The CHRISTMAS Post!

As promised, here it is at long last. Be sure to click the embedded links that appear as different color text like this as some of them are photos not actually displayed but that you'll see if you click the link.

Allison and I flew to LA early on Dec. 22nd for a full 6 days of fun and excitement. The 7th day was reserved for travel back to the ATL due to the 4-hour flight and 3-hour time change. Leaving LA at 10:30am gets you into Atlanta at between 5 and 6pm EST. We didn't do a lot of tourist-type stuff like we've done other times. This was more a time to relax and enjoy time off with family, which is definitely what we did. The weather was a perfect sunny and 60's almost the whole time. Here are the highlights:

Mom and Dad picked us up around noon PST on the 22nd and we headed straight for the In N Out Burger on Sepulveda that sits right under the approach end of runway 24R at LAX. Awesome views of lots of big international aircraft buzzing your head while eating In N Out with Allison and my parents? Doesn't really get any better to me.

As usual, dad and I had a little "airplane dork" time taking pictures while the ladies waited patiently.


Singapore Airlines A340 Jumbo over my head!

The rest of the day, we unpacked, wrapped presents and spent time talking and laughing. Late in the evening, Ellen and her friend Steve arrived into LAX after spending some vacation time in the San Francisco area.

The next day, we all headed to Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade to do some last-minute shopping. There is also a street market with fresh produce and other neat market-type stuff.


Allison, Ellen, Mom, Dad and Steve.

After that, we ordered lunch at Cha-Cha Chicken and took it down beachside. What better than a walk on the beach after a meal? Every beach is a good beach according to Allison, even though only one of us actually went into the freezing cold Pacific.
Well, kind of.


Feet in the sand with Santa Monica Pier behind.

The next morning, Christmas Eve, Allison and I woke up early (as we were still on ATL time) and headed back to the beach for some exercise. We started at Venice Pier and jogged along the Marina del Rey beach. Afterwards, we had smoothies from the Cow's End, a local coffee shop near the pier.

Steve, being that he is orignally from Maine and likes to cook, decided to show us what a Maine "lobstah feed" is all about. So he shipped out 6 Maine lobsters as his gift to us. For Christmas Eve dinner, we all got schooled on how to properly eat a complete lobster.


The passing of the butter.


Lobstah Feed!

Everyone whimped out on midnight mass so we went on Christmas morning instead. Then of course it was time for presents. Everyone got exactly what they wanted and there were no returns and exchanges necessary. It was harmonious bliss! Yeah RIGHT! Really though, everyone was really happy with everything despite a few items that had to be exchanged for various reasons.


The aftermath!

Our Christmas dinner tradition of Beef Wellington and all the usual trimmings went off without a hitch. Unless you count the oven taking a dive, forcing you to call a neighbor who isn't home but gives you permission to use his kitchen, only to find out once you came back over from cooking at the neighbor's, your own oven was mysteriously working fine again. Yeah, other than that.

The rest of us happily played Scattergories while dad ran back and forth between the two condos.

On to the next morning. Ellen bought a new car back in November, and had just received her plates prior to Christmas. So with a few modifications, the plates were installed along with a little Texas touch.


With her new 2006 Volvo S40.

After that and another lunch at In N Out LAX, Steve and Ellen headed back to San Diego the day after Christmas.

Now what Winter vacation would be complete without a little winter sports? None, that's how many. There are a few options available in the LA area for skiing and we chose Mt. Baldy. Although there were only 2 runs, yes TWO, open, it was still fairly satistfying since none of us had been skiing in quite some time. It was a little weird riding the lift in some spots as there was a distinct lack of snow in most of the area.


Don't we look professional?



Riding down at the end of the day.
Notice the lack of snow.


After a hard day of skiing, we introduced my parents to Pei Wei at the Rancho Cucamonga location, near Mt. Baldy. Mmmmmm! Always good!

Then finally the sad day arrived. Time to go back home and back to reality. But I did manage to get some great shots of MdR (that's Marina del Rey if you don't know the lingo) on departure out of LAX.


Marina del Rey including the marina, with
Venice and Santa Monica to the north.


Now to start shopping for next year! Happy New Year everyone!

