Happy Thanksgiving!

Today we are thankful that we still have our home! On Monday, I was getting dinner ready and I had a few pots boiling on the top of the stove. I turned on the oven and it started making a really scary popping noise and suddenly there was that awful, icky electrical burning smell. I called Kevin over to see what was happening and there were a few more little crackles and then POP!! and there was a flash and the whole stove went dead. Kevin told me and the girls to get out of the house. We were having friends over for dinner, so we called them and we all decided to meet for dinner at Burger King.

Kevin pulled the stove out and there was a scorch mark on the wall. There was a sheet metal box on the back of the stove that was covering the electrical wires, and there was a 1/4" hole burned clear through it. The electricity had arced so hot that it had gone through thick sheet metal! Kevin tried to take the face plate off the outlet, but the screws were welded to the plate and it is not going anywhere. He also checked up in the attic to make sure that none of the flash that we saw had started any fires we couldn't see yet. Thankfully there seemed to be no sign of any fire.

A few years ago we had a Family Home Evening on fire safety and we talked about how to get out and where we would meet, etc.. Well, this kind of freaked Rebecca out (she was five at the time), and so we went over to the fire house, which is only a block away, and they gave us a tour and answered all of Rebecca's questions. Ever since then she always prays that our house will not catch on fire. We appreciate those simple, faithful prayers!

On Tuesday a service tech came out and checked the stove. He said that the wiring had been installed improperly and that one of the wire connections was really loose. (I was amazed that this hadn't happened any sooner!) The electrical cable has to be replaced and the terminal box that all the wires connect in has to be replaced as well, as all the plastic parts were melted. Since the cord is a four-prong instead of a three-prong, it is a special factory order and we have to wait until after Thanksgiving to get the range fixed. Hmmmmm.

Thankfully I was only in charge of making some pies, and Kevin's mom is cooking the turkey. I had to go over to a neighbor's house on Tuesday to boil some spaghetti noodles, and yesterday I went to another friend's house to bake the pies. Thankfully the microwave is still great so we can have leftovers for the next few days until they get this fixed. Hopefully Monday. So even though our stove is cold and dead at the moment, we are thankful there was no other damage and that we and our home are safe.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Life of a Survey Monument

Here's a Flash animation of the life of a survey monument by the Bureau of Land Management.

http://www.blm.gov/ca//flash/fb/survey.html

More Geocaching & Getting lost.

We got up, had a continental breakfast in the hotel lobby, checked out and then headed out to do some more Geocaching on the way home. At one point we got really turned around and couldn't figure out where we were in relation to the 101 freeway. We had thought we were on the east side of the 101, but we were somehow on the west side of the 205. The three maps & the GPSr were not helping. The AAA map we had was of the city of San Francisco and didn't show the part of town we were in, and the Thomas Mapbook didn't have enough detail. We were driving semi-aimlessly, when Kevin said, "Geocache 'GC10JFA' just came on the GPS screen." I was able to look up the cache and see that it was right in front of the City College of San Francisco. From that, we were able to figure out where we were, and in the bargain, find another cache! Geocaching is so great!

We finally got back where we wanted to go, drove out to Treasure Island and spent some time exploring the old naval base. We left the city and headed to Pleasanton for lunch and some more geocaching. Then it was time to head home. It was great to see the girls and have them run out to give us hugs as we drove up and to hear of all the adventures they had this weekend.

See the pics here.

Aimlessly Wandering

We got back to the hotel at well after midnight, and the next morning we were delivered breakfast in bed. Pretty neat. We wish we could have stayed longer to enjoy the hotel more, as it had a "living room", with a couch and a fireplace. Next time we need to spend the night in San Francisco we want to stay there again!

We checked out of the hotel and then drove around downtown for a while doing some Geocaching. We really figured that without the kids it would be a lot faster and that we would get a whole ton of caching done, but we haven't done a lot of big city caching before, and we were frustrated because each cache took at least twenty minutes a piece, trying to find a parking place, sometimes driving around the block four or five times in order to find one. After a while we were in Chinatown and we looked up and saw Coit Tower and decided to go there. We enjoyed all the murals and the views! There were some great scenes in the murals, including two surveyors. As a fun side note, while we were at the top of the Coit Tower on the west coast, we got a call from Weston and Laura, and at the same time they were at the top of the Statue of Liberty on the east coast. We traded picture messages on our phones and wondered what the odds were of that happening. Pretty cool!

