Christmas and New Years Day

We spent the last of December with Sabrina and friends, shopping a little and visiting a lot. We met Josh and went to see the new Jim Carrey film, "Yes, Man" in which we had all been filmed as extras. We had hoped, disappointedly, that we had made the final cut, but ....no ....(deep sigh) It's a very cute movie, though, and we'd still recommend it, even without our presence on screen.

The gang all went out to the 'burbs to see the Christmas lighting. This is a local mansion that is always "over the top." (Can you say National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation?)

We danced every Thursday with the Eagle Rock Scottish country dancing class and a highlight of the month was the Burns Night dinner and ball on the 17th, held in a beautiful hall on the Cal Tech campus.

Our friends Heidi and Susan were both away over the holidays and asked us to house-and-dog-sit for them. It gave us a way to actually live together for a couple of weeks. Their home is lovely and it was a pleasure to stay there. We had our Christmas dinner together, and then opened a few gifts; Susan's dog, Winnie, takes advantage of her bed's being close to the action; even Gypsy had some nice "toys" to play with.

Hogmanay is the Scottish New Year's celebration and is often accented by Scottish country dancing. We attended the LA Hogmanay Party and had a great time, dancing from 8-midnight, then welcoming in the New Year.

We geocached whenever we could this visit, learning many of the out of the way places in Claremont, La Verne, San Dimas, and Glendale. What a fun hobby! We hit #900 with Sabrina while here.

We celebrated Sabrina's birthday (you'll have to ask her which one) with some of her good friends and later met at the home of our good friends Lyndsay and Aaron for a Super Bowl Party. And what a game it was!

Too bad our personal favorite Kurt Warner lost, but the room was split... so, some went away very happy! We finished the evening with three rousing games of "Scene It", testing all of our movie memories and logic.

This was a wonderful visit with Sabrina, as well as with all our LA friends: Heidi & Susan and their home; Lowell and Linda Rice (with whom we picked fresh oranges in La Verne;) Roberto, Jen, Eric, Maria, Lyndsay and Aaron, Josh, Leah, Jim and the Eagle Rock dancers. Thanks for making this another memorable trip to California. Wish it didn't have to end but end it did, as all things must. On the 6th of February we said our goodbyes and headed east for Arizona.