Mitchel turned 9 at life is good

... surrounded by ALL his good friends

We celebrated with Hallway Hotel Bowling

Limboing

Cake Eating

And Pool time

Road Trippin' and Life is Goodin'

The boys and I made our first huge solo road trip driving from Santa Clara to Vancouver, Washington. We did it in two days, passing through the stunning Mount Shasta to rest in the not as stunning Yreka our first day.

Mount Shasta (as taken from an iPhoto while driving so can imagine it was much more fabulous)

Black Bear Diner agreeably the worst food we have ever eaten

Hills we ran through to move the worst food ever more quickly through out bodies

No pictures of day two driving through sleet, hail, lightening, wind and down pour. All hands were on the wheel. Here though are some shots from landing safely amongst folks we are crazy about.

There was Hugging

Repairs of epic proportions (Rob is amazing)

Cuddling to view small screens

Cruising hallways and lobbies

Hallway Hackey Sacking

Park Day Posing

Gamer IRL Time (seriously Xander was in with the gang and not sad and left out like he looks here)

ReD Rover Hotel Style

Some hallway spin the bottle (no worries there was not any kissing involved just talk of it)

Bed Jumping

Close Encounters with Canucks

We got word that the Canucks would be practicing at Sharks Ice 1:15 on Saturday, so we thought we would check it out, see what we could see. And indeed we could see them all on the ice, we were thrilled and if the day had ended there would have been just fine.

But it didn't! We waited for the team to exit and board the bus (the same one we had tracked down the night before) Being that we were in Shark territory there were not a lot of other Canuck fans around thus we were able get autographs from a large majority of the team.

Mitch was so not going to talk to any Canucks when we first arrived. Then he was taken over by the feeling of not getting the autographs and got right in to. On the way home he announced "Now that I have met the Canucks I won't be scared to talk to them the next time I see them."

Canucks in San Jose

Just after this video we had a chat with John Shorthouse. I think I was more excited to see him. He was standing right beside me and I said "oh my god, it's Shorty!" he looked over like we should know each other and I said "I just finished listening to you." he looked confused as Team 1040 isn't broadcast here, to which I held up my iphone.

I explained to him " we mute versus and pause the video to sync up with you and watch the game with you calling". He had a big smile and said "Oh Cool!" then Shannon explained that we were from Vancouver Island. Mitch was shocked and Shorty was Great.

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Location:Pruneridge Ave,Santa Clara,United States

And the Video Version

Picture style vacation shots

Island Adventuring! (all videos courtesy of Craig)

A Performance




We said we would bring sunshine with us .. and even though the temperatures where less then hot the boys convinced folks to jump on the trampoline in the sprinkler!

Spooky Video games

require close contact




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Packing

For to head to head "home" Most important things in first




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Spring cleaning

Shedding the excess

Before





After




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KJ's new look

His response "Wow I look good!"




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Beach Happy

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I am a monkey

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More beach bums!

The weather this week has been fabulous and we have all quickly forgotten that it is still January. Some of the locals tell us the temps are unseasonal but the sun is pretty normal.

One day this week we headed to Dunes Beach in Half Moon Bay and the crazy Loucks boys were actually in the ocean !

It started with some good ole fashion wave taunting ..

A quick clothing change (yes I had shorts that they both wore for the ride home but where unwilling to wear in to the water the logic of which eludes me) and then it was time for the real wave jumping. 

Later in the week we headed to Monterey to visit the aquarium (I have few photos as I could not figure out how to turn of the flash on the camera which is a requirement in most of the viewing areas) Needless to say there was lots of super cool things to see, talk about and a pose or two to be stricken .. 

And on the way back we could not resist the sunshine .. and the big sand dunes so we found ourselves at the beach for a couple of hours again .. though me managed to stay dryer this time