Christmas above Temecula

I bought Devin a hot air balloon ride for Christmas. It turned out to be a bit of a bust, since we took our flight on a very foggy day. Still, it was fun to dangle in a rickety basket a thousand feet up. Other than that, we spent most of the holiday enjoying the company of family. Kimberly and Devin and I had fun playing in Mom's zany room full of costumes. I learned that Devin looks cute as a duck. Mom threw four rockin' holiday parties and proved that she is well on her way to being a skilled fundraiser for whatever good cause she supports, and Kim T. was a good sport about having to do a million errands before the party.

Dad showed us his favorite new hangouts in Escondido. Downtown has really changed since I moved away seven years ago. Where there used to be abandoned storefronts there are now cute, expensive little restaurants and coffee houses and spas. The economy of the entire city is really picking up and downtown is really cute, but I wonder where much of the former population of the city will go if Escondido turns into another one of the bland, gentrified neighborhoods that dominate the less well-thought-out parts of San Diego county. Anyway, dad likes the new coffee houses and he's good. Devin's parents drove down from the Bay Area, and we enjoyed Christmas Eve with his folks and his aunt at his brother's house in Long Beach. Last but not least, I got to spend a lot of time with Kimberly, and just as a little sister should, she bugged the heck out of me (hola Kim!) and that was Christmas.