Nik's Birthday Weekend

Happy 17th Birthday Nik! It seems like just the other day that we were bringing you home from the hospital. Our first little bundle of wonder. Now you are 17! How the time has flown by. We had a great weekend to celebrate your big day. Embassy Suites is your all time favorite hotel. You love the Suites, the heated pool and best of all the made to order breakfast! This year we made a mini road trip to San Diego. Our first stop once we arrived in San Diego was to visit the Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum. There is a lot of history on this ship. The Midway was very involved in the Manned Space program in the 1960's. The crew developed a very specialized skill of retrieving space capsules after splashdown. In fact, five Apollo missions ended on the deck of the Midway including the first mission to land on the Moon, Apollo 11.

The Hotel was one block off the water near Seaport Village. Our room actually had a view of the Midway from our window. We had a wonderful dinner at the hotel restaurant, the Pacific Fish Company. You had birthday phone calls on your cell phone all day, including calls from Grandma Olga, your aid Mr. Kahn, Untie Julie, auntie Jenny and Grandpa Wunrow. After dinner we retired to our suite and did your gift opening which was fun too. You got lots of fun gifts.

I snuck out early on Sunday morning while you guys were all sleeping to do 7 Geocaches. It was a beautiful morning to be out for sunrise along the water. Buy the time I came back, you guys were all just waking up, so we got dressed and headed down to the yummy complimentary made to order breakfast. You had two servings of French Toast and Bacon for breakfast and loved every bite. After breakfast we all enjoyed the heated pool, Hot tub and sauna before checkout. From the Embassy Suites we headed off to Balboa Park and its great collection of museums. Our destination was the San Diego Model Railroad Museum with its amazing recreations of various California cities and there history with rail travel and transportation. We really had a great time walking through the exhibits and were blown away by the level of detail in the scale reproductions.

On our way home from San Diego we stopped off for dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner. This restaurant is one of your favorite places to eat. The Fullerton location is part of the Fullerton Amtrak station, which made it even more special as the final stop on your birthday weekend. To top it off, we saw the Amtrak Californian pull into the station as we were leaving! We all had a wonderful time, and I can't wait to see what we get a chance to explore next year on your birthday!

Packing it in...It's a sad Day

Well the Packers season is over. This has been a season of bitter disappointment. I knew from watching them play in the pre-season that it was not going to be a Super Bowl year. I figured they'd win 8 or 9 games, maybe make the playoffs. Then the string if injuries to Javon Walker, Aman Green, Robert Fergeson, Najay Davenport, Bubba Franks, Tony Fisher, Samkon Gado...pretty much all the skill players on offense with the exception of Brett Favre have been hurt for part of or most of the season. The team was in most of the first 10 games with a change to win in the final minutes, but Brett seemed to always end the game on a turnover. He definitely didn't have one of his better years ending with 20 TD's and 25 INT's. With a win over Seattle yesterday, I feel that I may have witnessed Brett's last game as a pro. He went out with a win, extending his consecutive start record and with his TD pass extending his record for seasons with 20 or more TD's to 12. Alex e-mailed me at work late yesterday morning to let me know that the Packers have fired coach Mike Sherman. With him gone it's almost a certainty that Brett will retire. Not the way I wanted to see his career end. At least there is some joy in the house though. Alex's Jacksonville Jaguars also won on Sunday securing their first playoff game in 6 years. He is very happy and excited. Not sure how deep into the playoffs the Jags can make it this year, but having them to cheer for this weekend will help take little bit of the sting out of the Packers season for me. My hope now is that we con find a head coach that will be able to over the next year to two rebuild the team and set us back on a course to the playoffs and by the end of this decade back to the Super Bowl. I can also look forward to five years from now, experiencing the joy of watching Brett get inducted into the Pro Football hall of fame! Long Live Brett Favre and Long Live the Green Bay Packers! Go Pack Go!