I'd stay the whole night long

Friday November 26th.


...but the boys are playing those old sad songs and I must sing along. 



Lucero - Can't Feel A Thing from Joe Gonzalez on Vimeo.


People ask the question "who is your favorite band?" often the answer is "I don't have one, I love so much." I'm not so diplomatic. Lucero is my favorite. Joe and I have seen them every time they have come into town in the last five years. If I could have picked any band to open for them, it would be Drag The River and that is exactly what happened. Fantastic line up. Missing Lucero play in San Diego is going to be one of the things that I miss the most while we are gone.

Why I Like It.

Friday October 22nd - Monday November 1st.  This is a photo summary of our Puerto Vallarta vacation.  Joe will be posting photos and making a video soon.

The view from the 11th floor of Los Caracoles.

Alex was really excited to see Coco.  Coco mastered her stink eye.  

Sienna Katalina at Ocho Tostadas.  

This is what we did about half of the time.  This is why we are tan in November.

Hammock on the patio.  I need a hammock in my everyday life.  

Prayer Flags in the Zona Romantica.

A traditional candy store in Puerto Vallarta.  We bought giant marshmallows, peanuts, gum and mexican chocolate.

'Quino eating sherbet.

In my opinion, American ice cream is much better than Mexican ice cream.

Remember who you are.  A mural in Puerto Vallarta.

This is what Michael and Jessica looked like most of the time.  Their child couldn't be contained.

Coco ran everywhere that she went.

Papa Chuy is the happiest when he is with his grandchildren.

The kids love to be with Grammie.

This is Boca de Tomatlan.  We caught a water taxi here to go to Yelapa.  I love this town.

Karla and 'Quino on the water taxi.  Joaquin might have spent a few moments alone on the beach as the boat began to float off. 

In Yelapa, we hiked through the town to get to a waterfall.  This bridge doesn't look anywhere near as scary in this photo as it did in real life.

This is the waterfall.

Fabrics for sale in Yelapa.

Wheels in the junk yard.  This is the most organized junk yard that I have ever seen.

Michael and Peter at the junk yard.

Papa Chuy's land in San Sabastian.

We hiked though the land and got lots of mosquito bites.  Jessica ate a worm.

San Sabastian was founded in 1605 as a mining town.  Now it is best known for the coffee grown in the region.

We spent a night in Sayulita and stayed in the adorable Aurinko Bungalows.  

Juanito sold us some bracelets while we ate lunch.  When Peter asked him who the president of Mexico was, he said "David."

We all enjoyed hanging out both in the warm waters and back at the bungalows. 

Sienna and Coco hate the sand.  Sienna was happy to be on firm cement.  

Apple Days

Sunday October 3rd.  I have a mild apple obsession.  That is not to say that I endlessly eat apples, rather than I find them to be interesting.  Most of this stemmed from reading Michael Pollan's book, The Botany of Desire.  The most intriguing thing to me about apples are the seeds.  Each apple has five seeds.  Each seed contains the genetic information for a completely different apple species, thus, specific apple species cannot be grown from seed.  They have to be grafted.

Today Beth and I went to Julian to the Apple Festival.  After walking around town and buying pie we decided to walk to the festival, but, due to no fault of our own, we walked the wrong way for a while.  This made us hungry.  Luckily Beth packed us a lunch which was especially good because we had $11 between the two of us.  Instead of actually going into the festival we wandered around the winery.

I stole apples.  Beth stole apples.  Apples were stolen.  All of these apples were just falling on the ground.  The trees were by the side of the road.  The apples were hanging from the branches.  Really, we rescued these apples from a certain fate of rotting on the ground.  We could have easily gone into the nearby orchard and paid $10 to pick a bag of apples, but why when there were free apples across the street.  

There weren't only apples, there were also pears.  

Before heading home, we went to a favorite childhood place of mine, Frosty Burger.  I don't remember ever having food from here, but I love their soft serve.  It isn't anything special, but it's good.  I wasn't having two cones to myself, I was holding Beth's in this photo.  I believe that she might be writing about her first Frosty Burger experience so be sure to check out her blog, The Delighted Bite.    

  

Summer Trail Mix

This is going to be a post about a little bit of everything.  A recap if you will.

When Joe and I lived in Utah one of the things that we missed most about San Diego was the beach.  We vowed to go as often as we could when we moved back.  Thus far, we haven't been great about doing so, but we do try.  We made it a few times this summer.  Our new friend Andy moved out to San Diego this summer from Richmond.  Thats him in the picture below with his girlfriend Emma.  Andy has since moved back to Richmond but promises that he will be back.  I hope so.  

