The Chambers

California Pizza Kitchen

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

Photo Taken: 30th October 2007
Photo Location: Beverly Centre, Los Angeles, California

In 2007 we holidayed in the USA, staying in Los Angeles around Halloween.

This photo was taken at the California Pizza Kitchen, at the Beverly Centre. According to their site, the California Pizza Kitchen (http://www.cpk.com) serves “Authentic California-style cuisine at all CPK locations. Try our innovative pizzas, distinctive pastas, salads, soups, appetizers and desserts.” According to me, they serve good, inexpensive food.

I’m not sure what was happening in this photo, but it looks like Jackson was getting a smack, which he certainly would not have been.

Too nice to eat!

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

Photo Taken: 26th December 2009
Photo Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

Funny photo. This was taken at one of my favourite restaurants, “The Cheesecake Factory” at the Forum Shops in Las Vegas. This restaurant has “good” food and “great” cheesecakes, like every restaurant in the US, the serve sizes are massive!

Kylie and Jackson are pictured with some type of chocolate cheesecake. Sadly, I must report that after having eaten their “entrees” (mains in ‘ztraylian”) the two of them were only able to eat but a few bites, after posing with silly looks and threatening to eat the whole piece.

One of my 2009 goals is to make sure that I do get the photos from our 2008 visit to the USA up onto the information super-highway and share them with family, friends and anyone else who wants to take a look-and-see.

We took 2,183 photos while we were away. Not anywhere near all of them are good, but there are some great ones. The plan is to get them all tagged in an orderly manner and sorted into sets on flickr and then post slideshows here on the blog. I’m then going to pick 42 photos (1 for each day we were away) and put them into a slideshow.

After that’s all done, I can start on 07’s trip…..

Without further delay, here’s some happy snaps from the Napa Valley!

You will get a better view and captions / descriptions if you click this link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157612167795221/show/

I have also set these up like a slideshow, press play to activate and then the left and right keys to scroll through the photos. But, it would be better if you clicked the link above as the slideshow below does not have captions or descriptions…..

We had a great day out there. Thanks Rick from Blue Heron Tours for his hospitality on the day.

cc

Disney do a great job of theming up their parks. The attention to detail is marvellous and I guess that’s how they make their money, by putting people in a different place and making them think – even if only for a second – that they have been moved to another time or place.

Now, I wasnt around in the 1950’s, but last night we got a taste of it! We had dinner at a place called the Prime Time Cafe in one of the Disney parks. It’s themed like a 1950’s home! Even better your waiter is in character as a Mom from the 1950’s and she goes around the restaurant telling everyone to get their elbows off the table! Some of her other favourite lines were “No whinging and no complaining” (Jacko didnt like that one) and she even rolled out the “If you don’t eat your greens, no pudding!” (see photo of Kylie, muhahahahaha!)

The desert menu is on ViewMasters and the food is all very “homely”. Kylie had meatloaf and I had steak and vegetables, with the steak cooked medium / well and it came out cooked very well!

Jackson and I both got a “Clean Plate Award” sticker from “Mom” for eating all our dinner, while Kylie left beans behind, so got no sticker.

I havent quite worked out how to embed pictures from flickr into a post here, so click this
link for photos.

cc, Kylie and Jacko

Hi ya! Please excuse some of the mixed-tense you will find in this post, it was written over a week and a bit, so is a little mixed up!

I’ve got some of Jacko’s video updates to come too and will post them to the blog soon. We’ve got some great can-can action to show you all

This post started on the “verandah” (or whatever they call them on ships) of cabin 7122 of the Disney Magic. We’re now finished our cruise and are at Disney World….. This update was written with three days remaining on our cruise of the East Caribbean, which has been tremendously relaxing and a nice change of pace from the rather frenetic first fortnight of our holiday. Kylie commented at dinner the night before this post started that this would be our first morning to sleep in and wake naturally, without any alarms being set. She’s probably right too. It was about 545 am (a sleep-in for me) when I woke up and started writing this update, Jackson and Kylie woke at about 630am (not a sleep-in).

I need to catch you all up on a fair bit of our holiday, including finishing off with an update on New York, our time at Port and Cape Canaveral and our cruise. I’ll give you an update on the rest of New York in this post and follow up on the cruise and Canaveral later.

