Cassie has been taking ballroom dancing and etiquette lessons with Bobby Burgess and his Cotillion. She loves it, but I think it has to do with the party dresses that her mother has to supply her with. Here she is dancing with Mr. Bobby (the Mouseketeer and Lawrence Welk dancer) Burgess. She's learning all the traditional dance steps and has to dance with boys ("ewwww Mom - boys are on a different planet than me") her own age normally, but sometimes there are more girls than boys and the men step in to dance with the girlies.
We had LOTS of rain this season. The first big rainstorm brought this fun surprise to our area. This is what happens when your city gets a brand new pump for their fancy smancy drainage and forgets to check to see if the electricity to it is hooked up properly. This was taken after the water, which incidentally also brought cool water spouts and a mini-tornado and rained sideways in 60+ mph wind, had gone down a bit and I thought of getting my camera. It was pure river streets for blocks and the college kids in the area brought out their skimboards and were having a great time. We joke that we normally don't get "weather" here, but we had our fill of rain for a few days.
After Christmas we took the kids and one of Cassie's friends up to the cabin for some snow fun. I don't even think I can begin to tell the whole cabin story, but it is the most memorable cabin experience of the past 20 years - hands down.
The snow was too deep to drive up to the driveway so we had to park the car about 1/4 mile down the road and hike in. Four kids, all their stuff, food, a portable heater, and snow toys 1/4 up the road and another 1/4 mile up a steep driveway to the cabin. It took a few trips, but we made it and settled in for a little snowman building, sledding, hot dog/corndog roasting, and of course the ever popular s'mores. Meanwhile someone had reported our van as being suspicious and when the the Fresno County Sheriff's office got there they found the doors unlocked (thanks Jon) and also found his Department of Justice badge in the pocket of the door. Lets just say that all hell broke out just 1/2 a mile away from us and we were blissfully unaware.
They sent the Long Beach police to check on our home in Long Beach and when nobody was home there they became even more alarmed. Sometime around midnight the weekend of New Year's the Sheriff's Office called the #2 guy at the Attorney General's office and said something like this, "We found the abandoned vehicle of one of your missing Deputy Attorney Generals from Los Angeles in a remote location in the mountains above Fresno. Do you want us to search for him and his family?" Sounds ominous in the middle of the night doesn't it? Phone calls were made (after midnight remember)and a search party was organized for the morning. Meanwhile Department of Justice sends out their own investigators to our car and another to our house in Long Beach in the morning. The guy in Long Beach wants to go inside our house, but doesn't have the authority too so he calls the LBPD and 4 squad cars show up. They find our side door unlocked because my dad was in the middle of installing our new microwave and now they are all up in arms. No less than 6 cops go into our house with guns drawn to check to see if there is a crime scene anywhere inside.
Side note - always clean your house before you leave on vacation because you just never know who will see it while you are gone.
My neighbor sees all the commotion and goes to get my parents. They arrive just as the police are coming out of the house. They try to tell the police that we aren't missing and are up a cabin in Dinkey Creek without cell reception and that we're all fine. Nobody really believes them and they keep questioning and asking how they are related to the missing Deputy Attorney.
Meanwhile back in the mountains a search party is assembling by our car. They bring in the Forest Rangers to help them make a grid map for the search. They also decide to bring in a helicopter to help with the search.
The Klines are at this very moment sledding and making a lot of noise about 1/2 mile away while Rebecca is bringing in more wood to the cozy little cabin.
The Forest Ranger arrives on the scene and says, "this doesn't look suspicious to me. Hmmm . . . did you ask the folks in the cabin around the corner if they know anything?" I can almost imagine the dumbfounded looks on the sheriffs as they answer, "What cabin? There aren't any cabins around!" The ranger says, "There's a group of cabins just around the corner. Let me go see if they know anything." He then walks around the bend and follows the hundreds of footprints in the snow which takes him the first cabin with smoke billowing out of the chimney and he finds us.
When he confirmed that we were indeed the lost party from the Department of Justice he immediately got on the radio and called off the aerial search that was about to take off. The Fresno County Sheriff Office wouldn't take the Forest Ranger's word that we were find and dandy and so a few minutes later they send up one of their deputies to see us in person.
All I can say is What A Mess!!!!! Sorry taxpayers - we never meant to be determined to be missing!
