A Much Needed Vacation

Well, Natalie and I finally got a much needed vacation. The last time we had vacation was in October, right before we went into contract on our house. Since then we've been busy with moving and house projects, all the stuff I've been putting in my blog. Natalie is getting close to the point of no flying so we had to take vacation last week. I can only go so long without seeing the family, especially all the niños, without going crazy. So here goes a long blog....

So April 2nd, at 3am, after getting just 2 hours of sleep I had to roll out of bed to go to SoCal. My dad picked us up Friday from the airport and took us to lunch. Then he dropped me off at my sister's house to see all the niños. All of them except Jeremy, he was with his dad. We did our normal Good Friday business. We made benotts and dyed Easter eggs for Sunday's Easter egg hunt.

Coloring Easter Eggs
Dominic showing off his stickers

Raelynn showing her egg

Aubrey being a goof

Cody

I put stickers on the kids cheeks. Aubrey is showing hers off
And Raelynn's

Cody's "wuzzup" face


In January Grandma died, in March Grandpa died, something like 18 days short of making it until my visit. So on Saturday my dad took us to Grandma and Grandpa's old house to go through some stuff. After that Natalie went to a baby shower that my sister threw for her. While she did that Jerm, NickNick, my dad, and I went up to my Grandpa's ranch.

Baby Shower
Mom made the cake

Mom and Raelynn

Natalie con Cody






Easter
Of course Sunday was Easter. So we did an Easter egg hunt, had a ham, etc.... I bought these toys for the kids to keep them occupied while we hide eggs. They are paratroopers.

The kids getting ready for their Easter egg hunt


San Diego Zoo

Monday we went to the San Diego Zoo. I have been looking forward to this for a long time. This is rated the best zoo in the country. It was looking like Natalie and I might be going to the zoo alone but my dad paid for all the grandkids so that the whole family could go together. The only problem about the zoo that day, cold rain for a good hour or so. Reminded me why I wanted out of SoCal. I hate cold rain!

Everyone talks about the gardens there and it's no mystery why. It's very hilly so we didn't get to see everything but we saw a majority of the stuff. I found out after we left there was an amphibian exhibit that we missed though :( I think everyone knows, frogs are my favorite.

I thought this tree looked cool

Maurina & Cody

The kids in the petting zoo

Natalie&I with the kids in the aviary. Gotta love my cheesy smile
Inside the aviary. Reminds me of El Yunque, the rainforest in Puerto Rico.
The tram ride

View of the aviary from above

View from the tram









The biggest ant farm I have ever seen. They also had huge bee hives, which I didn't get a picture of.

These things looked fake, like statues, only they occasionally blinked.

The Meerkats were all hiding. But once we came up they all got together for a family photo.

This camel was grossing us out





Baby flamingo


Tuesday we were tired so we pretty much sat around at my sister's and parent's house. The little ones came over to my parent's house Tuesday night and we had a slumber party. I bought them ice cream and filled them all up with junk. Then we attempted to watch the movie "Up". It was a funny movie but I was fading in and out so I missed several parts and the ending.

Planes Of Fame Museum
Wednesday Cassandra took her family to Knott's Berry Farm. Natalie had to go to Corona to work for a couple hours (University Of Miami pretty much paid for our whole vacation and she only had to work a couple hours) so I took Chris' kids to the Plane's of Fame Museum in Chino for some Uncle Joe time. That's the best part of being an uncle. Take the kids, give them a bunch of soda and spoil them, then send them home to drive my sister nuts. :) Anyways, the museum, they have a bunch of famous airplanes in this museum. A lot of the airplanes have been used in movies and stuff. My favorite airplane of WWII is there, which is why I decided to go there in the first place. It's called the Vought F4U-1A Corsair. The one they have was used filming the series Baa Baa Blacksheep in the 1970's. The F4U had an 11:1 kill ratio against the Japanese Zero which earned it the nickname "Whistling Death".

While at the Museum I didn't just walk the kids around. I gave them an education too and they actually learned something. The kids thought the fuel tanks were bombs so I had to show them the difference between fuel tanks, bombs, and missiles. They thought that the engine's exhaust and the airplanes air data sensors were guns so I showed them the differences. Then I showed the kids how to identify what country makes which plane by looking at the markings. I was impressed two days later when I was watching The History Channel and I asked Jeremy to identify a the plane with the Swastikas and Iron Cross and he said "That's the Germans". I asked him about the red dot and he said "That's the Japanese". Pretty impressive for a six year old. I also taught the kids about the different turrets and their purpose, the difference between a fighter and a bomber, and I showed them why some airplanes, like the Corsair, have folding wings. They even had little models there so I could show the kids how the airplanes go on the elevators on the aircraft carriers and get lifted to the decks.