New York is really an amazing city. Everyone should visit New York at least once. Kylie has been here five times, I’ve visited four times and this is Jackson’s second visit. Even with a few visits we were still doing things we hadn’t done before and wondered afterwards why it wasn’t something we’d done on our first visit AND we haven’t got to any of the other four boroughs of New York City yet. We had so much fun here.

I don’t think a day–by-day or blow-by-blow description is the way to wrap up the New York part of our holiday, so I’ll give you some highlights.

The 30th of November (Sunday) was the first bad weather day of the trip. It was cold, very, very cold and raining, raining cold, very cold rain. Kylie, Mum and Jackson headed off to do the Statten Island Ferry for views of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, the views of the Statue were not good (damn rain). After riding the ferry, they did a few things but the most noteworthy (if you ask Jackson) was getting back to Toy r Us and riding the four floor high ferris wheel inside the store. I went off to check out a large electronics store called J&R, which was very cool and then off to catch up with a friend at an American Football (NFL) game. Great thing to do on a day when it is cold, freezing cold rain. Thank god our seats were under cover! The rain was coming down four different ways and the people on the top tiers (not under cover) must have nearly froze. The game was ok. It was nice to get out to a game and hang out with Robert and his mate for a while, but next time the game better be great if the weather is that bad!

We shopped. We shopped a fair bit and had fun doing it. There is a lot more variety here in the USA over Australia in the types of products available and things are still pretty cheap, despite whatever the AUD / USD is at the moment. We went into some great stores including clothes and electronics stores. I loved visiting the electronics stores and checking out all the different products they had for sale.

The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) was a very interesting way to spend a few hours. They had large Picasso and Joan Miro exhibitions on. The Picasso exhibition was very interesting and enjoyable. Contributing to the understanding and enjoyment of the exhibition, MOMA have a wireless network within the exhibition and you can use your own wireless devices (phones) to basically tune into and listen to information on each piece of art as you stood in front of it. It was very interesting to be able to absorb what state of mind the artist was in (drunk? crazy?) when the piece was being done and learn a whole lot more about the actual piece hanging on the wall in front of you. Some of the works on display take weeks and months to complete, despite them looking like they could be whipped up in a couple of minutes (more on Jackson Pollock later). I went through the Joan Miro exhibition and wasn’t really taken by any of the work. We strolled through the rest of the exhibits and took in works by many famous artists and pieces, including the famously large Water Lillies, which stretched out at least 5 metres wide and was the highlight for Kylie. There were many Jackson Pollock’s on display and Mum mentioned the national “interest” in Australia when Gough Whitlam bought Blue Poles for the National Gallery in Australia. It got me interested in that and when I get back home I am going to keep an eye out for books written on that topic. Surely there’s one. The MOMA do a great job of an exhibition, but I still reckon our very own GOMA is something we should be incredibly proud of.

On one day we caught a cab down to the financial district, to right near the site of the World Trade Centre to start a day of walking. From here we had a look through Century 21, which is a department store worth a look and then walked up to SoHo. In SoHo there are lots of great stores, including Ben Sherman, Ted Baker and Ed Hardy as well as a bunch of stores like the GAP and Old Navy etc which are fun to spend money in. I got my snow boots finally, they were marked down a fair bit on their original price and then when I got to the check-out they were marked down even further! Bargain. SoHo is also where we had lunch at Balthazar.

Rockerfeller Centre is a collection of buildings in mid-town. They were at one stage all owned by a very rich dude and were once home to the Tourism Queensland’s New York office (who do I talk to about re-opening that puppy?!). Rockerfeller is also home to “Top of the Rock”, which is a skyline viewing area similar to the Empire State Building which is about 70 stories up and also includes an outdoors area. The ride up to the viewing platform is an a lift (duh) but the roof of the lift is transparent so you can see through the roof and see the workings of the lift taking you up to the viewing area, this is pretty cool. Once up on the 70th’ish floor you can get a great 360 degree view of Manhattan. I prefer this view than the Empire State Building, there are shorter lines to get up to the viewing platforms and you are closer to Central Park. The outside areas have glass “walls”, but it was so windy that when out there I was clinging tightly to the camera and walking as “low” as I could. We got some great photos from up here.

