The Dahlin's

Happy Mother’s Day everyone! We’re getting ready to head to Santa Barbara to go to their zoo and see the beach. Michelle’s got a new camera and is just dying to play with it and a zoo and a coastline are two of her favorite places to take pictures. It might be a bit foggy over there, but it should otherwise be a great day for sightseeing.

This is Rincon Island and it’s causeway.  As you can see, it’s very gray…the marine layer is very thick today and sunshine does not look possible.

Um bird, you are not one of the zoo residents.

These are called capybara and they are the largest known rodents.  I sure wouldn’t want one running throughout the garage.  They can weigh between 77-150 pounds!!!

What are all these cool birds in this habitat??

“Hey, quit taking my picture!!”

“I think those flamingos have issues.”

Now there’s something you don’t see everyday…Poison Dart Frogs. And they really do come in all those really cool colors.

 That must be one sweet smelling twig.

“Now where is Pumba?”

“This wood tastes fabulous!!”

Here’s Kurt enjoying some lunch.

Holy cow!!  What’s that cruise ship doing off the Santa Barbara coast?

And, you can’t have a Mother’s Day without those that make you a mom.  I am very proud of Kyle and Aaron and I had a wonderful day. Thank you!

We decided to head over to Vasquez Rocks yesterday, an L.A. County Park not far from our house, to get some exercise. It was a perfect day for hiking and we even squeezed in some geocaching while we were there.

Here are some highlights of the time we spent with Michelle’s family up in Portland for Christmas:

Funnel cake!

We came to the race track today for the food truck festival. There was supposed to be 50 different food trucks on hand. We each had something a little different, along with a “lunch dessert” like Aaron’s funnel cake above. We thought it was going to be in the parking lot, but soon realized that it was inside the track, and there was also horse racing today. You don’t have to twist my arm to go inside: Continue reading →

It only took me a month, but here’s the video footage we took during our trip up to Eugene for Christmas. I’ll post another video from the time we spent up in Portland with Michelle’s family. Continue reading →

One of the perks of living in southern California is that you can get some good deals being a resident of this crazy place. This year Disneyland has a 2-park one-day price deal and we decided to take them up on it. Today we are living it up in Disneyland and tomorrow, weather permitting, we’ll be in California Adventure. Stay tuned for pictures because we’ll be posting them throughout our stay. Continue reading →

Well, we left at 4 a.m. and now we are having breakfast in Chowchilla three hours later. It’s 32 degrees and very chilly outside.

Gassing up outside Stockton. Beautiful sunshine.

Continue reading →

Is it just me or does she look a little possessed?

OK, I’m having way too much fun playing with these videos. This is a preview of a longer highlight reel I’m working on of our summer vacation:

One of Michelle’s friends told her about a neighborhood in town that puts on a great Christmas light display. We decided to go check it out last night. We were probably still a half-mile away when the traffic came to a complete stop. We knew we were in the right spot and it was definitely worth the wait. Check it out: