The Web 5 Christmas Adventure 2013

About five years ago our family decided to build a family adventure for Christmas, rather than focusing on individual gifts.  We have invested in travel and adventures to new places.

This winter we spent the actual Christmas Eve and Christmas Day playing games and hanging out with our family here in Boise.  Then we took our Webster Family Geeky Adventure just after Christmas and we enjoyed the best that Las Vegas and Los Angeles had to offer.  I'll just run through some of the highlights.  Maybe not what you might expect from those two cities.

Las Vegas With Our aunt, uncle and cousins 
Josh is a test pilot, although we don't really know what he does.

The National Atomic Testing Museum
We learned some things none of us knew before that. Probably the sound track for this adventure would be a clicking geiger counter.

Discovery Children's Museum
What a great hands-on experience.  All of us had a great time building and testing things out.  There was something fun for each of us.  One of the highlights was a tower with about 15 levels of science demonstrations.

Los Angeles Highlights

Evening walk at Sunset Beach.

Early morning run at the beach (Hannah and Heather)

Hanging out with the Stephens family
We enjoyed two days hanging out with Andre, Beth, Jason, Micah, and Torrey.  What fun.  We played everything from basketball to charades and mostly enjoyed just sharing life.

Touring Biola University
We walked from the Stephens house and recounted tales from our youth.  It was fun for the girls to be able to add pictures to all the stories they have heard.  We met some of the animals and profs in the science department and made ourselves at home in all kinds of places.

LA Public Library
On Friday we drove to downtown LA.  The LA public library is majestic.  Huge expanses.  A collection of books like we have never seen.  Beautiful art.

Downtown LA on Ice
The city parks system sets up a small ice rink in Pershing Square, right downtown.  It was T-shirt weather, beautiful sunshine, and there we were ice skating.  It is fun to see all the different people trying hard not to slip to our deaths on the ice.  All of us are still a bit sore and are nursing quite a few blisters.

Visiting Our Old Neighborhood
We drove down to our old neighborhood and showed their girls our old church (Celebration Church) on 20th Street and drove by to see our first apartment at Kenwood and 27th street.  The street and the house have been cleaned up quite a bit since '97.

Phillipe's French Dip
The Stephens family loves to wrap up their time in downtown LA with a visit to the famous Phillipe's for french dip sandwiches. A classic LA eatery.

It took some gumption to put my sweatshirt back on, put my pen back on my ear, and to head back north to work.

Movie Reviews

We drove past the local theater and saw this.  While many theaters are going to 3D, ours maybe is going several steps back in time.

The Reviews for the first movie might be:

• "Not much action. Just a line."
• "It's not 3D. It's not 2D.  It's 1D. Now, that's retro."
• "Straight ahead to boredom."
• "They'll be linin' up to see this one."

The Reviews for the second movie might be:

• "The sequel to 1D is already out.  Planes.  In 2D."
• "Many will be inclined to see this one."
• "It's plane to see, this one will be a hit."

Got Katie?

We've got creative girls.
Katie is now 7th grade vice-president.

This was one of our favorite posters.

Playing In The Rain

Ellie celebrated the evening playing in the pouring rain. Oh, the joy!

Running The Cascade Head Trail

Dad and Katie ran 4 miles with me on the Cascade Head trail. We started running down a very steep road for the first mile until we reached the trail head. From there we ran through the beautiful temperate rainforest (above) to the view point. We were able to see both the estuary and the ocean. After a quick break at the view point, we began our descent back to the trail head. When we reached the trail head, we were faced with the hills we had just run down two miles before. The climb was painful, but you felt a strong sense of acheivement when you reached the van.

 

  The scenery was awesome, but the hill was steeper than it looked and the following week I could barely move. 

 

The view was even more amazing without the thick fog. It amazed me that there was an ocean there, let alone one that beautiful.

 

Quotes heard on the run:

• Hannah: You can hear the ocean!
• Katie: No, that's my breathing!

•  Dad: [This road] can't go down forever!
• (Famous last words. The road went downhill all the way, making a not so fun climb back to the van)

 

Multnomah Falls - To The Top

We often stop to see Multnomah Falls on our way through the Columbia River Gorge. However, we are usually in a hurry to get somewhere and don't take the time to climb to the top. This time we had no schedule. We made the climb. Beautiful. Tough on the legs.

Ellie on the landing over the falls. 

We stopped to play in the riffles above the falls.

The Five of Us. Tired legs. Happy hearts.

Looking over the falls. Makes my tummy a little queezy.

Ellie was our photographer for this hike.

Quotes Heard:

-Wow!

-Oooh. I'm worried that person isn't going to make it.

-Ohhhh!  My legs.

-Twelve. More. Switchbacks. To. Go.

Winema Beach - All To Ourselves

After spending hours in the car, our legs were tired and sore and we were very excited to get out of the car. We quickly hopped out of the car, kicked off our sandals and raced down to the water.

Ellie collected shells and wrapped them up in her sweatshirt.

Hannah and Katie had a great time running down the beach and playing tag with the waves.

The sunset was spectacular.

Hannah's Future City Team

I'm proud of Hannah and her teammates. They have been working for months, in preparation for the "Future City" competition. Great scientific thinking. Great research, reading, and writing. They had some of the most innovative and practical solutions for dealing with storm water runoff and energy generation in their invented city.

We appreciate their science teacher, Mrs Ferro, who spent all of our 3 day weekend with the 8th grade "Science Ninjas" last weekend and also spent their "snow day" with the kids, building and revising their project.

The team did an excellent job communicating both verbally and by using visuals such as their model, pictures and diagrams. They made the judges' (engineers) eyes light up.

Postscript:
Their team did not make the final 5 teams at the competition, which surprised us and was a little disappointing.  However, they did win the "Best New Team" award and the "Most Sustainable Energy" award.  We found out yesterday that they also had the highest scores in the whole competition for their presentation.  The presentation was one of 4 parts (Sim City Model, Essay, Model w/ Moving Parts, Presentation).  Her teacher surprised the girls yesterday morning at an assembly with an award and $500 scholarship each form College of Idaho for representing their team so well in the presentation phase.