Christmas!

Hey everyone. Just a quick blog to tell you about a future blog.

Allison and I had a spectacular time out in sunny southern California over the holiday. As soon as I get a chance, there will be details (although concise) and pictures (hopefully not too many)!

Yey!

Stay tuned and refresh this page at least every 10 minutes from now until you see a new post.

Okay, okay, don't REALLY do that or your click finger will fall off and die due to the minimum of 2 days it'll take before I can get to it as I am on a trip and typing this from Allentown, Pennyslvania. :-)

Ottawa & Mini-Christmas

Wow, I go from not posting in forever and ever and ever to posting like 3 times in the past month! I guess I was in a blogging slump or something. And this will be the last post that I refer to the above subject matter. I promise. This one has a lot of pictures, BTW.

So lets see, according to my subject, this post is about Ottawa and Mini-Christmas. On my last trip this past week, one of my overnights included Ottawa, Ontario, eh. They really do say that up there. Anyway, last time I was up there (March 2005), I only had a camera phone so I took our real camera this time.

The weather, as you'll see, was much more mild this time around. No snow, and the temp was in the 40's. The guys driving the hotel van said they've had a real mild winter so far. My small walking tour includes the Parliament house and surrounding areas, which is Canada's equivalent of our Capitol building in Washington, D.C. I'll do some comparisons of the cell phone pics from March '05 (snow) to the ones from this past week (no snow).




Here's Parliament. Pretty, but I'm partial the ours. :-)


Okay, no more comparisons.



Ah, the Great Canadian Teriyaki Bagel.
Okay, so the Teriyaki place is separate.



Ha ha! Caught a Canadian picking her nose!
Seriously, our hotel is the red brick high-rise
called "Cartier Place."



Here's my "apartment."
It comes complete with a mini-kitchen
which is just to the right of this view.

And of course, what work photo series would be complete without a few airplane shots. I've wanted to get some night time stuff and finally had the camera with me at the right time. Here's the flight deck of N820AS, ASA's very first and "oldest" CRJ, originally delivered in 1999. I used the metal arm the holds the jumpseat in place to steady this exposure.



This next one is our beloved Bluebonnet, N868AS, which I flew to Ottawa on my trip. At least I think she's beloved. My theory is that Delta/ASA is too cheap to re-paint 868 even though there is no Texas base anymore. Incidently, this aircraft was dreamed up by a DFW chief pilot out of severe jealousy for N849AS, honoring the Atlanta base & ASA's 20 years (1999) with the ATL skyline and Stone Mountain. It was like, "Hey! they have one. Why can't we have one?"



And now finally to the second part of this entries' subject,
MINI-CHRISTMAS!

Since we are heading to LA on the 22nd and we don't want to lug ALL of our gifts out there, Allison "convinced" me to open a few presents Friday night after getting home from Ottawa. As you'll see in the photo, one particular gift wouldn't have been very conveinent to take, as it barely fits in our living room.



Camping, anyone?



There's room for three!

Okay, that's seriously it for now. It's taken me about an hour to do this post, including photo re-sizing, etc, so I need to get off and do something else. Like work on Christmas presents for moms and dads. ;-) Mwhahaha!

Feliz Cumpleanos

I'd put the tilde over the N in cumpleanos but I don't have a Spanish keyboard nor do I feel like figuring out how to do it. So you'll have to live without it.

Anyway, Allison and I ventured out to San Antonio this past Saturday and Sunday to visit my Aunt Kathy for her birthday, which was on Pearl Harbor Memorial Day. Not only that, Allison and my aunt had yet to meet each other. All right! Double Prizes!*

We arrived around noon, dropped our stuff at her place, hung out with her cats for a few and then headed for lunch at Order Up. They have awesome baja style tacos with cilantro, onion and lime. After that, we drove out to Boerne, TX, pronounced "Burny," and is found out northwest of SA on I-10.

The girls got in some good shopping and bonding time as I followed along, finding my entertainment in other ways. There were antique and gift shops, a weekend market with all kinds of Texas collectibles, including one with cool wrought iron stuff. Some of the items included a key rack made out of the end of a metal rake and a snake made from a chain with the end of two spoons for a mouth/head. We also took a stroll through the historic Ye Kendall Inn which had a very Texas Hill Country look and feel.


"Hmm, what could we sell along with our antiques?
DUH! Pickles of course!"


The famous pickle ladies posing by their sign.

After a driving home and a rest, we headed for the famous Riverwalk with the intention of finding dinner. We ended up just walking around enjoying the Christmas decorations because the prices and wait times were a little too long. Lots of people on the river during the holidays.





After deciding not to eat there, we ventured back towards Auntie's place where there was a good Texas BBQ joint called The Blue Cactus Cafe. Included with your meal was slightly too loud live music that you had to shout over to talk. It was quite tasty.

The next morning with all got up and enjoyed a big breakfast courtesy of our host.


Notice our friend Sammy's head in the bottom right corner.

Then we were whisked away back to Atlanta for a friend's Christmas shindig. It was a very fine weekend.

*see Pixar's Toy Story

Ancient History

Some time, long ago in the past, there was a guy named Dave. Well, there still is that guy, he's not gone. But he hasn't really made his presence known out there in cyberspace in quite some time. But today, that all is going to change with a nice long, colorful posting.

What do I have for you today? Why pictures of course! And what will these pictures be of? Why recent things in our lives of course! :-) Okay, enough with the small talk.

To post everything that Allison and I have done between my birthday in September (see previous post) to now would take too long for you to read and too long for me to type about. So I'll tell you about the last week or so, which will take me long enough as is.

For Thanksgiving, Allison went to Boise, Idaho. Incidently, Boise is pronounced "Boy-See," not "Boy-Zee" -- from what I've heard, the locals are quite serious about this. Most of you reading this already know so stop rolling your eyes and going "yeah yeah!"

She stayed with John and Michelle & Reganne (who live there now) and visited with her parents and Patrick & Lydia who came in from out of town.


Michelle, our niece Reganne and John


Allison's fine photography work of some cool Xmas lights

So what was I up to while she was in Potatoland? Bet you'd never guess flying! Well you should. Because I was. Started out at 6:05am EST in Columbia, South Carolina. Flew to Cincinnati. Turned around and went back to Columbia, then back to Cincinnati. Are you getting dizzy? Then it was on to Milwaukee, Wisconsin where we arrived around 1:30 CST for the overnight. We had gorgeous weather and flew right up the middle of Lake Michigan for a nice view of Chicago. Check out our flight path and see for yourself.

Anyway, my crew and I really only had one option for Thanksgiving dinner, the Sheraton hotel restaurant. There was only one chef working and the bar food was really the only stuff available. I went with the sausage and cheese plate, seeing how I was pretty much in sausage and cheese central being in Chicago/Milwaukee area and all. The Captain got the same thing when he saw mine. We kept talking like the Superfan guys from Saturday Night Live. Good times. Yes, they actually had a Thanksgiving plate with turkey and all that other stuff I'm not really a fan of. But we did all get a free slice of pumpkin pie. Probably due to the fact that we were practically the only people in the place and they had to get rid of it.

This past weekend, I finally put my new mountain bike to good use and rode it on a mountain. Most everyone sent me money this year for my birthday so the bike was my big b-day present so-to-speak. Thanks again to those of you reading who were kind enough to send me a gift. :-) My old bike has been handed down to Allison. If we get really serious about this, which, after yesterday, looks likely, we'll probably get her one that fits her a little better. But the old one is just fine for now.

Anyway, it was her first time to ride off road like that and she really enjoyed it, despite a rough start. The first hill at the start of the trail was insane, even for an experienced rider, and she's there trying to ride up it, which was my fault. :-( After a mental slap of myself, we opted to hike up the first part of the trail to some easier, more beginner-level grades. These were lacking in the stupid wood beams that the trail people put on steeper grades to prevent washout in the rain.

It's been too long for me and I was in heaven on the trail. Even more so, Allison had a good time and enjoyed herself, instead of just giving up and being frustrated, which would have been easy to do. But I'm always amazed how athletic she is as long as she can get over thinking she can't do something. Mom and Dad, you know what I mean. Paddle tennis? :-)

So see the post below for a few pictures. This all took place yesterday at the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area along the, you guessed it, Chattahoochee River, only about 5 miles from our apt.

