Solvang
Biking on the Beach
Santa Barbara Mission

So Hockey season is winding down with all the playoffs. We enjoyed the drama of the College Basketball Tournaments-of course since MSU played. We even wore our MSU sweatshirts out to LA. And we pulled up at a stoplight next to a guy who had a Uof M sticker on his car. I made sure he saw my MSU sweatshirt! He laughed and gave us a thumbs up. I even got a honking from another driver here in MD for my MSU bumper sticker. I did not recognize the driver, but when he went by I saw he had a Michigan license plate. Us Michiganders stick together!
Tom has had hockey fever so bad lately he couldn't stand watching another game on tv. He had to go watch a game in person. So off we went last Sunday night to Hershey Park in PA to watch the IHL team, the Hershey bears play in their playoff series. We had very nice box level seats-lots of great food and comfy seats. Scott especially enjoyed the ice cream sundae bar! And it was a very exciting game(lots of rough housing-ie fights). And the bears won which made it even more exciting. I almost didn't mind when the lady behind me jumped up and spilled her bottle of water all over me! And then we got to drive home in a massive thunderstorm-complete with hail. And Allison and I had already put in a busy day by driving north of Baltimore to sing with the GS choir for the Gold Award banquet. The Gold Award is equivalent to the BS Eagle award. My girls were working on their award prerequisites at the overnight. There were about 49 girls that earned their Gold Award this year in Central MD. This is a project primarily for High School girls. Allison and I enjoyed looking over the booklet at all the different types of projects before getting up to sing.
On Saturday morning I was busy with my garage sale-time to clean out all the kids closets. While I was busy selling stuff, Tom was busy trying to train Cookie on our newly installed electric fence. Poor Cookie was caught off guard and stuck over the electrified wire so I had to run and save her. I have never seen a dog jump straight up in the air. All her fur was sticking straight out. Needless to say the kids weren't too excited about the incident. But Tom and I told them it would be better than having Cookie squashed in the street. As a matter of fact, she was trying to follow one of my customers to their car when she got zapped. And after all that we dragged her off to doggy school. We are working on wait and stay while we stroll around the store. She actually did very good with this. She still gets distracted, but she is the best behaved dog in her class.
After our garage sale we were busy cleaning and cooking to have the neighbors over for dinner. We wanted to thank our neighbors for watching our house while we were gone, and we also invited some friends over that we keep missing since they live far away. But all that is going to change since they are moving back to our neighborhood. They used to live just two doors down. We are happy they will be much closer.
Friday night I was busy with Scott at the Cub Scout pack meeting-they put on a mini olympics. Tom got Allison to piano.
Thursday I had to take the day off to stay with Scott. Both kids originally had the day off, but Allison was making up for a snow day. So Scott needed company. And it was Take your Kids to Work Day, so Northrop had several fun activities and food available for all the employees that brought their kids. While the boys played and Tom taught a class, I headed to the dentist. I also had to get Scott to gymanstics that night, and Allison to an orientation meeting for GS summer camp. She is going to be volunteering at GS Day Camp and helping with the archery. She is pretty excited. I am just happy she found a ride home.
On Weds night I was rushing the kids off to the Resurrection 8th grade vs Faculty basketball game. Allison played last year, but I took the kids so Scott could sing with the school choir. They did the National Anthem and Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror at half time. Allison just wanted to visit with her old teachers and old class mates that were there cheering on their siblings. I think my ears are still ringing from that night. And a few teachers did not do too well physically-there were twisted ankles and torn finger tendons. The adults are getting older and kids are getting younger! Glad I didn't have to play!
Allison finished her third quarter in High School and did fantastic. Now the race is on for the last quarter and she is getting slammed. They have a lot to squeeze in between now and the end of the school year. Same for Scott. Which means we will be busy too! What a surprise.

So we made it back to our usual schedule(you can just imagine). Kids were busy with tests and papers, and we were all very tired.
I switched my work day to Friday since we were traveling on Monday. It made for a long week since I had a girl scout outing over the weekend. My girl scouts are in High School now and looking at completing their Gold Award-equivalent to the Boy Scout Eagle Award. I took 4 girls to an overnight program where they completed most of their prerequisites to earning the Gold Award. They already finished their Silver Award which counts towards their prerequisites. This program was very overwhelming considering the amount of info they covered, but very interesting.
So interesting, they turned it into an overnight. We spent time working on an environmental/health badge, Roots and Shoots, and the girls now have to plan a project. They decided they will probably run a health class for Junior girl scouts next year(some badge), and probably charge for it to make some money for a future trip. We are looking into joining a GS International group that just started and will help organize Girl Scout trips overseas(like London!) The girl scouts have lodges around the world including England, Mexico, Switzerland and India. England sounds good.
The girls also earned a Parks badge, a finance badge called Capital Currency. That was very interesting since the girls spent time learning about banking, checking, stocks and financial aid for College funding. The girls also got to speak to a Senior college student about classes and college life as well as a tour of a local Community college and a peak into the dorm rooms as well as other buildings.
While I was off with the girls, Tom was spending time at home with Scott. He was busy cutting the grass(for the 3rd time in two weeks). He had to cut it before we left for LA and our neighbor cut it while we were gone. Sadly, he also ran over one of my Michigan baby cedar trees with the mower. Oh well. We've had lots of warm weather and rain so lots of flowers and pollen. The rest of the family isn't too happy about the allergies. Even in LA we couldn't believe how green everything was as well as all the beautiful flowers(not a good sign for the fall though-when it all dries up it means more chances for fires). But it sure was beautiful now!

