Hooray for the Granite State!

Josiah, William, and I flew up to New Hampshire yesterday afternoon. The boys were thrilled beyond imagining with the plane ride (their first in 2 years, and the first William can remember). Jesse has been left behind at home, though, so here we are to keep him up to speed with our holiday activities.

If today is anything to go by, we're in for a wonderful vacation.

The day started off normally enough — lots of playing in the loft, Josiah doing Legos with Nannan, and William enjoying PlayDoh. William loved using Nannan's rolling pin and cookie cutters to make an ocean scene with me.

William never passes up a chance to ham it up...

After lunch, William enjoyed a special outing with me and Nannan to play miniature golf. He took instruction on how to point his toes and line up his shots very seriously...not that it significantly reduced his stroke count, of course. He loved every second of the game.





Will then stayed home with Nannan while Josiah got to enjoy his own very, very awesome adventure: going to the New Hampshire Motor Speedway with Papa (and I got to tag along too, at the last minute!). Since Dad is chaplain there, with access to much of the track, and since he was giving the invocation before today's race, we got a fantastic insider's tour. He took us all around in a golf cart...through the campgrounds...we got to go up to see the broadcasting and control rooms...peeked in a skybox...and ended up on the inside of the track, mixing with the drivers as they were getting ready to be announced. Super fun! Then, while Papa did some of his work, Josiah and I sat in the stands and watched the heats and racing for the Global Rallycross event. It was a smallish crowd, nowhere near the 100,000+ likely in attendance for Sunday's major NASCAR Sprint Cup race, but we sure had fun. This race involved jumps, hairpin turns, and a track that was 40% covered in dirt. Crazy stuff. :)

Think Josiah looks happy?  :)

  

Inside the track. Waiting with the Color Guard before the race began. 

Travis Pastrana, one of the more famous drivers apparently, agreed to a quick pic while he was waiting to be announced before the race! 

Dad praying for the invocation. Josiah and I just sort of loitered 20 or so feet back!

Can't really capture the noise and speed and dirt and craziness in photos. (Josiah and I had been leaning on those white barriers while Dad was praying just before the race began.)

Josiah was as thrilled with getting to ride on a golf cart as anything else. Dad had just parked this one with all the others at the ministry area as we were getting ready to head home. 

My handsome 6-year-old. What a lucky boy.

PlayDoh, mini-golf, race cars...not a bad day for me...er...I mean for the boys!

Nevada and Utah: done!

It was Saturday afternoon when we officially saw California disappear behind us in the rear view mirror. Sigh....

Later that afternoon we arrived in Las Vegas, NV. The boys were mesmerized as we drove the strip. The weather was hot (mid-90s) but we enjoyed walking around, and since the kids had taken naps in the car earlier, we agreed to stay out late so we could enjoy the fountain shows at the Bellagio. Wow! The kids loved it! 

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On Sunday morning we were up in good time and drove through Nevada, clipped the corner of Arizona, and arrived at Zion National Park in Utah by early afternoon. Given our later-in-the-day arrival plus the boys being young, we couldn't take advantage of much of what the park has to offer—but we sure would love to come back in 5+ years! We took the shuttle right to the heart of the park and walked the level, 2-mile round trip River Trail (carrying William for the start of it as he fell asleep on the shuttle!).

Waking up.

The special stone Josiah insisted on carrying for the hike.  

We then drove on through Zion (a drive that rivals the Big Sur coast on Highway 1 for utter, breathtaking awesomeness!!) to Bryce Canyon.

You can see the road winding through the mountains. It was like this for miles—tight twists and turns in, around, and even through (yes, a tunnel that had the boys squealing for ages and begging us to turn around) the mountains. The walls of stone seemed to just explode out of the ground, shooting far up into the sky on every side.

William was so utterly past it by the time we arrived in Bryce that he wouldn't even get out of the car, so Jesse and I took running out to observation decks in turns as we drove to a few key lookout spots. It was chilly (low 50s) and mostly overcast (one quick break of some rays shown below!) but still spectacular.


