A Visit from Mike

Henry's son Mike came to visit for a few days. He works and lives in Tokyo, and was on his way to Denver for the holidays. Henry and Mike went to the California Science Center to see the shuttle.

We took a hike in the Deukmajian wilderness park near our house. It was a beautiful, crisp winter's day.

We had a lot of fun and hope Mike can visit for longer next time!

Birthday in the Desert

We took a 3-day weekend trip to the desert for my birthday. It was clear, sunny, and a very comfortable temperature for hiking. On Friday we visited "The Living Desert" in Palm Desert, where they displayed plants and animals from all of the deserts in the world.

 

 

  


On Saturday we hiked over 7 miles in the southern region of Joshua Tree National Park.

 

 

 We were hiking to the Lost Palms Oasis - a bunch of palm trees in a canyon in the middle of the desert.

On Sunday we took the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway up to Mt. San Jacinto. It took us up to 8500 feet, where it was kind of chilly - 50 degrees. But once we started hiking, the sweaters came off and it was gorgeous. We hiked up to about 9000 feet and then back down to the tram station where we enjoyed lunch in a restaurant with a spectacular view.

It was a great trip. Henry really indulged me for my birthday - he even agreed to stop at an outlet mall on the way home! Thanks, Henry!

Welcome, Christmas!

This weekend we welcomed in the Christmas season. We decorated the house...

And had friends over.  On Christmas Day I'm planning a gingerbread house decorating activity, so we did a dry run of the event to make sure I had the right materials. At first the guys pretended to not be interested...

 

 

but they got into it and helped. Look at these masterpieces!

 

 

 

I was cooking, so Henry pretty much did ours by himself. And he won the "best engineered" award! Take a close look at the roof - rather than waste a bunch of time decorating the roof to look "cute," he spent his time putting ridge caps on the roof to keep out the rain!

 

 

And no simple fencing for Henry. Note his classic midwestern fence. When asked why he built this more difficult fence, he responded, "To keep out the cows, of course!" Hahaha!

 

 

 

It was a fun evening, as usual. And a great start to the season.