Why couldn’t the Rose Parade have been today? It was nice and sunny so we decided to go view the floats up close. We skipped it yesterday because of the rain. So, we walked quite a distance down to a Park N’ Ride for the post parade viewing of the floats and rode a bus to where the floats were. It was nice seeing the floats up close. They weren’t in as bad shape as I thought they would be, but you could still see quite a bit of rain damage.

In the evening we rode with the six elderly University of Texas nurses, who we met on our first day at the hotel, to the Longhorn Bash. It was a gathering of 7,000 Longhorn fans in Los Angeles at the Century Plaza Hotel. There was beer, BBQ, and bands playing music. Bevo and the cheerleaders showed up and lead Texas cheers with the whole group. Jennifer said that she’d never seen such a sea of orange.

51 years without any rain and today it down poured. Today was the 117th version of the Rose Parade and we sat through the cold and the rain to see most of the parade. We left about 15 minutes before the end so that we could beat the crowds out of there. We had rain slickers (thanks to Aunt Marci), but as we sat there, rain was still getting though. We were soaked from the legs down. This combined with the cold wind that was coming up through the grandstands made it a pretty rough ride.

We were supposed to have lunch at a restaurant near the parade route, but we were soaked and we decided to walk back to the hotel. We were pretty pissed at the tour guides for not taking us back to the hotel before lunch. Who wants to eat lunch in soaked clothing. After lunch we were supposed to go see the floats, but we decided to skip that as well.

Since we had the afternoon off, we walked across the street to a movie theatre. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a movie. The last one we saw was Pooh’s Heffalump Movie a year ago with the girls before Isabelle was born, which is pretty sad. We went to see Cheaper by the Dozen 2. It was a cute movie and passed the time until dinner.

Today was a free day for us, but since we had so much fun on the float tour we decided to crash a Los Angeles city tour today. We talked to our tour guide, slipped her some extra money, and voila we are on the tour.

We started off by driving through downtown Los Angeles and seeing the Walt Disney Hall and Performing Arts Center. From there we headed to the Kodak Theatre which is now the permanent home for the Academy Awards. It’s kind of weird because it’s part of this big mall and the tour guide was saying that they put red curtains up to cover up the shops for the award show. Right around the corner from there was Grauman’s Chinese Theater, where they have various celebrities put their foot and hand prints into the cement. We saw old stars’ prints like John Wayne, George Burns, and Debbie Reynolds; as well as some new stars’ prints like Stephen Spielberg, Harrison Ford, and Johnny Depp. After that we went to Farmer’s Market to have lunch. There was every ethnic variety of food available. It was amazing. Unfortunately that’s when the rain started. After that the rest of the trip was from the bus. We drove down Rodeo Drive and through Beverly Hills. Overall we weren’t too impressed with the tour, but at least we can say, “we’ve been there; done that.”

Once we got back to the hotel we rested a bit and went out for a dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. It was raining and cold all afternoon, but there were still whole families that had started lining up along Colorado Boulevard in order to get a good spot for the Rose Parade tomorrow. It was amazing and sad at the same time that people were camping out in such miserable weather in order to see the parade tomorrow. We did some shopping for some Rose Bowl souvenirs and then called it a night.

Happy New Year from the West Coast. We got up at 5:30 this morning so that we could get ready to go view the parade floats getting decorated for the Rose Parade. We have complimentary breakfast each morning as part of the tour. From there we headed down to the first of the decoration sites. We saw six of the floats from the designer that has won an award for his floats for the last 12 years. The first thing I noticed when we entered the tent was the smell of flowers. It was just like walking into a florist shop. Each float starts as an artistic sketch. From the sketch the metal workers create the shell of the float on top of a truck chassis. Foam is injected into the shell and then painted the color the final float is going to look like. From there flowers, seeds, and grass are added one piece at a time to the float. It looks like a pains taking process and it’s pretty amazing that so many floats are created from scratch each year for the parade. We went to see a couple of more float making sites near the Rose Bowl next. Unfortunately it started raining and we got pretty drenched.

