from here or if we’ll simply make the connection to San Diego and get on with our vacation!?!?