The first plane we saw. It's got a sweet paint job. The kids though the engine's exhaust were guns and asked why they shoot backwards. Now they know better.
Boeing P-26 Peashooter
Me and the kids in front of the Corsair

Vought F4U-1A Corsair from Ba Ba Blacksheep with it's wings folded up
Vought F4U-1A Corsair from Ba Ba Blacksheep

I found this plane interesting for a few reasons. 1)Three tiered wings 2)Check out the guns. Mounted and movable for the pilot with sights. 3)No canopy 4)Wooden propeller.
Fokker Dreidecker/Triplane DR.I
Fokker Dreidecker/Triplane DR.I

Jungle crash display
Mitsubishi Betty G4M1
Messerschmitt Komet Me 163

Dominic, Raelynn, and Me in front of a WWII Sherman

WWII Japanese tank. Check out the size of this thing. It's no wonder they got blown to bits by the Sherman.

The kids showing off the airplanes guns
Curtiss Warhawk P-40N
Fieseler Storch Fi 156C
I found this jet interesting because it's rare to find a jet with the jet engine on top.
Heinkel Volksjager He 162A-1
Northrop Flying Wing N9MB
NickNick and Jerm in front of a 500 pound cluster bomb.

Grumman Bearcat F8F-2

Hanriot Scout HD.1



Boeing Fighter P-12E/F4B-1

Thursday was another lazy day until Thursday night we went to Cassandra's to watch a movie. Then something weird happened. In three years of living here I have only had my alarm go off twice, both times when I was in SoCal. The last time was last year, Valentine's Day weekend, when I was putting chains on the car tires going up to Big Bear. It was a false alarm and a mystery what set it off. Last time it was a motion detector auto dialer so I had to call the police myself and call Phil to check out my apartment. Well Thursday the same thing happened only now I have a monitored alarm. So I get a call and I tell them to send police. Police find nothing. Yes, another false alarm. Why does this only happen when I'm out of town?

Friday morning I was watching the kids and I painted Raelynn's nails. Here she is showing them off.




Grandpa's Ranch

So the first Saturday I was there, then again Friday afternoon (would have been Grandpa's 74th birthday), we went up to my Grandpa's property. He called it his ranch, although it was really an orchard. 385 acres of oranges, grapefruits, and avacados. My dad and I used to spend a lot of time up there. We would go fishing up there, hiking up the canyon to catch newts and frogs, and we even went camping up there. 90% of the time when my dad and I had "father/son time" it was spent at Grandpa's ranch. Everyone in the family talks about how they miss how the ranch was in the past(it's up for sale), but I really doubt anyone can miss this place more than my dad and I, since we were the only ones that were up there all the time.

The day I turned 18 I bought a shotgun and when I got to pick it up a few days later my dad took me up to Grandpa's to shoot it for the first time. Anyways Grandpa was selling his land a couple years ago. He was the last one to sell off his property. In the 80's getting up to Grandpa's we had to go through miles of orange groves. Then in the 90's it was reduced to just a mile and a half or so of groves before getting to Grandpa's. Finally after Y2K everyone else had sold off. Grandpa was in escrow so they cut down all his trees. The market took a dump and the land never sold and now it's robbed of all the trees. Everything is completely different than it was just a few years ago. The roads have changed. A creek runs through Grandpa's property. It comes out over a road and into a big reservior. Well the road where it used to come out is gone. Streets have disappeared, new ones have been created, houses are now built right up to Grandpa's property line, the whole area is transformed.

I found this picture on google maps. I used to have one from years ago but much to my disappointment I can't find it. I'll keep looking though. This one is a couple years ago though and shows before they ripped out the section of Skyline Drive and while they were in the process of tearing out his groves. In the picture to the right of the reservior, directly below it, and some of the section to the left and left bottom of the reservior were all oranges. Avacados lined his gate by skyline drive as well as the hill on the right side of the picture. The grapefruit were all to the left of the reservior as well as the whore house and the well. Where skyline meets W Foothill Parkway (formerly Chase), that stree is gone and we now have to go up Rawley. It's all really weird to me seeing the changes.


From the North Side of Grandpa's looking South towards the Cleveland National Forest.



Looking West towards Orange County. A couple hundred yards out is where he grew his grapefruits.

