Allan Family Christmas Update 2010

Greetings to all of our family and friends! We will once again attempt to update you on our past year of activity, accomplishments, and other stuff.
As the girls get into their teenage years, life becomes increasingly hectic. Both Anne and Emily are now attending Whitney Academy in Cerritos. Their school is part of the local school district, and focuses on college prep. Another benefit for Chris and Rita is the school bus transport provided, so no more multiple daily driving trips across town.
Rita consented to move her Caltrans office into what was the master bedroom, and the bedroom is now on the ground floor. Chris suggested this arrangement because less noise from the street gets through to the back of the house. The move, which took place over the summer, involved a lot of painting, new carpets, windows, and other improvements that were put off for too long, like central heat downstairs. The new office also includes homework areas for both the girls. Rita continues to be active in Girl Scouts. She led the annual campout to Newport Beach over the summer, and keeps busy organizing other troop activities. For her Mother’s Day in August she received a baby dragon sculpture for the garden, and for her birthday she loved the ”Harry Potter” themed Jelly Belly vending machine we bought surplus from a candy shop in Jackson. At Halloween she added a large inflatable skull to the roof of the house; she affectionately refers to him as “Achmed”.
Anne’s highlights for the year included her East Coast trip with her 8th grade class, from Washington DC to Boston in less than seven days. She also was treated to a “backstage” tour of Disney Imagineering from a friend of ours. Anne hopes one day to become an Imagineer, and the tour, which was incorporated into a school career report, was quite inspiring to her. She graduated with honors from Carmenita Middle School in June.
This year also marks the first year both the girls have Disneyland Annual Passports, so they can take advantage of our proximity to the Park and visit as much as they both can stand. Anne is a rabid Disney fan, and Emily loves Tinkerbell, and they both love a few hours a month running around Disneyland parent-free.
Summer Camps for both girls this year included Surfing at Huntington Beach, improv/theater camp at the local Community College, and of course Girl Scout camps both in Long Beach and up in the mountains near Idyllwild.
Emily finished up 6th grade and took part in the school play and the talent show, and did a wonderful job with both. She was accepted to Whitney school and decided to go, reluctantly at first, but she now loves it. She was encouraged to attend the same school by both her parents, for the reasons previously mentioned (there’s a bus!)
The really BIG news is the purchase of Chris and Rita’s retirement property in the town of Pine Grove, California, in the northern part of the state, about an hour’s drive southeast of Sacramento. There is not much on the acre-and-a-third parcel except for a couple of shacks. One of these “outbuildings” will become a bunkhouse of sorts, someplace to stay while we are working on the property. Chris is quite excited to get out of the greater Los Angeles area after the girls are out of High School. The property purchase gives him some hope this may actually happen! The land is wooded and lies at the 2300 foot level. The well, septic, and power were put in by the former owner, so all we have to do is drop in a house and shop in the future (among other things).
Chris continues to restore the steam locomotive in Portola with his team. It will be a long term job but one he enjoys. Every so often he even makes it out to the garage to work on one of his projects, or somebody else’s. He has several more lifetimes of projects ahead of him.
Missy continues to take care of all of us, and enjoys napping and barking at the UPS truck.
That’s about it for now. We wish all of you a joyous Christmas, and a happy, prosperous, and safe 2011.

Happy Birthday Anne!

Anne celebrated her 14th birthday on the 3rd. We are all very proud of her accomplishments and how well she is doing in school. Tomorrow she is going to Madame Tussaud's wax museum in Hollywood with her friend to be followed by lunch at the Hard Rock. We love you sweetie! - Chris

Anne's friends decorated her locker as a surprise on her birthday.

Happy Birthday Emily!

Emily celebrated her twelfth birthday today. The family took her out to Mimi's for dinner, and she picked out a chocolate cake at Trader Joe's. On Saturday she will have her friends over for a mystery dinner. They grow up fast! Happy birthday sweetie! - Chris

Emily gets ready to blow them out!

Delicious chocolate cake!

End of Year Update for 2009

In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church; the Jews called it 'Hanukkah' and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukkah!' or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!' ~Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"

On that note we would like to welcome you to the 2009 edition of the Allan Family Christmas letter. Another year has come and gone. Some events in our lives were happy, some sad. We have again persevered, and hope the same holds true for all of you.

Life here in Lakewood continues to exemplify the dream that is Southern California; traffic, noise, shopping and nonstop coming and going. All of us here have a lot going on, and a lot to be thankful for. We all still like (or at least tolerate) each other and in the end that’s pretty good!

Rita continues her Girl Scout mission which serves to get Anne and Emily out of their bedroom at least occasionally. Nut sales have wound up for the year, and cookies are getting ready to crank up. They are saving up for a troop cruise in a few years, something to look forward to. Caltrans work is still keeping a roof over our head, but Gov. Arnold has seen fit to put Rita on “Furlough Fridays” three days a month, which does eat into our savings a bit. Hopefully that will all end by June 2010, we remain optimistic. The rest of Rita’s time is spent reading with the Kindle, her form of escapism. Recently she relayed the floor in the kitchen and installed a dishwasher, all in one huge day of effort, which her back muscles didn’t appreciate.

Chris still has a few projects in the works. The locomotive restoration in Portola, Ca. (his form of escapism) continues. Sadly he lost one of his best pals, Dana Greeley, this past spring. Dana was a great guy Chris has known for most of his adult life, and was of late helping him out in Portola. Another smaller narrow-gauge locomotive is being restored for a private individual here in So Cal. This one is named “Apollo” and was rescued from an abandoned gold mining operation in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. Due to financial constraints not much time has been spent on his own projects unfortunately. He takes joy in driving the girls back and forth to school, and looks forward to a trip up north to Concord right after Christmas. Other activities include honing his cooking skills, and internet-scouting various possible locales for the move to up north after the girls are in college.

Anne is now 13, and is in eighth grade at Carmenita Middle School in Cerritos. She is doing very well grade-wise, and is active in other activities there including leadership, and tutoring. There is lots of homework during the week, but enjoys her Sims computer game, and of late, oil painting during her brief periods of downtime. Anne also helps out at the local county library on Wednesdays after school reading to the little kids, and helping the librarian organizing things, etc. Her summer highlight was summer surf camp in Huntington Beach. Anne is quite adept in the water, and even got good enough to stand up on the board a few times. Next fall she enters high school. Yikes!

Emily is (until January) eleven years old, and is in sixth grade, her last year at Nixon Elementary. Next year she will take her sister’s place at Carmenita Middle. She enjoys a lot of the same things her sister does. Emily is Dad’s “sous chef” in the kitchen most nights, and has learned to make a mean hollandaise sauce! She enjoyed a week at horse camp this past summer in Bonsall, in northern San Diego County. This was her first long trip alone away from home, and she did great.

For the first time in many years (if ever) we took a family vacation together. After some deliberation we decided on a few days over on Catalina Island. The whole adventure can be perused in our summer update blog post. Suffice to say it was a relaxing time away from home, which we all needed. A nice change of scenery was a good thing.

Aside from some other omissions that may have escaped our frazzled brains, that was about it for 2009. We look forward to another busy year in 2010. We send our love to all of you, and hope to see many of you soon. Missy the dog would really like that too. She loves visitors, as do we all!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all,

The Allan Family
Chris Rita Anne Emily Missy

Time for Girl Scout Fall Sales!

It's that time again! Anne and Emily would like everyone to know that Girl Scout nut, candy and magazine sales are on. Click on on the product page below for details and pricing. Please email your nut and candy orders to Rita directly: gscglb_troop138@yahoo.com
Deadline for orders is Monday October 12th. Delivery is scheduled for November 9th.

Magazine orders may be made online here.

Click to enlarge.

Thanks to everyone for your past and future support! Have a great Fall season!

-Anne and Emily Allan

Allan Family Summer Report 2009

Except for the customary first-day-of-fall heat wave, summer has run its course here in Lakewood. Some great plans were hatched in the spring, some saw their way to completion; others simply vanished into the ether. In any event it was a typically busy season. For some of us new frontiers were explored, and for others among us (namely me) there were the good times and some not-so-good.

Approaching this strictly chronologically, summer 2009 kicked off with Emily going off for a week in Bonsall (just north of San Diego) to horse camp. Rawhide Ranch is an interesting conglomeration of old west facades, swimming pools complete with water slide, teepees, covered wagons and every type of critter that man has domesticated to date. Oh yea, and horses, lots of horses. This was Emily’s first foray away from home, and she did real well. Thanks to all of you who sent her cards and letters that week! Her counselor was a petite blond girl from Northern Ireland, but I still maintained her accent mutated into a California “valley girl” drawl, despite what Rita thinks. Many of the counselors there seemed to be from abroad, I suppose there are few places to experience the “wild west” in the British Isles, or anywhere else, for that matter.

At the end of the week the camp holds a rodeo of sorts and every kid gets to strut their stuff. Emily came out with the last group on horseback, and did a great job of holding on while she galloped, trotted and much to my surprise, put the beast into reverse. She had a great week living the life of a ranch hand.

Each of the girls spent time this summer at the Skyland Girl Scout camp in the mountains near Idyllwild. Anne worked as a counselor/helper for one week, and joined Emily (and a lot of other girls) as a camper for a second week. They got to hang out with friends, and make some new ones. The week they were both gone was the same week I was in Portola, so Rita only had our dog Missy to talk to.

I spent a week in July up in northern California at the Western Pacific Railroad Museum in Portola working on the steam locomotive we are slowly restoring. At the beginning of that week one of my dear friends died unexpectedly, suffice to say that cast a bummer of a shadow on the rest of the work session. I felt a bit better when I was able to meet up with an old friend, Jim Blake, in from the east coast and tour him around our museum, he likes trains too, go figure! I also had lunch with another old friend, Rick Mugele, in nearby Quincy which was a nice break from locomotive work. At the very least we got some work done, and I enjoyed a break from the constant din of the I-605 freeway. That was pretty much the highlight of my summer.

Anne’s choice for a “specialty” camp this year was surfing. Rita found a day program with the City of Huntington Beach, which is fairly close to us. Anne found out that surfing 6 hours a day is actual exercise, so she had to take the Thursday of that week off to recover and recharge, but by Friday she was standing on the board and doing all the cool stuff surfer chicks do.

As a family we decided to go on a trip together this year, which we haven’t done in a very long time, if ever. Originally the destination was Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula to visit the little town of Forks, Washington, which was the filming location for one of the vampire movies the girls liked at the time. The prospect of sitting in the truck for extended periods didn’t appeal to the Anne or Emily so this week long trip was culled down to two and a half days on Catalina Island.

After talking Rita’s cousin Teresa into dog sitting, we were off to the Island. The town of Avalon, on Catalina, is a cute little town sort of stuck in the 1950’s, which was fine by me. Visiting Avalon is a bit like a visit to an older, gentler Los Angeles, so this town has always been on my “LA Bucket List” of things to do before we leave town for good. I have been to Catalina before, but only to Boy Scout camp as a youthful lad. The camp was way on the north end of the island, and if memory serves, the stay wasn’t always too pleasant.

Due to the lack of wave action on the leeward side of the Island, where Avalon is located, the girls weren’t too terribly interested in getting in the water, so we took advantage of some of the other amenities afforded us, like the newly refurbished miniature golf course, and a truck tour up Skyline Drive to the Airport in the Sky. Yes, they really call it that, even though it’s actually sitting on top of a mountain, not floating in the air like Cloud City in the Star Wars movies. False advertising. As close as we got to the water was a ride on the Glass Bottom Boat, which is a famous old attraction in Avalon. They drop buckets of food into the water so the fish come up to the boat. The skipper also told us which ones were the tastiest; I guess I will have to take his word for it. I don’t mind looking at fish, but eating them is another matter. The remainder of our time was spent browsing, eating and enjoying the air conditioning in our suite at the Atwater Hotel.

More Catalina trip photos here.

Shortly after our trip to Catalina, Rita and the girls, along with the rest of their Girl Scout troop camped out for a couple days on Balboa Island in Newport Beach. Of course "camping" is a relative term given the accomodation was a Girl Scout troop house on the main drag adjacent to the beach. Luckily the gi-nourmous waves Newport was seeing subsided in time for the trip, and no water rescues were necessary this time. The girls led by one of the other troop moms put on a skit one evening as an appreciation for Rita, who has been ably leading this troop since the girls were at Daisy level.

We are back to the routine, both Anne and Emily are back to school in 8th and 6th grades, repectively. A sweltering end to an interesting summer. The Santana winds are due this week, which means yet another hellish heat wave. Many houses in Lakewood, including ours are sans air conditioning due to our close-ish proximity to the ocean, which doesn’t seem to mean much anymore. Perhaps as I get older I tolerate heat less. Perhaps I don’t tolerate many things as well I have in the past.
Thanks for visiting my rambling blog. FYI- Girl Scout sales of nuts and magazines is coming up, so you can look forward to hearing from us soon!

-Chris

Mermaid Emily

Rita took this yesterday, August 4th. Emily trying out her new Mermaid tail in a friend's pool. They grow up so fast! And they seem to grow tails even faster! Today is Rita's birthday, we plan to take here out tonight to a restaurant yet to be determined. Happy Birthday Hun! - Chris