Family Update – 8/4/07
August 4, 2007
Monsoon season is in full swing here in Arizona. Afternoon downpours have been rolling in like clockwork. We have had a couple of gully washers that dropped 2 or 3 inches of rain each on us. The area sure is getting green. For us here, it’s been very, very humid. It actually reached 45% the other day, which is almost unheard of around here. We start to complain when it leaves the single digits. You sure can get used to that in a hurry.
The new theater system continues to perform nicely, though I still haven’t gotten around to calibrating the HDTV monitor yet. It’s not a hard thing to do, but does take some time. It involves running some DVDs and tweaking all of the monitors settings for optimal viewing experience. It’s probably a couple hour task but I have been lazy.
Speaking of being lazy, the genealogy updates have been non-existent. Several folks have sent my some good information and I have some leads that I tracked down a while back, but I just don’t seem to find the time. I guess the video gaming is just getting in the way.
Tonight is the Summer Dance recital for Suzanne, Sean and Savannah. Again, I will be comfortably sitting in the audience. If it seems like there sure is a lot of dance recitals and competitions, I agree. With four or five dance recitals a year and the regional and national dance competitions, it keeps us hopping. And that doesn’t include all of the charity events that the studio performs at. It’s good experience for the kids and they enjoy it, but it takes a bunch of time.
Speaking of time, football practice has started for Sean. They are practicing three days a week right now. It’s mostly a conditioning program but they are running a few simple catch, throw and run drills. Sean is excited as he really likes football. He has moved up an age group this year, so only time will tell if he gets to play as much as last year, when he played both offense and defense. Personally, I would like to see him concentrate on defense as I think that’s where he is best. Only time and size will tell, but I see a defensive end or linebacker in the making. Savannah is once again on the cheer squad for the football team. Suzanne is again the cheer coach.
Tomorrow, we should have the pictures from the Showstopper National Dance competition ready to go here at Mr Papa’s World.
The Showstoppers Trip
July 25, 2007
A couple of days ago, Suzanne posted the results of her and the kids Showstopper Dance Competition. Today, I thought I would detail out the overall Showstopper trip a bit more.
The drive from our home to Anaheim and our hotel wasn’t too bad until we hit the Riverside area in California. Road construction completely derailed the good time we made driving out there. Still, the trip from doorstep to hotel, took us about 8 and 1/2 hours. The route we took went through Gila Bend, AZ (basically, I-10 bypass around Phoenix). That included a breakfast and lunch stop for food. Amazingly, we made it all the way on one tank of gas, though I didn’t plan it that way. For some reason, I never check the gauge while driving. As we were approaching the hotel, I happened to notice that the low gas light was on. We had maybe another 40 miles of gas left. That’s a lot closer than I normally cut it.
We stayed at the Sheraton Four Points there in Anaheim. It’s a high rise hotel with fourteen floors. We stayed on the 10th floor. Our balcony looked right down into California Adventure and to a lesser degree, Disney Land. The view was really nice. The desk clerk told us we would have front row seats for the fireworks every night.
I must say that my first glimpse of Disney Land was very uninspiring – in fact it was very underwhelming. We have never been to Disney Land, but have been to Disney World in Florida many times. And I must admit, we didn’t go into Disney Land on this trip either. Basically, we couldn’t find a reason to go in there. The entire park could fit into one of the parking lots at Disney World. The sizes and things to do at the two parks appear to be radically different. Perhaps going inside the park would change our minds, but I doubt it. We will just keep going to Disney World.
One positive things was it was never busy there. The parking lots that we could see were never close to full. The Showstopper Dance Competition was held at the Disney Land Resort Hotel, so we were real close to the entrance and traveled through Downtown Disney every day and night and it just was not crowded. I was amazed at the lack of people. The weather was nice every day with temps in the upper 70′s, maybe low 80′s. It seemed like perfect amusement park weather in the middle of July only no one came. We could see some of the California Adventure rides from our balcony and sometimes they were going and were not full.