We went along to the Radio City Christmas Show, with the Rockettes. Apart from being dazzled by the heights of the dancers kicks we also thought the show pretty cool as they combined dancing and singing with a story about believing in Santa and a 3D film which tied in nicely (and not so subtly) advertising messages from the shows sponsors. This was a good night out which also featured a 5 block dash to the gents room at the restaurant we were having dinner at for Jackson who pronounced that he was busting to do a pee just after leaving the theatre and we were sure we wouldn’t make it, but he did! Phew…

Dining wise we had some great meals in New York, probably the highlights over the last few days in New York would have been.

Balthazar is a beautiful French Bistro in SoHo. A friend had dined there in the past and recommended it to me, we were looking forward to eating there and we were not let down. We’d made a reservation for 12 and when we were going back to the restaurant I noticed a big black SUV pulling up in front of the restaurant. Given my earlier induction to the Posh-Pap-Scrum and that my paparazzi sixth sense is now nicely developed and I commented to Kylie that someone famous was in that car. Turns out it was Kate Moss who was having lunch at Balthazar, “with us”. Kylie wanted me to let everyone know that she did eat something and definitely drunk her share of red wine (Kate Moss, not Kylie). We had a great lunch and the highlight for Jackson was when he was presented with a box of crayons and told to draw all over the paper tablecloths. He didn’t believe me and I had to get the waiter to come over and be the first to draw on the tablecloth for Jackson to believe it, but after that first drawing he couldn’t be stopped and he made his way around each of the four settings at the table doing his own special drawing for each setting.

We also ate at Daisy May’s. This was one of Kylie’s finds, which came from Oprah Winfrey (!). It is over on 11th Street and it served BBQ’d ribs. We ordered our dinner and went into the dining room, which was a few rows of tables and benches and sat down to one of the most delicious meals we have enjoyed so far. We both had Kansas City style sticky sweet ribs, Jackson had a chocolate ice cream. Kylie and my ribs were served with our selection of two side dishes. We got the Brown Sugared Sweet Potato Mash (which I’d had a version of once before when we had a Thanksgiving Lunch in the Digital Team with Caroline Lalla, a Yankee member of the team) and the Red Eye Sauce Mash Potato and the Corn Bread. My mouth is watering just remembering that dinner… If you are in New York, get yourself here for a meal. Fantastic food, go Oprah!

Mum headed back to Brisbane on the Tuesday, from New York, to Los Angeles, to Sydney, to Brisbane. Blech! She did have a row of three seats all to herself from Los Angeles to Sydney, which is very fortunate! With her she took a medium and a small sized suitcase loaded up with goodies we’d bought in San Francisco and New York. Kylie has bought eight pairs of shoes (compared to 11 the last trip) and I’ve bought a few new business shirts.

Sadly, I’ve now realised that we go back to work next month

New York.

We’ve managed to cram a lot in during our stay in New York. Since the last update we have done so much more and the days tend to slip into one another. I have trouble remembering what I had for lunch yesterday, let alone four days ago, so I’m going to drop down here a few notes on the main things we’ve been up to.

First and foremost, Kylie has done a lot of shopping while we’ve been here. My mum heads back from to Brisbane today, taking with her quite a bit of our shopping (thanks mum!) which includes an unknown (to me) number of pairs of Kylies shoes and quite a few new business shirts that I have bought and a whole bunch of other stuff. We’ve certainly done our bit to try and kick start the US economy. I might try and get Kylie to do a summary of her purchases when we’re back in Brisbane. No point in doing it on the road, the “kill” count rises too quickly….

Saturday 29 November

Saturday we all went our seperate ways for the day. Mum did the hop-on-hop-off bus tour of the Uptown areas, Kylie went and did some shopping and Jackson and I went to the Intrepid Air & Space Museum.

The Air & Space Museum only recently re-opened after being shut for renovations for a while. The Museum sits on board a retired US Air Craft Carrier which is moored in the River just at the end of the street we’re staying in! (One heck of a yard ornament to have in your street!) What a great facility and museum this is. Jackson and I were both enthralled for the three and a bit hours we walked the decks of this massive ship. We got some photos, but I’ve been having trouble uploading them through this internet connection, hopefully the next place is kinder to me, because we’ve got some great shots to share.