We were scheduled to go to Band Fest next, but we decided to sit that out since it was raining so much. Instead we went searched for a battery charger for our camera. I forgot our battery charger at home and the batter light came on while we were looking at the floats. We had the driver at the hotel drive us to Best Buy and we found a charger there.

In the evening we headed to the Civic Center next to the hotel for our New Years Eve bash. We had dinner, drinks and danced until midnight. We counted down the last seconds of 2005 and toasted campaign while confetti floated down from the ceiling. I wish everyone a great 2006. We miss the kids and hope to be home soon.

The day started early. We woke up at 5:00 a.m. and Marci and Chuck drove us to DFW Airport at 5:30 a.m. There was a long line at the curb side check-in, but we got through it and into the airport in plenty of time. The flight was rough at the beginning, but smoothed out after the first hour. I don’t understand why so many people carry their luggage onto the plane and then try and store it in the over head bins. Just check it in. Are they afraid they are going to lose their luggage? Anyway, we arrived at LAX Airport at 9:00 a.m. PST. It was a three hour flight, but we lost two hours crossing two time zones.

It took forever to get our bags at baggage claim. Maybe those people who carry their luggage onto the plane have a good idea. We caught a shuttle from LAX to our hotel in Pasadena. The smog was pretty think over Los Angeles, but it was cool to see around the city with the Hollywood hills in the background. The city looks pretty trashy. There seemed to be graffiti all along the freeway. Jennifer refused to look forward and kept looking out the side because our driver kept swerving while he was messing with his cell phone.

We got to the hotel in one piece and got our hotel room. It’s on the first floor and has stairs walking down to where the bed is. So, it has a pretty tall ceiling, which makes the room feel a whole lot bigger. We checked in with our tour and received our tickets to the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl. We are sitting in section 23, row 31. It’s on the corner of one of the end zones. For the parade we are sitting in one of the grand stands right after the first turn of the parade.

We explored around downtown Pasadena and then went to a reception for the tour. We met some other Longhorn fans, some older ladies some of whom are faculty at the University of Texas’s Nursing School. It was nice visiting with them and they offered to give us a ride to the Longhorn Bash on Tuesday.

Today’s picture is a surprise we had when we opened up one of our luggage. Emily had stowed away! Actually, this was from last week. One day Emily fell asleep in one of the suitcases while taking a nap.

We spent the past week in Houston with Jennifer’s parents and had a great time. At one point, we went into Clear Lake and looked at our old apartment and ate at one of our old favorite restaurants, Han’s Mongolian BBQ. One day we met George and Heather at The Melting Pot and caught up with the year’s past events while eating. On Christmas Eve, I went with George to Reliant Stadium to see the Houston Texans take on the Jacksonville Jaguars. Up until the end of the third quarter I thought the Texans might actually have an upset in the works, but they completely fell apart and lost pretty poorly.

When I got back from the game we went over to Christina and Mike’s in order to open presents. There were a ton of presents and Abby and Emily helped distribute them. After that, it was time to head home and go to sleep so that Santa Claus could show up. Abby was very concerned and made us remove some bells that were hanging over the chimney as well as move the sofa so that Santa wouldn’t bump into them. In turns out that Santa had dirty boots and left tracks for a couple of steps as he left the chimney.

The day after Christmas we got up early and headed to Lindale to my Grandparent’s house where my family was meeting to open our Christmas presents. There was another ton of presents to open, but the kids plowed through them. We stayed the night and then headed to Shreveport leaving Austin in the care of MaMaw and PaPaw.

We stayed in Shreveport for a couple of days and then left the kids with my parents and borrowed my mom’s car today and headed to Dallas for the first day for our Tournament of Roses Tour. Abby was sad to see us go and was crying, while Emily was running after the car yelling, “Bye, Mommy! Bye, Daddy!” We will miss them. We drove three hours to my Aunt and Uncle’s house where we went out to eat Chinese food with them and my cousin Kevin and his wife Christie. We finally got to see their “new” house (they’ve been in it for a year and a half, but this is the first time we’ve seen it, so it’s new to us). It was really nice and well decorated. We are now gearing up for our flight in the morning to Los Angeles.