Monday, April 03, 2006

Live from San Diego! It's the adventures of Adriel, Christina and the kids.

I'm down in San Diego for the next few days attending the "Portals, Collaboration & Content Management" conference - since I have some extra time on my hands I thought I would try and catch up on this blog!

Keep reading, because this entry will be a long one. On tap today are the topics of San Diego, Flying, Awana Grand Prix, and of course the Baby Miriam update. (Not necessarily in that order)



I'm staying on Coronado island just off the San Diego bay, my meager accommodations are the famous Hotel Del Coronado. The waves of the Pacific are soothingly crashing on the sand just outside my window. OK, pretty nice life, eh? Except I'm down here on my own so there isn't really anyone to share it all with - except you who are reading this bloc!

What's a portal? Well, it's the next best thing on the Information Technology outlook - that according to the first presenter today. The second presenter was a little more realistic. In reality, all of us web designers have been making portals for years, the industry is just now getting around to giving it a term and creating portal development toolkit softwares. Anyway, that is my "going in" thought. We'll see what the conference brings to light over the next few days. :)



After the sessions today I walked about four miles down the peninsula of Coronado Island. There is a naval amphibious base that I walked past (even saw a stealth ship in berth) as well as a Navy airport on the other end of the island. There was a helicopter flying circles around the island all day, I assume providing security for the bases, I'm sure that everyone around here just gets used to that. I would love to take a harbor tour cruise, but I'm not sure that I'll get the time to do that while I am here.


OK, next topic: Awana Grand Prix!



Last weekend was the pine car races, and the kids both did great. A few weeks back I had the kids pick out a match box car each and that is what we modeled their pine cars after. Abbie had a bright yellow car that our friend Jeremy helped cut on his tablesaw and I finished up. David had a cool dark green car with lots of aerodynamic features (dad went a little crazy with the Dremel tool on this one). We learned that creating pine cars takes a lot of time, next year we'll get started much sooner. But in the end both cars worked great. Both kids won trophies for design - Abbie came in first for her class in this category and David came in second in his class for this category. David's car won the first heat, he was beaming with pride, and was able to participate in the finals.




Want to see the action? Here's a video clip of Abbie's heat (her car is the yellow one closest to the camera) and a video clip of David heat (his car is the green one closest to the camera)

It was a pretty fun day for all of us, even Miriam participated. (By the way, Christina cut her hair, it's pretty cute.)



Speaking of Miriam...

... She's starting to smile once in a while now, it's very cute. I was lucky enough to get her to laugh with me the other night, that was special. Now I am continuously making obnoxious sounds and coo's to try and get her to repeat this little trick while her mommy is in the room - to no avail.

She's seven weeks old now! It's amazing how fast time goes - we're almost out of the "two month window" - that time when life starts to feel back to normal. But we're not quite there yet, so there's still a lot of sleepy times for all of us.








Now, for my "hobby" - RC Flying


The weather has been improving a little around here (you heard about our snow at the beginning of March right?) and I've been able to get out to fly with my flying buddy Jeremy a little more often. My earlier plane, the P-51 Mustang, took a nose dive after a radio malfunction a few months back. I replaced it with a cute little biplane which is also an excellent flyer. Jeremy has a new plane as well, I'll close with these pictures from our trip to the field last week.





4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hotel Del? Coronado? I'm so jealous! I used to hang out down there all the time when I lived in San Diego. Coronado Island is one of my favorite places in San Diego!

Might I recommend you visit Cafe 1134 right there on Orange Ave.? Great place. I used to meet students there all the time!

Have a great time Adriel!

Adriel and Christina Henderson said...

Brian - I will check that out tonight! Any other great ideas for things to do in the evenings here? - Adriel

Brian Eberly said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

If you can get back across the bay to Seaport Village, that is a very cool place to kick around. It is directly across the bay. You can either take the ferry over or drive back over the Coronado Bridge. Fun place!