A visit to the museum starts off with a movie about the career of the ship. It’s mainly focused, of course, on the tragic aspect of the lose of life which happens during war. Halfway through I thought I’d made a “dad” mistake taking Jackson in, but he hasnt had any nightmares since and though he asked once after the movie about why’d those people get killed, he was fine with the movie. We were sitting next to a (I presumed from the way he was talking to Jackson before the movie) retired British Naval guy and during the movie he started crying through the movie – the emotions which come back visiting a place like that must be a terrible thing to manage.

The main “exhibits” of the museum are the planes which sit on the deck of the carrier. There must have been 20 different planes and choppers from different Navy’s / Army’s around the world. Jackson loved it and would run from plane to plane and then ask me to read the words on the sign for each plane (some of those Russian designers have VERY difficult names).

You also get to walk through the hanger of the carrier and in the hanger is a kids museum area where they can get their hands on all sorts of cool stuff, including sitting in the cockpit of a M*A*S*H style chopper, a plane simulator where you try to land a plane on the deck of a carrier, there’s a scoreboard which counts the number of “Jap” planes and ships the carrier took down and some models which show the carrier in its different incarnations.

Another exhibit is the Concord, which sits on the pier next to the Intreipd. The Concord is dwarfed by the Intrepid. I was looking forward to looking inside the Concorde, which you could do, but they had all the seats enclosed in a plastic bubble and the cockpit was blocked off, so all you got to do was walk down the aisle. Which was pretty boooring, even to me.

By the time we got back from there we met up with Kylie and went down to the Union Square area for a look around. We had lunch at a burger joint and walked around and looked through the stores. Paragon Sports was the main shop we visited and we got some stuff for the ski part of our trip – cool new goggles!

That night Jackson and I went to a cirque de soleil show and Kylie and Mum went to see the Musical Wicked. They liked Wicked better than Mumma Mia. Jackson thoroughly enjoyed the Cirque show, particularly the acrobatics of the show including a great trampoline act and during the finale huge fans sent a deluge of paper snowflakes out over the audience. This was pretty cool.

Jackson’s video:

This started out as a short note, ended up being longer than I thought, so I’ll wrap it up there. more to come.

over and out

Hi all,

We had a great day on our tour to San Francisco’s wine country, which included stops in the Napa and Sonoma Valley’s.

Saturday night we went out for dinner at a little Italian joint around the corner from the hotel. Jackson fell asleep at the table and I think if we’d have stayed much longer Kylie and I might have fallen asleep at the table too! We were all asleep by about 730pm and Jackson WAS NOT the last to drop off. We all had a great night sleep with the alarm waking us up at 6:30am, so even I had a sleep in which was nice.

After a VERY restful night of sleep we were off to “Wine Country” today! Our day was spent with Rick from Blue Heron Tours. Rick does a great day out and if you are in San Francisco, be sure to get in touch with him to organise your day out and about. Apologies to Rick, Jackson just could not remember his name.

9:00am kick off and at the first winery by 10:00am….. This would’ve been a fun day to spend with Kezza and Jane!

Over the day Rick took us to wineries which produce good sparkles and pinot. We went to 5 wineries, including Mumm and Tattinger’s for bubbles and Nicholson’s Ranch for Pinot and a stop at a very nice winery called Trefethan. We went to one other, but the name of it escapes me for the moment – their Global CEO is an Aussie and they have a winery in Vic somewhere.

The weather was great, the wine was very nice and I could very easily have settled in for a Sunday session at either the Mumm or Trefethan winery, which were my pick of the tasting room’s / locations.

Lunch was at a lovely Italian restaurant, we’ve got a great photo of Jackson showing his “best” table manners…. Our mains were fantastic! Kylie had what she claims was the best Ravioli she’s had and the Porcini & Sausage Fettuccine was pretty bloody good too. The highlight was Kylie’s Maple Syrup Creme Brulee… wow!

We got back into town early evening and headed off to ChinaTown for dinner. Jackson decided he didn’t want Chinese for dinner, so chucked a tanty in the restaurant and didnt eat anything. Quite funny…. (he didn’t think so)

This YouTube video is an update on the days activities from Jacko: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R-MfRCiCHA

This YouTube video is Jackson’s best of / worst of video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkCJjX3_YgE

Fun day! Day 3 update is written and ready to come soon.

