New Years at the Rose Parade in Pasadena

We finally can mark off one of Chip's long time dreams of being at the Rose Parade on New Year's Day in Pasadena, California. We stayed in Beverly Hills at the Plaza Hotel which was mostly nice except for the thin walls and having to listen to the escapades of the woman in the room next door each night... We had to get up at 3:30 a.m. to leave for Pasadena and get to our parking lot by 5:30 a.m. We parked right behind the grandstand and really didn't have to wait long to get back out after the parade. Oh, and the parade, just beautiful. It's quite a long parade with 89 entries of mostly floral floats, bands and horses. We bought tickets to go view the floats at the end of the parade, however we had to wait until the parade was over and the floats were parked. Earlier in the week, Chip had found a little restaurant/bar off of Colorado called Lucky Baldwins with 65 beers on tap. Bit of a dump but fun...... After a few beers we headed to the viewing area and walked along the blocks and blocks and blocks of floats. Seeing them up close really was much more exciting for me than seeing the parade itself. The detail of the work put into these floats in such a short time is amazing. Some floral arrangements on certain floats were more aromatic than others.
We drove back to Beverly Hills for the evening and went to The Grove by CBS studios which is a nice outdoor mall with a few nice restaurants. Had a nice steak dinner at Morels French Steakhouse and Bistro then drove back to the Beverly Hills Plaza.
On Jan 2 we decided to drive back to Pasadena and tour the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens. We saw the Blue Boy and Pinkie paintings and toured the beautiful gardens. I snapped an awesome pic of a hummingbird! After the Huntington we went to the Norton Simon Museum where we saw some Van Goghs and quite a few Edgar Degas sculptures. My legs were about to fall off when we decided we had better go somewhere for dinner. Driving down Colorado Blvd we were using the GPS to find an Italian restaurant when we decided on Il Fornaio. It was on a really cool section of Colorado Blvd with lots of shopping. The restaurant was great and while at the bar we were talking with two couples. The younger couple, who lived in Las Vegas, had never heard of the Rose Parade. Unbelievable!! Or is it just me?!?

Chicago June & July 2008

I traveled to Chicago to see my sister, Kiki, with my friend, Tracy in June. We spent one day exploring downtown Naperville and having lunch at our favorite luncheon spot, Hugo's Frog Bar. They serve a $1 blue cheese wedge salad and other tiny lunch selections for small prices. We always get the goat cheese appetizer too. Our other favorite thing to do is stop in the Tasting de Vin for a wine tasting. It's the tasting room for Lynfred Winery. We love the gift shop and always enjoy tasting the newest releases of Lynfred's wines. On Saturday, we took Tracy to downtown Chicago and walked the Magnificent Mile. I think we walked about 8 miles that day considering how much our legs ached. We did a little scrapbooking together and enjoyed some wine and had a splendid girls weekend.

May 2008 Perdido Key Florida

We spent a wonderful week in Florida with Kylie and our friends, Todd and Kathy from Georgia and Dave and Sue from Preston, England. Rene' flew down and joined us for the first 4 days. We built a nice size sand castle and first full day and the next day we rented a pontoon and went out on the bay with the jetski. We spotted dolphin and had Kylie doing her "dolphin call" and the little buggers swam all around our boat. The kitchen at the Villa Belvedere beach house made cooking fun and easy so we grilled fish one night and steaks another night. Other evenings we had dinner at Louisiana Lagniappe which provided everyone with a nice Cajun seafood experience, and of course we had to visit Lulu's in Orange Beach. This is Jimmy Buffet's sister, Lucy's restaurant/bar. Live music, dancing, pitchers of Blue Moon and Fish Tacos made the evening complete. Perdido Key, Florida is located just east of Orange Beach, Alabama right at the Alabama/Florida state line. There's beautiful bays on the other side of the key which is great for jetskiing and boating. It has officially recovered from Hurricane Ivan and is looking beautiful and serene once again.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Good Afternoon!!

While Kylie, my granddaughter, takes her afternoon nap in her room here at my house, I decided to pursue my sister, Kiki's, advice on starting a Blog. I'm not exactly sure what I plan to write about, but I do want it to be worth writing.
Right now, I'm planning to keep this as a journal, especially for when I travel and load my pictures from my travels. Likewise, I want to journal about life with Kylie and pictures from our family events. Also I may even post some of my craft creations so that I can share them with friends and relatives who are unable to view them in person. I suppose that will help me validate my efforts at creativity, although I'm sure many will just reassure themselves that I have too much time on my hands. Actually, I'm hoping that by doing this, I can become more organized about what I have done and what my future plans are going to be.
Just this past week, Chip and I talked about our up and coming travel plans for this year while watching a travel show on TV. We decided that beginning this year, we would take a trip each year going somewhere that we have always said we wanted to go. Not just the typical vacations, but hopefully adventures that we can look back and say, "I never thought I'd get to do that!" We figured if we don't just start doing it, we would end up being 80 years old and saying, "I just wish we had done that!"
Our vacation plans currently exist of me and my sister and cousin, Colleen, going to Santa Barbara wine country in April for the Vintner's Festival and then in May, we are going to Perdido Key with Kylie and Todd and Kathy Clark and meeting the Bond's who are coming from England to join us at the beach house. For fall, we are planning our first trip to Disney World with Kylie since she will be old enough to really enjoy and remember the trip.
This year our trip on the "I've Always Wanted to Do That" list that we are planning for is a trip to Pasadena, CA for New Year's day 2009 and seeing the Rose Parade. Next year we are shooting for an Italy/France tour.
Well now I've started my blog and you can come back often to see what's going on in Teri's World.
May we all find our Bliss!
Teri