By the time we exited Bryce we were all exhausted, and two rather late hours later we limped into Richfield, UT for the night. We skipped dinner since everything was closed and we were too weary and desperate to get to the hotel anyway. Another day sustained by trail mix, apples, and other sundry snacks from the car...THANK YOU Melissa Mann!  :)

And so the journey home begins...

There's so much more about San Diego that I want to write about and remember here, but I guess it'll wait for another day. We're now three days into the journey home to Pennsylvania, and we've done and seen so much!

We left on Thursday, May 2. (Jim and Tillie left a few weeks prior, by the way, and are already back on the East coast). The lead-up to departing was CRAZY! Jesse finished grading his final exams that very morning and had a couple of HOPE meetings during the day (by phone from home). Rather than "just" packing up our lives from the past 4 months and preparing for a 3000 mile car journey, we were totally boxing up and emptying out the condo we'd so happily lived in. It was wonderfully already full of the essentials (plus tons of kiddo extras like toys and sports gear) when we arrived back in January, borrowed from several sources, and we were so grateful! Figuring out where each and every last item needed to go took a lot of attention and time this past week, especially since we needed so much of it right to the last days. Jesse and I joked that the stress of moving out maybe was a blessing in disguise, though. We were sufficiently frazzled by the time we finally pulled out on Thursday evening that we almost felt a sense of relief rather than just sadness over leaving!

In any case, we headed back down to PLNU to drop off a few last items and hit the cafeteria for supper. The sunset on campus was spectacular, and Josiah commented that God must have sent it special for us.  :)

Photo credit: Jesse with his phone. Perfect!

We drove a few hours, getting just north of Los Angeles before crashing for the night. It was a Hotwire booking, and it turned out to be a great hotel. We had breakfast on an outdoor patio in the morning breeze on Friday and the boys LOVED the hotel's airplane theme. The previous day's stress was long gone.

We quickly hit the road and drove north to Sequoia National Park, where we spent an awesome afternoon and evening. Magnificent!! Pictures don't begin to do it justice, but I'll include some anyway.  :)



 

Twin giants and twin peanuts.

From little sequoia cones come mammoth, 2000 year old trees!  :)

By the roots of a long-ago fallen sequoia. I call it "bad hair day."

On a whim we decided to climb up Moro Rock. It's not a hard climb (I was in sandals and a dress!) but rather a third of a mile stone staircase walk, winding up crevices and the side of a bald mountain. It was a little heart-stopping with William, since he's vehement about doing things on his own and could easily slip straight underneath the guard rails. Gah! But both boys did great. In fact, they were begging to do it a second time as we descended! Jesse and I explained that although we too had loved the climb and wouldn't have changed it, our blood pressure really couldn't take a second go.

Moro Rock from a distance. Could hardly believe we'd been up there half an hour before!

The views were spectacular.

 

Here we are on the flat walkway at the very top.

Will did every single steep stair himself (400 or so of them).

Catch-up #3: More whale watching!

I'm so behind! April seemed to get away from me in a whirlwind of activity on every front. We are now en route home to Lancaster. However, since this basically is my "diary" and way to remember our CA adventure, and since I have a bit of a hang-up about chronology (!), I'm feeling the need to get some short catch-up posts together. This is the third.

We decided to take advantage of our location and do a second whale watch. Gratuitous, I know. But this one was so different from the last, and we don't regret it a bit! Compared to sailing on the America, this boat was...well, serviceable would be the kindest word (definitely nothing to write home about), so the trip wasn't nearly so much about the journey or the process as our first whale watch had been. However, our day was gorgeous and we had a great time.



Although we saw some whales, they weren't the memorable part. What we'll remember ar the dolphins!

First we spotted one swimming along beside us:

Then we could see two.



And before we knew it, there were dozens and dozens of dolphins swimming and leaping and playing all around! You can't tell from the photos, but we were travelling at a pretty good clip. The dolphins kept pace and totally seemed to be having fun darting all around, splashing in the spray, and playing together. The boys were giddy with excitement as we leaned over the rails, and Jesse and I were pretty much the same. What a treat!

