Sunday, March 26, 2017

Spoon Trade and Wine Tasting

After a wonderful brunch at Spoon Trade, we had our first France-trip planning session at the newly-opened (last Fall) Biddle Ranch Winery, followed by a stop at Baileyanna, then on to Chene (Oak) Vineyards (just down the road from our place).

Biddle Ranch Winery

Biddle does a sparkling!

Baileyanna

Chene Vineyards (chene means oak)


Saturday, March 25, 2017

To the Moxi by Train

We had an "All Play" trip (including "Uncle" Jon) to the new kids' museum in Santa Barbara, the Moxi, which, amazingly enough, is right across the tracks from the Santa Barbara Amtrak Station. How convenient! Trevor, Matt, and Jamie took most of the kids by train, and Jen, Tracy, and Lynn drove down with the rest. Turns out the Moxi is very cool, kids and adults had a blast. In the Moxi's own words: "Our mission is to ignite learning through interactive experiences in science and creativity. As Santa Barbara’s newest hands-on destination for families and curious minds of all ages, MOXI is a place where you can explore and discover new things about the world around you, ask questions, seek answers, and have a blast doing so." We had lunch at Enterprise Fish (always fun!), then blasted home - Serafina had a 3:30pm music rehearsal for Annie (yup, she's doing it again, this time a full production with Kelrik; Sandy, too).

All the photos are here.

We took over the cafe car.




"Uncle" Jon met up with us - bearing cookies!












Matteo got some time at the controls of an electron in a hydrogen atom.


Sunday, March 12, 2017

Guys and Dolls closes

And what a cast party it was... (Includes a few other random photos.)







Cute ad from a photo by Danielle.

Backstage shenanigans earlier during the run.


Off to the Gala (February 25th).

Theatre kids of all ages.

Nicely Nicely Johnson, Nathan Detroit, and Benny Southstreet.
Photo by Danielle Dutro McNamara Photography.


AJ holds court with some of the gamblers.

It's the oldest established permanent Floating Crap game in New York!
Thanks, Larry, for the show drink.

Nicely Nicely Johnson and Sarah Brown.





Arvide Abernathy, photo by Cameron


Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Guys and Dolls

These are dress rehearsal photos taken tonight by Danielle Dutro McNamara Photography.

Guys and Dolls
February 17 - March 12, 2017
Produced by SLO Little Theatre
Directed by Kevin Harris
Choreographed by Zach Johnson
Musical Director Lacey McNamara
Jamie: Arvide Abernathy
Tribune review











Saturday, February 11, 2017

"Quick" Train Outing to Santa Barbara

It was Jamie's last free Saturday for a month, and a group of motorcar ("speeder") operators were doing a little joy ride to Santa Barbara and back on Amtrak before their Board meeting, so why not, let's go! Matt and Jamie took Matteo and AJ. Track work prevented us from leaving SLO on time (40 minutes late). Why they couldn't be done in time with their overnight efforts eludes me, but hey, we were on the train! They were out of hot dogs. WHAT! No AmDog! We only had about 20 spare minutes to get to Santa Barbara in time to catch our return train. And a tree fell across the tracks near Goleta. That took care of that. We ended up having about an hour in Santa Barbara after all. While we arrived late, the northbound Starlight (our fall back return train) was late, too. With some fancy footwork by the SB station agents, we turned our 10-ride tickets into Starlight tickets (not usually allowed) and headed on home. The good news was the kids got a dining car experience and a chance to check out an Amtrak observation car. A mere four hours late, we finally got to SLO, dropped off our four boxes of railroad books, and headed home. All the pics are here.