Sonya World

Lake Havasu was the most fun! From the painted desert, we went directly to the Lake Havasu and stayed at the Nautical Inn, which is the only hotel with rooms right on the water.

It was a two room suite right on the water with a large balcony. There was a sofa bed that pulled out in one of the rooms and I quickly put my dibs on it! I love jumping on those beds!

In the morning, my mom and I put on our swimming suits and ran to the beach and started to build a little castle. The sand was a bit different, so I did some experimentation on how best to build a castle (more on that some other time). The water was a bit cool but it was 85 degrees hot and it felt nice.

We went to the place called Naked Turtle for lunch and had a really nice brunch and glass of pineapple juice. We were ready to hit the water. I had also heard about the famous London Bridge that was brought from London and reused in the Lake Havasu.

My dad suggested getting Jet skies, the large ones where all three of us can ride and I jumped with joy; yes, yes, I want to ride the jet ski. My dad found a place where they had those and we decided to go visit the London Bridge and then go jet skiing.

The London Bridge was, kind of disappointing. It didn’t look like anything special. In fact we have a beautiful bridge in Pasadena that looks so much better. Oh well - forget about the bridge, lets go on the Jet ski!

We went to the Crazy Horse campground and drove to the marine shop. They had these big, powerful jet skies and I was ready. The guy at the shop told us the basics and lowered it in the water. My dad got on first and was steering, I got on next and my mom pushed it and then jumped on.

We were on the water for a few minutes and the water was very choppy and I was SO SCARED! The fact that the water was cold didn’t help much either. My dad brought the jet ski right back and asked the marine shop guy, Dan, to take me for a ride instead. Later he told me that the only way to stabilize the jet ski was to make it go fast and he was hesitant in going very fast when I was so scared.

Dan put on some life west and we went zoooooooommmm…. I had SO MUCH FUN!

On the way back we took the scenic route and passed through some very beautiful spots. Lake Havasu Springs had a very nice river/lake wrapping around.

On the way back, we stopped somewhere and my mom took the most beautiful picture of me and the blue sky and an interesting formation. Here is a thumbnail, click for a large picture.

After a day of gem hunting, and a night of gloating over the loot of stones and two gorgeous geodes, we went to the Painted Desert. The place was full of colors, the most interesting ones were the deep blue colored rocks.

We pulled over to admire the view and I found a frisbee that I had gotten with my Wendy’s kids meal a while ago and we just started to toss it around! The weather was perfect, sun was shining, the air was crisp and the view was out of this world and we were just running around taking it all in.

For a moment it felt like we were on an alien planet with strange landscape.

Then we went to the Sapphire trail where one can see the most of the blue colored rocks. The color was so intense and then on top of it, there was a layer of gray soft rock and then a layer of deep brown and the top layer was red. It really seemed like God had taken the time to carefully apply strokes of color to each layer.

Petrified forest was something else! There were these trees on the ground and they looked like regular brown tree that fell over and when you touch them, they are actually stones! Imagine that, a tree made out of stones, perfect in every detail. The bark, the ring, the spots, Amazing!

We also saw the petro-something drawings and “the newspaper rock”. It was just a huge stone with a lots of petrographs on it. We were joking that since it had a lot of pictures of animals, it must have been the sport section! Thank god, the newspapers are made with paper now; can you imagine if every morning, somebody drove to you house and threw a big rock on your front lawn!! Just kidding!

There was this man-woman sign on the rest rooms and my dad tried to convince me that the signs were really petrographs, drawn 6-700 years ago… Ha Ha..

And then we went to the gift shop and there were so many gems there! I picked out some geodes and got to pick a bunch of gems.

Now I have 23 gems, 2 geodes and 1 piece of petrified wood. One of the geodes has white crystals and other one has dark purple ones. I like them both.

It was a little cool when we got to the Grand Canyons, but we went in to our cabin, which was right in the park, and snuggled in. The next morning, I got the big picture and it was really really HUGE! The sight of Grand Canyons - It was bigger and deeper then I thought it would be.

A part of it looked like the battleship ready to fight some aliens and other part looked like a top of a temple. We went around the rim, had a nice lunch at the Arizona Room and then went back to the west rim for the Sunset.

It was really very beautiful; there were the colors of the sunset and then there were the colors of the canyon walls.

It was getting kind of cold, so sneaked in to the gift shop and got myself a key chain with a compass and a thermometer! pretty nice.

I have been playing tennis on the Wii for a while and have gotten pretty good at it - I always beat my dad, even though his skill level is higher!

But now, I have started to play real tennis - its much harder than it looks. One of our neighbors, Mr. & Mrs. Day, have a nice tennis court overlooking the LA downtown. I am still learning but my mom tells me that I have a good form! Aimee is teaching me a bit, hope I get to play some more.

Here are a couple of pictures of my whacking the racquet.

Went to the new trendy Piinkberry frozen yogurt place today. I heard that people just love this stuff!

I had even picked out the toppings for it; mangos and strawberries.

And then when I got to the store, I had a little taste: and I just hated it….

Sorry! the frozen yogurt tasted like regular yogurt with some lemon on it and the tea yogurt was a bit strange.

I think the taste is not right for a 7 year old. My mom didn’t care for it but my dad liked it a lot.

The interior of the place was nice and the little yogurt container was pretty. Didn’t see too much of pink though!

LA times says that people pay $75 for a large order ($7 for the yogurt and $68 for a parking ticket). We also had tough time finding parking.

Let me know what you think!

I am having fun with Excel. My mom showed me how to enter formulas. Now I have all my times tables done. Too bad I have to memorize them as well!

I also had fun making graphs in excel. I plotted my weight from the time I was a baby. Then we found some data on rainfall in California and I plotted that too.

Can you tell which month is the most rainy?

Meet Coco and Stickers. Coco is the mom and Stickers is the little puppy.

A perfect set, Mom & baby Cocker Spaniel!

They even share a house together and I decorated it a bit.

I like them a lot better than the tamagatchi that I had because my Tamagotchi kept dying on me. Also Webkinz have more interesting things to do and Coco can get a job as a vet’s assistant and play a lots of games.

Here is a picture of Coco and Stickers sitting on a couch and watching TV!

Sticker loves the little blue wagon he has!

My username is cocostickers if you want to be my friend in the webkinz.

I have never seen the Columbo show but my dad tells me stories and plots of the shows and they are so interesting.

It is like a mystery and a puzzle and a game; all together.

Columbo likes to observe things and even the littlest of things gives him a clue.

If you look at something closely and carefully and think about how it got there and whether it belongs there or not, you can learn so much about, not just the thing, but about everybody who might have interacted with it.

The last story I heard was about the case where Colombo looked at a burned match stick in the ashtray and by looking at it closely and observing how much of it had burned, he figured out that it was used by a cigar smoker and not a cigarette smoker.

In another story, he looked at the teeth mark on a half eaten piece of cheese and tried to figure out who might have visited the room.