Later, we were surprised and pleased to have the America sail past us, reminding us of our other trip two months prior. 

And motoring past sea lions on the docks was fun, too.

Of course not every moment was full of fun and excitement, but William stayed happy during the boring parts trying to knot up Jesse's sneakers.  :) 

Definitely a great day.

Catch-up #2: San Diego Air and Space Museum Annex

I'm so behind! April seemed to get away from me in a whirlwind of activity on every front. We are now en route home to Lancaster. However, since this basically is my "diary" and way to remember our CA adventure, and since I have a bit of a hang-up about chronology (!), I'm feeling the need to get some short catch-up posts together. This is the second one.



We never got to the main Air & Space Museum in San Diego, but we did visit the (free!) annex at Gillespie Field one afternoon. It's where many of the historic aircraft are restored. The boys enjoyed clambering around cockpits and staring up at the big rocket. And since it's right next to a small, local airport, we got to watch some planes take off and land, too!

Catch-up #1: Taylor Guitars

I'm so behind! April seemed to get away from me in a whirlwind of activity on every front. We are now en route home to Lancaster. However, since this basically is my "diary" and way to remember our CA adventure, and since I have a bit of a hang-up about chronology (!), I'm feeling the need to get some short catch-up posts together. Here's the first one.

In early April we spent a few hours at the Taylor Guitar factory outside of San Diego. One of the execs there was in Jesse's Vistage group and encouraged us to come for one of their group tours. We're so glad we did it; it was awesome! We got to see every step of the guitar building process, going through all of their workshops and factory areas. So much is done by hand, and the instruments are beautiful works of art.

In the show room and gift shop at the end, Josiah fell in love with this Baby Taylor! He needs to start saving his pennies.  :)

We also came home with several free coasters, made from the guitar hole cut-outs. William and I enjoyed playing with them away from the $1000+ guitars...after Mr. W was getting a bit too rambunctious in the showroom!

Kindergarten dropout...to day trader

(A guest post by Jesse.)

Josiah got interested in stocks near the end of 2012. He overheard Mama Caz and Pop Pop talking about selling some stocks, and he started peppering them with questions. What’s a stock? How do you make money on it? How do you buy it? How do you sell it? Etc. Then he started in on me with questions when I got home that night. I relented and started showing him some stocks and charts on the computer, focusing on companies he’d know something about.

In February of 2013, Josiah bought his first stock ever. It was 2 shares of Chuck E. Cheese stock (CEC) for $30.73 each. He used his own money he had saved in his bank account from birthdays, holidays, and lemonade stands. We had been watching it for a while while by that point, waiting for the right time to buy, and often he’d say something like, “Dad, CEC is down $0.20 today; (and then in an eager side whisper) do you think we should buy??” We agreed that somewhere around $30-31 would be ideal based on historical price movements. 

After we bought, he watched the price every day (without prompting by me). Each day, he’d ask for my phone, and he knew how to look up the stocks app and find CEC. He’d often look at the one day chart to see what it had done. He would then figure out how much he had made or lost so far by doing the math. After about a month, we agreed to sell at $33 per share. He had also received a dividend during that time, which I paid to him in cash (two quarters, one for each share). In total, he made about an 8% return in about a month. Not bad for his first trade! Krista and I covered the brokerage fee on the condition that when we’re old and he’s rich, he’ll take care of us…    I love that boy!

This picture was taken with my phone while we were visiting Santa Barbara in early March. We were waiting in a pizza restaurant, and Josiah found an Etch-a-Sketch to play with. We were ordering, not paying attention to what he was doing. He suddenly held up the picture he had been working on and said, “Look, it's a chart of Chuck E. Cheese stock!” Krista and I lost it. What have we created?!
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Post-script edit: It's been 12 hours since putting up this blog post, and we're feeling compelled to note that Josiah is still a 6-year-old boy, his education on bid and ask prices, limit orders, and dividend payouts notwithstanding. Jesse took the photo below with his phone today during breakfast. Yep, those are underpants on Josiah's head. As Jesse reflected, maybe he's not ready for Wall Street quite yet....   :)