Biking Pictures

Here are the pictures...


After loading the bikes onto the bike rack.


Allison on the leaf-covered trail.


Dave with his new toy.

Dave's Birthday Celebration

Happy Birthday to Dave! A few days ago it was Dave's birthday. To celebrate I flew out to see him on his over night in Melbourne, Florida. (darn there was a beach) (o: We walked along the beach in the morning and he flew us back with a superb landing. Here he is with our hotel, The Crowne Plaza, behind him.

To continue the celebration we went with our church group to Big Canoe for the weekend. It's one of our group member's parent's house in the mountains of north Georgia. We had a VERY relaxing time and we had some yummy red velvet cake (that I made). (o:

New Vinny Pics

Isn't he a cutie! He's gotten a little bigger since the first few pics. I'm not sure if you can really see the difference. In person you can see it a little better. He's doing well and our allergies are being nice to us. So, everything is good.

Anniversary ATL BNA Vincent Andrews, NC Pt. 3

***WARNING!!! If you have not read parts 1 and 2 of this Anniversary ATL BNA Vincent Andrews, NC series yet, scroll quickly down to part 1 and start there, then read part 2, then this one as the 3 blogs are written as if they were 1 large blog broken apart into 3 parts and it won't make as much sense if you start with, say, part 2. Thank you for your cooperation!***



Part THREE!!

I took my mountain bike up with us since Amy and Brian are also bikers. Brian decided he'd rather stay with his parents' boat instead of riding so Amy and I headed out for the 8-mile loop trail. Just as we got going, it started to rain. And it rained for a majority of our 2-hour ride. Needless to say, the trail was a tad muddy in spots. But it was one of the best rides I've ever been on. Check out the clean feet compared to the rest of me in this post-ride shot:



And here's my bike after the mud dried out:



Then it was time to try our hand at water skiing on Lake Fontana. We both did really well for our first time according to the seasoned veterans with us.

Allison first...

And then me...

Finally, a dusk shot from the porch of the house, looking at Lake Nantahala. It doesn't get much better than this.



I figured out, here on the last post, that if I make the thumbnail photos small instead of medium like the ones in the other 2 posts, it lets me post more than 3. Weird. Oh well. We hope you enjoyed reading and viewing. Stay tuned for more cuteness from Vincent. :-)

Anniversary ATL BNA Vincent Andrews, NC Pt. 2

Welcome to the continuation of the post below.

The next morning after the ATL, we got up and flew to Nashville to visit with Patrick and Lydia for a day or so. We went to Opryland land where the original Gaylord mega convention center/hotel/miniature New Orleans inside/etc is. I thought the Gaylord Texan in Dallas was big. After that, we drove down music row where all the big Nashville recording studios are. Dinner that night at the Watts' was fantastic and was followed by a game of Cranium and a rather intense Uno match.



After returning to the ATL from the BNA Sunday afternoon, we went to our normal Sunday group get-together. Then, even though it was about 9:30pm, we drove 45 minutes west, almost to Alabama, where we picked up our freshly-weaned-off-of-momma 6-week-old kitten whom we named Vincent, or Vinny for short. Here he is the following morning, checking out the porch for the first time.



He is absolutely the cutest thing ever. Yes, I said that. There's no better way to describe it. We take pictures constantly.

This weekend, that's still happening for another few hours as I type right now, we took a road trip up to Andrews, North Carolina, just south of the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. The aforementioned Sunday church group we meet with includes 3 other young kid-less married couples, one of which has parents that own a lake house in Andrews. Awesome! We all caravaned up Friday night and hit the lake Saturday. All of us have been married around a year except the host couple, Amy and Brian, who have been married 5 years.



If you're counting, that's picture number 3, so you'll have to scroll up to Part 3 to continue.

Anniversary ATL BNA Vincent Andrews, NC Pt. 1

Can you believe it? A post written by Dave? I know, I know, I'm amazed too.

Allison told me I don't have to go into major detail, just a summary, so here's our latest life happenings in summary form. This covers basically what we've done from our anniversary on July 23rd until today, August 6th, incidentally Dad Greene's birthday.

