bonnie & jason

2011 Vacation Video Trailer

By jason, April 24, 2011 on 10:06 am | In alissa | No Comments

I tried out the new “semi-auto trailer” feature with some of the SLR, iPhone, and point and shoot video clips. It’s pretty easy. Not much flexibility, but fun nevertheless.

2011 04 23 vacation montage from Jason Wang on Vimeo.

2011 Family Vacation in the Books

By jason, April 23, 2011 on 11:31 pm | In family, travel | 1 Comment

We just got back from vacation so that means I need to take care of the photos and video and blogging before life gets busy again and the memories start to fade away!

This year, we rented a house at Seal Beach which is just north of Huntington Beach and due west of Disneyland by about 15 miles. The house was right on the beach with plate glass views of the ocean from all three floors, a rooftop hot tub, and plenty of room for all of us (6 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms).

View from our master bedroom:

(The closet was huge so we made all three kids sleep in there)

The weather varied from pretty chilly to pretty warm throughout the week as you’ll notice from what we’re wearing in the photos. But all in all, a good week to be in LA.

Our house is the leftmost house.

Seal beach is made up of mostly really nice homes (~$1.5M based on Zillow). Some less nice places are interspersed between the fancier ones, but I definitely saw more BMWs and Porsches than Fords and Hyundais:

The beach was pretty clean and seemed popular with kite surfers and a few other random guests as well.
Sadly, this seal (on Seal Beach) apparently was pregnant and not very healthy. Some wildlife officials came and took her away later in the afternoon.

At one point, I counted about 15 kits surfers up the coast:

Apparently, someone had a heart attack and beached their boat right next to our house. The “Baywatch” team showed up along with the “CSI-Seal Beach” team.

Then a big bulldozer came and pulled the boat away:

Even FOX news showed up to take a look:

As for our beach fun, the kids spent their time split between the playground and digging random holes in the sand.

When not on the beach, they were often playing in the water in the hot tub:

Then, of course, we spent a few days at Legoland (1) and Disneyland (2).

Legoland was ok. It seems geared toward a very small age range… like 3-6. So Chloe and Alissa enjoyed it quite a bit, but Amanda and Ashley and the adults were not particularly entertained. Nevertheless, it was a nice park and worth the trip.

Disneyland was about what you would expect except that it was super crowded with the spring break crowd. I have to admit though, they are still very good at crowd control and just putting on a good show all around. A definite step ahead of the Legoland experience. But you pay for it! I think Disney tickets are about twice as much as Legoland.

The standard group shot at the park entrance:

Ashley already has a nice fake smile:

I don’t remember Aladdin looking like Balky from Perfect Strangers:

Alissa was super excited to meet Mickey!

And Minnie!

And three of the princesses:

Ashley enjoyed playing with this twig:

Amanda fit well in Minnie’s lounger:

Alissa and Chloe – inseparable:

Riding the carousel:

Enjoying a mickey lollipop at It’s a Small World:

Amanda sort of enjoyed it:

Again, meeting the characters was a big highlight: