Thanksgiving in So Cal

The kids were off for the week again for Thanksgiving, so we decided to take a trip to Southern California, and do some college visits prior to the holiday. 

We flew into San Diego early on Sunday morning and made a quick stop to see our former au pair Rebeka and her family.   Her daughter is now almost 2, and she is pregnant with a second!   

While in San Diego, we also walked around the UCSD campus, which, not surprisingly, was pretty dead on a Sunday morning.

On Monday, we had tours at UCLA and USC.   I was impressed with both campuses--both are really beautiful and have a lot of spirit!   

Because I am not keen to do all these tours again with Alaina in a few years, I asked her to keep a notebook about her visits.   She took the task to heart and did a great job documenting her time!!

  

After we had dinner with Jeremy in LA.   On Tuesday, we checked out some small colleges: Pomona and Claremont McKenna.    Both are located East of LA, in a more suburban area.  The weather was absolutely perfect when we were there--a great way to woo applicants!   Ethan really liked Pomona,  but of course it is really tough to get in.   Funny enough, our friends the Cortez family were also on the tour--they were also in So Cal for Thanksgiving!   So we went from not seeing them in a year to twice in a week!

We enjoyed dinner with our medical school friend Jenny and Andreas on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, enroute to Palm Springs, we visited Joshua Tree National Park.  Jason had never been there before--the last time I took the kids he had to work--so wanted to visit.  Again, we had great weather and the kids enjoyed scrambling along the rocks.

We made it to Jason's parents house in La Quinta on Wednesday night, and spent the next three nights with them.   

Taller than grandma?

We were again really lucky with the weather and enjoyed some sunshine.   Eileen cooked a really amazing meal that we all enjoyed!

   

Hike in Half Moon Bay

 On Saturday, we met up with our freiends Sue and Ben and their kids Cruz and Whitney.   Though we try to get together a few times a year, our schedules make it difficult, and it had been quite a while since we had last gotten our families together.   As the weather was beautiful, we decided to take a hike, and again met at the Grey Whale Cove hike south of Pacifica--we had hiked here in June 2024.   

We enjoyed an 8 mile, 1800ft elevation gain hike in the afternoon--finishing just after sunset.   The kids were so much bigger since the last time we have all gotten together.  The weather was calm--much less windy than the last time we did the hike, even though the fog was rolling in towards the end of the day.

  

A Beautiful sunset over the fog:

  

After our hike, we were ravenous, so we headed to Half Moon Bay and had dinner at Tres Amigos Taqueria--a place Jason frequented when growing up.  It was delicious and a great end to our day.   So fun to catch up!

Fall Ball

This weekend was Alaina's last fall softball tournament. This year, the girls are 2nd year 12u players and had a much better record this fall compared to last.

 

Alaina has been playing consistently, and her fielding has been really good.   Unfortunately, their coach bit off a bit more than he could chew this fall becasue he also coached a 14u team.  Because that was a new team, it was not quite a good as ours and since he could not go to different trounaments with the two teams, our team ended up playing at some 'easier' tournaments....and after winning them repeatedly the coach had the team move up to play 14u.   They did pretty well even in that age bracket, though they never won a 14u tournament.  

Now, we have a break until the new year!

End of XC Season

 On Friday, Ethan had his last race of the XC season.  He ran the hilly 5k course at 21:52, which is 7 minutes per mile!   Considering that he had a slow start to the season, and obviously has some physcal limitations he--and we--are very proud.   He also ran a mile in 6:16 at a time trial the week before.   Both times are personal records for him, and really incredible progress!   I couldn't run that fast if my life depended on it!

 

Now, all the growing he has been doing helps--he is nealy 5'11" now--but also he is in great cardiovascular shape.  Now that the season is over, he tells us he plans to keep running over the winter....let's see!

Halloween

 On Friday, the kids celebrated Halloween.   For the first time in many years, mom and dad did NOT celebrate halloween!

Ethan headed to school dressed as cookie monster.   Allegedly he wore his costume all day, but the pic I got of him and his freinds in the eventing, below, did not feature a costume.   I guess I will never know.

Alaina and her "friend group" decided to dress as characters from the movei "Men in Black".   Where this came from, I will never know, as she had not seen the movie prior to the decision.   She decided there was no way that she would be man in a suit, so she opted for an alien.   Though it appears that she did not coordiante with her other friends were going to be aliens, as she ended up in a fuzzy onesie, and the rest of them had tutus.  

When I asked her about thsi later, she told me that there was no way that she was going to wear a tutu.   I guess the theme was bad all around for her.  Anyway, she met up with her friends after school and then hit the neighborhood trick or treating for several hours.   She ended up coming home with over 300 pieces of candy....which didnt match Ethans haul from many years ago bit was still quite significant.

Meanwhile, Jason and I had a quiet night at home and watched some Netflix!

Chicago Visit

At the end of last week, Ethan had a fall mini break from school.   He took the PSAT on Wednesday morning, and on Wednesday night he and I headed to Chicago to do his two first college tours!

We started on Thrusday at the University of Chicago.  It has been awhile since I was on campus, and it was a lot of fun to go back.   Plus the weather was amazing.   We even visited the old medical library (which has been converted to a computer science area/maker lab!) and the building where all our medical school lectures were given.   

 

Afterwards we headed downtown, where we took a run along the lakefront and then promptly consumed all the calories we burned (and then some) at the original pizzeria uno.

The following day, we headed to Northwestern (but stopped for bunch at Walker Brothers first, of course!).   We took another tour at Northwestern, and made a stop at Jason's old dormitory.  

After the tour, we took another run, along the lake in Evanston, and then again promptly made up the calories when we met Jeff and his kids at Barnaby's for dinner.

On Saturday, we had time for a quick brunch with my high school friend Janet, her husband, and 2 of her 4 kids before we boarded the plane back to Chicago.  Both Ethan and I had a great time.   Can't believe we are doing this already!

 

San Antonio

 This past weekend, Jason and I travelled to San Antonio for our annual American Society of Anesthesiologists Meeting.    

My dad graciously agreed to watch the kids at home to make this happen.   It’s been awhile since I have been to San Antonio, but it was a fun and different place to visit, other than the weather (it was over 90 everyday)!  

Though Jason and I were both quite busy with the conference, we did have a little bit of time to hang out together which was nice.   Jason had to spend a lot of time networking for his company, and running the committee on practice management, which he chairs.  He also gave a podcast!

 I had to give two talks on Sunday.   We both got to catch up with old friends and colleagues, which is always fun.

Now time to play catchup!