We also made it to the water-park twice with Noah.  The first time we went on a Thursday which was a great idea because the lines were short so we were able to go on all of the slides.  This last Saturday we went for Noah's birthday.  This time, it was a little bit more crowded but still fun.  I don't have any photos of the water-park because my camera isn't waterproof.  We did however get stuck in traffic on the way back last time.  Not regular traffic, but the kid where people get out of their cars on the freeway.  Life-Flight actually had to land on the freeway.

Saturday September twenty-four-eth was Noah's thirteenth birthday.  We went to The Station for dinner.  I made a cake which was dubbed The Wizard of Oz cake.  My best work to date.  I wish I could say that I was creative enough to come up with the idea myself, but its been done many times.  A Google search of "rainbow cake" comes up with thousands of photos.  These food colorings made a huge difference in the vibrance of the colors and I recommend them.

Something else I recommend is Mariposas Ice Cream.  It in our neighborhood so Joe and I go often enough that they know what we want.  He gets mexican chocolate and a waffle cone and I get cookies and cream in a cake cone.  Delicious.  If you haven't been before, go, though I hear that they will be closed this Sunday.

I have not yet made horchata ice cream, but have made mint ice cream, and I have plans to make horchata cupcakes with a mexican chocolate frosting.  

Something else in our neighborhood is Jack.  Jack lives next door.  When he was a wee kitten some rotten kids put him in a microwave.  He was rescued in time but was left with a wonky ear, two bad back legs, and an amputated tail.  Despite all of this Jack is social and affectionate.  He loves our apartment, I think because we don't have a microwave.  For a little while we had to ban him from coming in due to fleas but a little note fixed the problem and now he is welcome.  

We also saw this dog at the Adams Ave. Street Fair.  Yes, it is wearing sunglasses.

Tonight we were supposed to go to see Tom Petty, but Mr. Petty has a sinus infection so the concert has been rescheduled to next Tuesday.  The waiting the the hardest part.  Instead of sulking we went to a baseball game.  Event though thousands of people put their rally caps on, the Padres were unable to pull it together for a win.  It was still fun and I'm glad that we went.

Catalina Video

Catalina: August 2010 from Joe Gonzalez on Vimeo.

Or you can access it here.

Catalina

Friday August 6th.  Joe and I drove up to Long Beach where Jessica and Coco dropped us off at the ferry that took us to Avalon.  On the ferry we played dominos.  I lost, many times.

We got to Avalon and the weather was beautiful.  It was finally summertime.  The beach was bustling, but we were hungry, so instead of spending time there or heading up the hill to our camping spot, we stopped to eat.  

Our campsite was a 30 minute walk through town and past the golf course at Hermit's Gulch.  The trek was a little arduous with our backpacks, but nothing like last year (eight miles, in the dark).  Our tent was up in a jiffy so we headed into town where we took some photos at the beach and bought some groceries at the itty-bitty island Vons.  

Feeling that there was no better or safer time to ever do so, we hitchhiked back to camp with our groceries.  A nice guy picked us up on his golf cart and drove us the mile up the hill.  That night we made dinner, listened to music, and went to bed.  

Saturday August 7th.  Camping seems to revolve around food.  Most of the time it is either being made, eaten, cleaned up or hidden.  True to this, upon waking up on Saturday we made some mexican hot chocolate, scrambled eggs, and hash browns.  Our little camping stove worked much better this time.  

Beth and Ashton were on their way to camp with us so we headed back down into Avalon to meet them at the pier.  

We found them and then headed back to camp.  This time a man offered all of us a ride on the back of his golf cart which was much appreciated.  Beth and Ashton set up their tent and then we were on our way back down to Avalon.  We toured the town and ended up at Descanso Beach Club where we enjoyed the sun and the view for a while.  On the way back to the grocery store we all posed for some more photos.  

Back up to the campground.  This time we had to walk.  We made a pretty gourmet dinner by camping standards and had a dessert of smores with green apples.  The night was finished off with a round of dominos.  I finally won.  

Sunday August 9th.  Breakfast.  Clean up.  Packing.  Today was the day we had to go back home.  

We finally decided to use the $2 shuttle that runs between Avalon and the campsite, but sadly we were $3 short so we hiked back to the ferry with all of our things, only to find the exact money we needed once we arrived.  Beth and Ashton spent some time with us in Long Beach and then it was time to go back home.  Showers were needed by all.  

Please check back because Joe is almost done editing the movie film from our camping excursion.  He took most of these photos and I'm sure that he will also do a much better job editing all of the photos from the trip so be sure to check his flickr too.