Oprah!

My cousin Chelsea was able to get tickets to the Oprah show. Last Friday I got a frantic call from her asking if I could meet her and her mom and my sister in Chicago for an Oprah show on Wednesday. It was an amazing experience to go through the process of security, waiting, sitting in her audience and seeing Oprah. The guest on the show was Kirstie Alley who was once on Cheers and Veronica's Closet. It was a funny and lighthearted episode which made it all the more exciting. After the show was taped, Oprah stayed and visited briefly with the audience. She thanked us for getting babysitters making the effort to get to the taping. This was such a great bonding trip for the 4 of us girls, I felt incredibly lucky to be with such amazing family members.

2010

Have I mentioned that I really love even numbered years? I always feel more optimistic and excited when the year starts off "right". We traveled to Iowa for Jude's first birthday this weekend. While Matt and I had meticulously looked at weather forecasts and road conditions we ended up traveling on horrible, snowy, icy roads. It was the worth the journey to spend some quality time with Lucy, Jude, Chris and Sarah.

Christmas Eve 2009

The order of the blog is confusing for the next sequence of dates, but it all began with my Cousin Brett getting engaged this summer and informing us that the wedding would be December 30 in San Fransisco. We had a family vote and decided that we wouldn't have any gift for Christmas but rather a vacation to San Diego and San Fransisco. It was an experiment of sorts. So, on December 24th we flew from Omaha to San Diego and spent that day at Coronado Beach. The weather was in the 60's and one of us braved the icy cold ocean.

San Fransisco

Matt and I were able to go to my cousin's wedding San Fransisco for a few days and celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary. It was so much fun to be with the Albertson group sans children, not that we didn't miss them all, but we are slightly more fun without them. Our hotel was downtown in the middle of everything so we did many tourist type activites such as: riding a cable car, going to fisherman's warf, toured a brewery, went across the golden gate bridge, ate at interesting places, hung out in Haight Ashbury. Mostly, it was fun to be with family and be able to talk, laugh and celebrate the new year.

Sea World

The third day of our Christmas Extravaganza was spent in Sea World, which was much less crowded, thankfully, than Disneyland and more educational. We rode some of the fun rides and went to the sea lion and otter show that our entire family laughed outloud with. I was disturbed by the lack of any recycling in the park and designated smoking areas in a park that was supposedly about animals and their environment. As it was the 3rd park in 3 days, perhaps it was my grouchiness or lack of patience with people but I thought Sea World missed the "boat" on teaching anything important in terms of ecology. Bah Humbug,

The Christmas that never ends.

THe day after Christmas we made a mistake, we went to Disneyland. We knew that it would be crowded but we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. I have truly never seen so many people in one place for such a period of time that only continued to increase as the day went on. It was fun to be there and ride on the familiar rides, Saylor fought Darth Maul in a Star Wars Jedi Academy. After waiting nearly 2 hours for each ride and feeling like we couldn't catch our breath because it felt like there wasn't enough air, we gave up and went back to our hotel.

Christmas Travels

We spent Christmas Day in Legoland, San Diego, it was really outstanding! As we drove up to the gates, we were all curious what the park would be like, the only thing we were sure of was that we would see lots of legos. The rides were terrific along with areas to build with legos, play video games or take a robot class. Another plus was that it was not crowded at all, we never waited in a line for any of the rides and we all had the same favorite ride!