Happy b-day to him. :-)

So we anniversaried by going to dinner at Cheesecake Factory, Crystal Cruises-style. Appetizers, wine, entrees, cheesecake and coffee. After that, we had a drink at the Sun Dial bar/restaurant/observatory at the top of the Westin Hotel in downtown Atlanta, much like Reunion Tower in Dallas. We seem to have a thing for rotating stuff during romantic moments. Sorry, sorry, I'm getting out of summary form. Too many details.

Allison's folks came into town the next day. We ate our cake tops that were expertly stored and frozen by Allison's mom.



And in traditional fashion, we took them to the Georgia Aquarium, Allison's 3rd time to attend, my 2nd. I know it looks like we're at a strange Ikea, but this really is at the Aquarium.



Next, without explaining why we did this (there is one), Cindy, Drew, Allison and I queued the movie ATL. It's about these 2 inner-city brothers from "the ATL" (Atlanta) who are about to graduate high school, etc, etc. Here we are acting like thugs after the movie:



And now it looks like Blogger won't let me put more than 3 pictures in 1 post so I'll be breaking this up into pieces, which, as you read this you already knew since you probably read the post at top of the blog first where I instructed you to scroll down and read this one first. :-)

We've moved to Smyrna, GA

This pic is of Dave driving the truck that our friends let us barrow! They saved our lives! This was a pretty good sized truck with a diesel engine that Dave really enjoyed driving.

By the way our new home city is pronounced Sm-er-na. (o: We are excited about our new home (apartment). However, because we had to move so quickly after our trip we won't have internet for a little while. So... we'll catch up with everyone in about a week (or less) (o;

Let me just say... we are getting a moving company next time!!! Poor Dave had to lift sooo much heavy stuff with the help of some guy friends of ours. I was really impressed with how hard everyone worked. Also... I can't tell you how many steps we've walked. One flight from our old place and two for our new place. So needless to say we are TIRED!!! I started packing some last Wednesday and with breaks it took us until today - Tuesday June 27th to get done. In fact I'm getting ready to take a our last load in my car to our new place. Then clean, clean and we're done!!

As for our new information. I should be sending either an email or post card out to everyone to let you know it. Please email me if you haven't given me your new information. (o; Thanks!

Cruise Pics 1

Us on our Veranda on an informal night.

Here we are in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Here we are in London, England. Big Ben!

More to come... (o;

Official World Travelers

Here I am at 6:30am, wide awake and rested. Good old jet lag. It hasn't really been that bad actually, going or coming back. We woke up this morning at around 4:30am and I've been up ever since. Allison went back to sleep and is just now waking up again as I type this.

I wanted to let everyone know that Allison and I are safely back from our late honeymoon/vacation and will be posting stories and photos as soon as we can. We filled two 512MB memory cards for a total of around 850 pictures and you can expect to see EVERY SINGLE ONE. Just kidding. I'm usually pretty good at narrowing down through the smorgasbord.

Some of you may not have even known we were gone so here's a quick re-cap.

My dad, who works at Crystal Cruises, gave/gifted Allison and I with a cruise as our wedding gift last year and we finally cashed in as soon as Allison was finished with school this year. This was my 3rd cruise and Allison's first. We originally wanted an Italy/Greece cruise but it was overbooked so we ended up doing Scandanavia which turned out to be unbelievable. I've never been international except for Canada and Mexico so it was a first for me. Allison did 2 months of student teaching in Australia/New Zealand as well as Paris with her family when she was younger. So at least she's been on a long flight over an ocean before. But needless to say, it was still a big new exciting experience for both of us.

We'll post more details later but for now, here are the places we visited, some on the cruise, some while traveling to and from the ship:

Copenhagen, Denmark
Malmo, Sweden
Gothenborg, Sweden
Oslo, Norway
St. Petersburg, Russia (my favorite)
Helsinki, Finland
Stockholm, Sweden
Nykoping, Sweden
London, England

Overall, it was one of the best experiences of my life and Allison and I are truly grateful to everyone involved and that we were able to add another adventure to our travel log.