So we made it to LA on the Saturday before Easter for our spring break and had a fabulous time! Good thing Allison and Scott had the same week off. Won't happen again I am told.
We flew into LAX after a stop over in Nashville. Tom saved up his airline points with all his traveling so we could all fly out to LA on Southwest(nearly free). If you don't use those points by a certain time, they expire and you have to pay a small amount to keep the tickets. Anyhow, it was a lot cheaper! The kids were pretty excited about flying since neither one remembered their previous trips. And that is a long flight. Tom had us all set up with inflight entertainment-movies and games on Ipods, etc.
We picked up our rental car at LAX and headed to Mike Bozyk's place north of LA. Traffic actually was terrific for us all week-we couldn't believe it. We got to Mike's early enough for a quick tour and to get the kids to bed before the Easter bunny arrived!
Easter Sunday the kids were up early looking for their Easter baskets(and they managed to find them!). We were up and dressed and on the road down to Disneyland in Anaheim. We had put in volunteer hours and earned free tickets to Disney. Mike had a California discount and got a free return ticket to Disney or California Adventure. We had an incredible time at Disney, even enjoyed Tom's official birthday since it fell on Easter Sunday. He had his "It's My Birthday" button on at Disney and got lots of good wishes and a free dessert when we stopped for lunch at the Bayou in the Pirates ride. Our day was interrupted though by a 7.2 earthquake which occurred in Mexico in Baja, south of San Diego. I had told Allison it would be a one in a billion chance that she would experience an earthquake while visiting LA. Both kids have been studying earthquakes in science class, so they were very fascinated(and concerned) about being in one. And since lots of earthquakes have been occurring lately around the globe, there was a slight possibility. And we caught it! But surprisingly, the only one of our group that felt it was Allison. I said since everything at Disney shakes you and rocks you on the rides, who could tell the difference! Unfortunately for us, they shut down the rides for several hours for safety checks, so we stopped for a snack and to walk around the park, check out the castle. I did not realize that the castle in Disneyland belongs to Sleeping Beauty, Aurora, and the castle in Disneyworld in Florida belongs to Cinderella. Who knew? The Disneyland castle is a whole lot smaller too. I was just disappointed that they didn't have the Fantasia show running-that was pretty spectacular when Tom and I saw it 15 years ago! By the way, I had not been back to LA for ten years. Tom did a drive by of our old home, Downey to show Allison and Scott our townhouse(Allison was there for a year). We thought it was amazing that the Downey high school had a viking mascot just like Allison's high school here in Maryland. We spent the whole day at Disney until we could walk no further, and the rain started about 11pm.
Monday we promised the kids a trip to La Brea tar pits. They studied it in school and wanted to see for themselves. Tom and I had visited many eons ago, and I even showed the kids photos before we left. It pretty much looked exactly the same-lots of gooey tar coming up from the ground(bubbling ooze). And smack dab in the Hollywood area. They got to see the Hollywood sign from the top of the parking structure at the new shopping mecca, The Grove. Mike took us there and we enjoyed lunch at the Farmer's Market. We also visited Mann's Chinese theatre and the Ripley's museum and read lots of Hollywood stars on the Walk of Fame(the kids really don't know too many movie stars, but they recognized the star wars and Harry Potter characters.
Tuesday we headed down to San Diego and visited Sea World(we have season passes). No more swimming with those killer whales by the way! Weds was a full day at the San Diego zoo. We saw cute baby Koalas!
Thursday we were back at Mike's place and headed to Universal Studios. Mike got a CA discount and received a free pass to Universal for the rest of the year. The kids were not very familiar with too many old movies or movie stars, but they were fascinated with all the movie magic and the shows, as well as the rides. We actually ran into several filming sets around LA that week, including a few CSI sets and a movie premier, The Perfect Game(kids baseball movie with Cheech Marin). I had wanted to stay at the Barnes and Noble bookstore to see Gene Wilder at the Grove shopping center as he was selling his new book.
Friday we spent the day at the beach. We took a 25 mile bike ride up and down the coast from Rehobeth to Marina Del Rey and stopped for lunch on the pier. We were excited to see sea lions swimming around the piers! The kids ran up and down the beach for an hour before heading home.
Saturday we drove up the coast to Santa Barbara and Solvang. We toured the Santa Barbara mission(very cool). We stopped for lunch and a tour at the Firestone winery(one of our favorites) and had dinner at a Seafood restaurant on the pier. While waiting for our table, we enjoyed searching for starfish, crabs, sea lions and manta rays around the breakwater.
Sunday we ended our trip with a visit to Disney's newest park, California Adventure. How fun. Mike had a free pass, so we thought we'd try it out. It was a combo park of Epcot, Disney's MGM studios and amusement park. Again we had a wonderful time, and the kids got to spend their Disney dollars that they found in their Easter baskets. Scott found a Club penguin for the computer game(Disney owned) and Allison is now a Disney pin collector. She was busy searching for Disney's dragons. The disney workers wear pins around their neck, and you can swap pins with them if there is something you would like. Most people pick up cheap packets of pins to trade for the better ones.
So on Monday we flew back to Baltimore through Houston. Our flight was terrific, our trip was terrific! I would have loved to visit my old hospital, Rancho as well as some LA friends, but I am not sure where we would have squeezed that in!We thank Mike Bozyk for being such a wonderful host.
The kids missed one day back to school and had to make up a lot of homework, but it was worth the trip.
Another Happy Birthday out to Dad Bozyk, Sandra Bozyk and Sarah Bozyk! What a busy month. And Sarah hit the big 18 this year! The kids are growing too fast!