Learning to skateboard

Down time between water polo games can get very boring. Not enough time to go anywhere but too long to just sit around. The boys spent their allowance on some skate boards and have been learning to skate at the tournaments. However, this particular outing ending in a small accident. But Ted had no idea anything had happened.

Travis the dancing machine

Ted insisted that I post a video of Travis dancing to embarrass him like I did with Ted's beach dancing video. This video was taken during a water polo tournament.

Winchester Mystery House

We visited the Winchester Mystery House. A little history for those of you who do not know. Sarah Winchester moved to San Jose after the death of her baby and husband. She believed she was being haunted by the spirits of those who were killed by the winchester guns. So she consulted the spirits nightly and built on her house 24 hours a day for 38 years to appease the spirits. To confuse them she had doors to nowhere (pictured to the right it drops 2 stories and does open from the inside), stairs to the ceiling, windows in the floors and other bizarre features. It can be seen on Haunted History, Secret passageways and the ghost hunters TV shows. Ted was excited and asked hundreds of questions and recited information he knew about the house on both tours we took today. I don't have many pictures because you can't take pictures in the house.

Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk

We spent the afternoon and evening at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and beach area. The rides closed at 8pm and the boys wanted to go down to the beach. Of course it was cold and cloudy. Not to mention the pacific Ocean off of California never gets above 65 ° F. The boys said that they would stay out of the water. But somehow by the time we left they were wet t their armpits.

Future dancing with the stars contestant

Ted didn't know I was video taping his dancing on the beach. He thought I was going to take a picture of one of his poses. Travis loves to watch the video over and over. You might like to check out his moves also.

Henry Cowell Redwood State Park

After our exciting train trip we walked across the tracks to a redwood state park. We were able to take a hiking path and view some of the great redwood trees. Since this is only the beginning of the redwood forest the trees aren't quite as large as some of the redwoods further North and inland. But they were still exciting for the boys to see.

Roaring camp railroad

Saturday morning we went up to the roaring camp railroad. We had planned to take the steam engine up to the top of Bear Mountain to the redwoods. Engine #7 was the engine that was pulling our train. When we hit the 8% grade going up the mountain the engine's front axle derailed and a little diesel rescue engine had to come up and take us back to the depot. Travis got to see how they manually uncouple the cars from the engine because we were sitting right behind the engine. Also check out the video with the boys explaining their experience. Remember Ted is always the dramatic one.

Vacation at Great America

We visited Great America in San Jose on Friday. Travis rode on the log ride for 1 and 1/2 hours straight since their were no lines. The amusement park was quite empty since it was cold and cloudy.

Los Alamitos Parade

Ted's water polo team marched in the Los Alamitos parade. Ted enjoyed the parade except they had to line up so early in the morning.