Anyways, the set up that Showstopper had at the Disney Land Resort Hotel was pretty nice. They had plenty of seats, though they could have been more comfortable. Most of the other folks that we talked to stayed right there at the Disney Land Resort Hotel. For us, we had about a 1 and 1/2 mile walk each morning and night to and from the hotel. We could have driven over to the competition and parked, but there was a charge and we thought the walking would do us good. By the end of the trip, though, we were saying we might just stay at the resort hotel next time.
We had hoped to save a bit of expenses on food during the trip and thus brought breakfast bars for the morning. We had planned to take a cooler with sandwiches for lunch and figured we would get dinner in Downtown Disney each night and just pay the piper. Unfortunately, the sandwich deal only last the first day and we ended up eating in Downtown Disney each day for lunch. We ate at ESPN Zone, Rainforest Cafe, Tortilla Joe’s, and the Cajun Jazz Cafe. The food was quite good but very, very expensive. We ended up spending pretty much a $100 for both lunch and dinner in Downtown Disney.
A couple of nights we ended up eating back at the hotel. One night we just loaded up on Nachos at the pool. The other night we ate at the BBQ/Grill restaurant, The Overland Stage Company, at the hotel. Again, the food was quite nice, but around $100. So, we ended up spending a lot more money on food than we had planned but did enjoy it.
The pool at the hotel was very nice. The kids enjoyed it immensely. Suzanne enjoyed the hot tub. I enjoyed the poolside bar. As night descended a the pool, it got pretty chilly for us Arizona folk. It was funny because one night three tables next to each other had all the women bundled in coats or blankets and the men with their arms folded. Turns out that we were all from Arizona (the others from Phoenix area) and more used to our 110 degree temperatures that we had been experiencing. In fact, when we left, the Tucson area had a streak of over 30 straight days of 100+ degrees going. One night the bartender even turned on the portable heater next to our table. She must have seen the cold ladies. At this time the temperature was maybe 70 degrees, but 30 or 40 degree differences is certainly noticeable.
The hotel clerk was right about the fireworks. Each night the display on the balcony was fabulous. One night we were still in Downtown Disney for the fireworks at 9:30 pm and it was clear the view was better from our balcony. We normally retired each night after the fireworks all ready to do it again the next day.
Prior to leaving on the trip, I had checked on my Mercedes GPS computer on the best route to Anaheim. It looked like there was 3 routes:
- direct on I-10 through Phoenix right on into LA area
- I-10 towards Phoenix but swinging West on I-8 to Gila Bend and bypassing Phoenix before getting back on I-10
- I-10 to I-8 and on through San Diego before swinging North on I-5 to Anaheim
My GPS trip computer estimated each route to be within 10 minutes of each other. The computer doesn’t know local traffic conditions but does take into account average speeds on the routes. It wanted us to go directly through Phoenix, but there was no way I was doing that especially since we would hit Phoenix around morning rush hour. So we opted for the second route bypassing Phoenix. Except for the mind numbing construction in Riverside, it wasn’t a bad route.
For the route home, we decided to take the last route through San Diego. Intuition said that might not be the best route, but the computer thought it was only 8 minutes longer than through Phoenix. I had my doubts but came home that route. Turns out it was a great way to go. Granted, we came home on a Sunday, the the very wide highways between LA and San Diego made for exceptional speed and time. Once we left San Diego, it was smooth sailing all the way on I-8 with the road almost to ourselves. Of course, Suzanne slept most of the way home. Sean read about half of his new Harry Potter book. Savannah watched a couple of movies. The trip home, with breakfast and lunch stops again, took a couple of minutes less than 8 hours and it was a very easy drive. I think that will become our preferred route to LA area in the future.
All in all, it was a fun trip although very expensive. We could have taken a very nice, long cruise for the cost of the dance competition entry fees, the hotel, the food and the gas. Downtown Disney at night was fun and the kids enjoyed the fireworks. That said, if we want to go to Disney, I think we would still definitely go to Disney World.
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