We stopped at another cache at Alamo Park. This is where you see the view all the time of the six "painted ladies" houses when you see pictures of San Francisco. For example in the Cingular ads and at the beginning of the show "Full House". While we were there we saw a movie being made, so we went over to investigate. It was a Bollywood movie with a cast and crew almost entirely from India. We watched for awhile and then went on to Golden Gate Park. On the way we stopped for a late lunch at Tony's Cable Car Restaurant. That was a fun little place.

When we got to Golden Gate Park, it was such a gorgeous day. We really enjoyed walking around as we looked for other caches. We went by the Conservatory of Flowers, the de Young Museum and the Rose Garden. As we walked by the Rose Garden we were surprised to see the same Bollywood movie being filmed there as well. We watched for a while, talked to some of the crew and took a few more photos. What a coincidence that in a city as large as San Francisco we just happened to be in the same two places at the same time. We spoke with one man who turned out to be one of the film's producers. He asked if we'd ever seen an Indian movie.

"Well... yeah.... late at night, while flipping thru the channels", Kevin said.

"Really", he asked. "Which ones?"

"Uhh... I have no idea what they were.... but the girls were pretty."

He smiled and said, "Yes, they were".

We left the Park and Kevin noticed that we were about to cross Haight Street. A quick right turn and we were in the Haight Ashbury District - the area that made the 60's the 60's. Saturday night was obviously the best time to be there.

By this time it was getting late, so we drove out of downtown and headed down to our second hotel, near the San Francisco Airport. We had to get a second hotel, as by the time we had decided to stay for the second night, the hotel that we were going to be staying in was booked up. This one was nice too - not as nice as the Carriage Inn - but good enough for us. We went out and watched the airplanes take off and land and then went and had a nice meal (read: expensive) at a neighborhood Italian restaurant. We went back to the hotel fat & happy.

See all the day's pics here.

San Francisco - Nightwish!

On Friday afternoon we left our girls with some friends and we drove to San Francisco for a concert and some time together. It was the first time we've had together since Amanda was born. For those of you who may be counting, that's more than ten years. We LOVE our girls, but we had such a great time by ourselves this weekend! We left home later than we'd hoped and by the time we got to San Francisco it was dark. We did get to see all the lights as we drove into the City though. It was great.

We got to our hotel, and they had upgraded us to the 3 star hotel next door. We don't know why and it doesn't really matter. It was a really nice room at the Carriage Inn Hotel. We didn't have time to enjoy it right then, as we changed quickly and headed over to Slim's, a club where we were going to go see a band called Nightwish. The band is a symphonic/metal band from Finland and they are doing a six week American leg of their 2007 tour. Nightwish is: Anette Olzon (Vocals), Tuomas Holopainen (Keyboards), Emppu Vuorinen (Guitar), Marco Tapani Hietala (Bass & Vocals), Jukka Nevalainen (Drums).

The concert was AWESOME! The opening act was a band called Paradise Lost, and they were pretty good. We have to admit though, that we were so looking forward to hearing Nightwish that we really weren't paying that much attention. At about 10:30pm, Nightwish came out and they opened with "Bye, Bye Beautiful". It was amazing to see them live! Annette is great! The band was really tight and they were a LOT of fun! They sang a few songs off their last album "Once", but the majority of what they played was off of their new album "Dark Passion Play". The band played around with the audience, with each other, and it was obvious that they were having a lot of fun. It was easy to see that Anette fits in really well with the band. (Anette is a new singer to the band, replacing Tarja Turunen after ten years.) After they had been on stage for a little over an hour they said that the song that they were about to sing was usually the last in the set, but that they were having such a great time that they were going to sing some more. They sang another two or three songs, ending with "I Wish I Had An Angel". They also sang some of our other favorites: "Sleeping Sun", "Amaranth", "Sahara", "7 Days to the Wolves", and "The Islander". They played for an hour & a half, but it seemed like it was waaaay tooo short. We could have listened to them all night.

Nightwish is going to be in Las Vegas in May.

Guess where we are going to be.

See all the concert pics here.