Now that the land is unsupervised, people have been offroading up the dike of his reservior

Looking towards Orange County

I found this flower on the dike of the reservior. They have been growing there for years, I think they are Gladiolus. I pulled a dozen or so out of the ground. I planted some in my mom's yard and took the rest home and planted them at my house. My mom has some flowers but they are yellow so I exchanged her yellow ones for the purple and took both home along with some of her calla lillies. Nothing like free plants :)


From the top of the dike of the reservior. A road goes around the whole reservior on the dike. My aunt's ex husband used to like in a small camper on the little hill below the reservior. My grandpa also used to have a small house down there. By the time I was a small kid the house was abandoned and infested with rats. Finally in the early 90's, I think, Grandpa has the house torn down. Just to the left of that were naval oranges. From the road, by the reservior, looking towards Hagador. This was all orange trees. You can see where the road turns. We came in on the road to the left and had to make a big u-turn around all the trees to get to the reservior.

The reservior. The water used to come all the way to the road when it was high. To drive up to the reservior we used to make a big loop, like a horseshoe. Come up the road where the houses were, drive up towards hagador, then turn and take the road back to the reservior.

This is above the reservior. This is where we used to camp. At night there is a great view of the city lights from here.

Formerly known as avacado hill. Where all the brown grass is, that was all oranges. On the hill were the avacados. They are seperated by the creek. Grandpa always talked about building a house at the top of the hill, but never did for some reason.

The bridge that crossing the creek that seperates the avacados and oranges.
From the canyon (Hagador) looking north towards Corona. This picture, at most, shows 1/3 of Grandpa's property. He used to have beehives where I took this picture. Grandpa's property ends all the way down by the houses.

Top of avacado hill

Back in the 90's we built this dam. We had 6 inch pipe that ran the backed up creek water to the reservior, almost a half mile away. A big flood wiped out the west side of the dam years ago and the creek has been flowing around the dam. My dad decided to block the water from flowing around and restore it flowing through the dam. Why? I guess because he was bored. It serves no purpose now but he wanted to do it.





Hagador Canyon. They used to mine up there probably 100 years ago. If we hike back far enough, along with marijuana plants and other stuff, we find caves, underwater caves, old mining cars and tracks. I've made it pretty far back, but never far enough to find out where the water starts. On one hike I took with a friend I came back with close to 40 California Newts. I am very skilled in not only spotting, but also catching frogs and newts. My friends go with me and pass right by them, and when they get spotted, they aren't able to catch them. I'm a natural at catching these creatures. I'm also quite skilled at catching poison oak. I've probably had it 3 or 4 dozen times in my life and had it on every body part imaginable. I've had swollen eyes from it and probably the most annoying was having it in my ear due to the fact that the oil would drip in my ears while laying down. Probably my favorite thing to do as a kid was hike up this canyon. My dad liked going up there to fish, I liked going to hike and catch frogs and newts. So we usually did both. The first hike I ever remember taking up there was when I was around 5. I can still point out to this day the spot on the trail where I was scared and stopped because of a rattle snake.

Hagador Canyon

View of the city from the canyon

This is up by the canyon and the beehives. This is where the younger naval orange trees were.





The reservior

The road going past the whore house. One day, in the mid 90's, my dad was driving with me past the whore house, just around the corner at the end of this picture. My dad went to make a 3 point turn on the road and backed the back tires of his truck off the side of the hill. His rear differental was resting on the edge of the road and the tires where hanging in mid air. We spent a couple hours trying to get the tires back on the road, my dad even lifted up the back end of the truck but we couldn't get the truck out. It was hot that day, about 105, and we ran out of water. When my dad told me to fill up the water jug I didn't fill it up all the way. We kept running to the whore house to get wood planks and stuff to try to get the truck out. Eventually we had to start picking grapefruits and suck out the juice so we wouldn't dehydrate. Finally hours later my grandpa pulled up in his Jeep and pulled us out. A couple weeks later at the dinner table my dad told my mom that he was teaching me to drive and I was the one that got the truck stuck. I don't know if it was because he was embarassed about it or just because he was being him and joking around but I played along and my mom believed that story until we finally told the truth a couple years later.

On the right used to be all orange groves. On the left side of the road Grandpa had avacado trees along his fence.

The old well. This well drops, probably a good couple hundred feet. We used to be able to throw rocks down it, hear a couple pings as it goes down, then a couple seconds later it would sound like a bomb when it hits the bottom.

What's left of the old whore house. Back in the 1880's, way before Grandpa owned this land, the whores were kicked out of Corona so they built a small whore house up here. It really should have been saved as a landmark but thugs would come up and vandalize it. By the 90's it had just two walls supporting the structure. Grandpa used to store old sprinkler parts and stuff in there but it was a rat infested mess that no one ever went into. Well according to my dad, a few years ago when they tore down the house, they found out that it had a basement that no one knew about. In the basement they found a really old chest with old clothes from the 1800's in it. Grandpa let the guys doing the demo take it, really he should have kept it and sold it to a museum.

Frogs and tadpoles...... Now that there are no fish in the reservior it's loaded with frogs. I have never seen so many frogs in my life. It's like something off Discovery Channel. Millions, if not tens of millions, of frogs and tadpoles. On our first trip up there my dad took hundreds of them home. They were all tadpoles at that point. Then on our second trip there was a mix of frogs and tadpoles. I was walking along the shore and thousands and thousands of frogs would jump into the water. Just a bunch of black dots.. So on our second trip we took hundreds and hundreds more of the tadpoles home. By Saturday, the day I left California, the tadpoles were turning into frogs. My dad now has hundreds of frogs running around in his flowers, grass, etc....







A small area with hundreds of little frogs. This is what the whole shoreline of the reservior looked like.

Wild Flowers


Videos of the frogs jumping







Dad's 50th Birthday Party (He's not 50 yet)
Saturday was a long day for me. First off I started getting sick Thursday from the kids. It hit me the hardest on Saturday. I woke up early Saturday because I had to pack some stuff and have it shipped to my house. Then I had to get a bunch of other stuff done before the party. By the time we got to the party I wasn't feeling good at all. I ate the dinner but wasn't able to eat the cake and ice cream for fear of what would happen on my flight out that night.

We stayed at the party until close to 9. I had to be at the airport at 11 for a 1am flight. Fun stuff.

Anyways the week before the party my dad became a facebook celebrity. A couple months ago when they were going through my grandma's stuff my dad decided that he needed to lighten the mood. So he took some of my grandma's jewlery and put it on. My dad used to have earrings 20 years ago. Well he was able to open up the holes and my cousin Patty snapped this shot which ended up on her webshots page. My dad had me download it to put as his facebook profile picture and everyone loved the picture. So, that explains the other pictures from the party.... He decided to be funny at his party and dress up for everyone.

This is the picture that Patty took.


Well not only did my dad put on a bunch of jewelry, but he had to make a towel cape too. Before doing presents everyone told their favorite story about my dad. When my dad was a kid he made a cape and told my Aunt Sharon that it gives people magically powers and could make her fly. He had her convinced and she was about to jump out the window when my grandma walked in and stopped her. So my dad made himself this towel cape at the party so he could be "Super Bud" while everyone told their stories.

My sisters and I had to get a picture with Aunt Suzi since we haven't seen her in years, well I haven't. In case you can't tell since she looks like she could be my sister, my 42 year old Aunt Suzi is the one next to me in the black shirt.

Some people even brought props for their stories. My Aunt Peggy brought props to tell her stories about how my dad took the clothes off all her barbies and gave them lesbian haircuts. Here is a picture of Aunt Tina telling her story about my dad's 48 rabbits.

Me and Natalie

Me and my 92 year old great grandmother

Me and my family. Yeah I'm not smiling, I was pretty sick that night.

My dad and his brothers and sisters

Dad and Natalie




At the party I realized that Raelynn is a con artist. I asked her if she loves Uncle Joe and she said no. Then a while later she wanted me to push her on the swing. I said nope, you don't love Uncle Joe. So she comes over and hugs my legs and says she loves me. I push the kid on the swing for ten minutes and then we I take her off the swing I ask if she loves Uncle Joe and she said no and ran away.... Hmmmm.....

After the party I had probably one of the miserable flights I have ever had. When we finally landed in Fort Lauderdale at 11am my forehead felt like it was going to explode from all the sinus pressure and loss of altitude. Then I had a miserable drive home.

When I got home I decided to do a yard check. Due to the warm weather and rain my plants took off last week and I was pretty excited about the progress with my yard. Not only that but my flowers worked and brought in all the butterflies and dragonflies and stuff. I snapped this shot of a Monarch Butterfly Caterpillar that is attacking my Butterfly Weed. I noticed one of my Butterfly Weed plants was looking good and the other was bald. Further inspection revealed caterpillars on it.

Natalie went right to sleep when we got home, after a shower of course. I slept for maybe an hour but didn't want to sleep all afternoon because then I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. I was woken up by a massive thunderstorm. A little early for this kind of weather in April but I'm not complaining. The storm drain by my neighbor's house got clogged and I walked outside and noticed the street was flooded. Once the rain finally stopped and the water receeded I went outside and planted all my flowers I brought home with me from my mom's house. We'll see how well they do in this South Florida Climate.


The rest of my pictures that didn't make it into this blog are on my webshots page.