Chris, Kylie and Jacko..

ps – we’re in New York now, Nanny arrived safe and sound.

What a long day….

Our flight left Brisbane a little late (thans Ju, Will and Pat as well as Kylie’s Mum and Dad for coming to the airport to say goodbye) and then there was a little bit of bumpy weather around Sydney, so we were delayed a bit getting into Sydney. By the time we got from the Domestic terminal over to the International terminal we had about 2 hours between flights. BUT, our flight out of Sydney to San Francisco was delayed by nearly an hour… Thankfully they hadnt boarded us yet and we just waited in the terminal. When they did board us they called for people in First and Business Class and families travelling with children under 5. Yeah! we got to jump the scrum…. that was by far the best bit of flying with a child under 5….

The “highlight” of the flight was Jackson starting to vomit about 4 hours out of San Francisco. He stopped vomiting after about 2 hours. He was not himself until after we’d cleared customs. He’s full of beans now.

We got in mid morning. We’re booked into a very nice hotel, right off Union Square. We step out of the front steps of the hotel and there’s the shops and the trams! Great spot, very nice hotel. They even had our room ready a little early and we were able to check in when we arrived – hooray.

Today we took it easy (if you call flying half way around the world with a vomiting child easy). We walked around the main part of town, into some shops, checked out the big Christmas tree and the ice skating rink in Union Square (Jackson said he does not want to ice skate… which is unfortunate as we’re going to make him do it in New York). Had an ordinary lunch at a restaurnt in the Westfield shopping ctr but a beautiful dinner tonight at http://www.pucciniandpinetti.com/index.php. Jackson fell asleep at the table – which is a first.

We’ve recorded a short video which we’ve asked him the best / worst bit of each day. It’s at YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h5egrnvZUI. Apologies for the film & interviewing quality.

Tomorrow we’re off to the Napa Valley for some pinot quaffing.

over and out,

Chris, Kylie and Jackson

the subject of this post bears no resemblance what-so-ever to to the topic at hand… however! it does sound better than general weekend update.

not much going down this weekend.

Kylie went into town with Mum yesterday to buy some comfortable walking shoes for the 5th ave assault.

Jacko and I hung out at home and did a lot of nothing. When I say a lot of nothing, I mean we did a lot – but not a lot of anything in particular. playing outside, playing inside, you know… kid’s stuff

Some exciting news is that Kylie and I are parents again! sort of…. My Scarlett Chested Parrots have babies, four of them to be exact. Jackson and I spent some time yesterday cleaning out the bottom of the cage and shoo’ing away ants – there’s lots of ants around at the moment. Lots of ants all around in the yard. not sure why, but there is – out the front, out the side and out the back. anyway, the reason for mentioning the ants is that two of the baby birds had left the breeding box – which I think would have involved a fall of about a meter and a half and were on the bottom of the cage and the ants were giving them grief, biting them and such. So, we pfaffed around and got them back into the box and then they fell out again. I’ll do another check on them and try and get photo’s later. v exciting!

We went out for dinner with Colin and Ju last night. To Thai Mali – it would HAVE to be Brisbane’s best Thai restaurant. I don’t know why we bothered with the menus, we ordered pretty much the same thing we always order! It was nice to catch up with Col and Ju, thanks for dinner! Col and Ju and the boys will be looking after the house and vegas when we’re on our holiday.

The US holiday itinerary is all but done! I’m so close now – i did a fair bit on it yesterday and we just need to tidy up Honolulu – which is our last stop – and we’re done. Only 13 sleeps to go!

This week looms as a busy one at work – with a trip down to Sydney Thursday afternoon for the Australian Marketing Institute Awards. TQ is a finalist in three categories – two finalists awards for the Where Else campaign (brand revitalisation and also for the digital campaign) and a finalist for the Whitsundays campaign. It should be a good night out hopefully. Back on Friday.

I bought Jacko a great little gift this morning – a raiders jersey! he’ll look v cool in that.

anyways, that’ll do it. aveagoodweekend

couple of quick hits…

1/ last night we went to a teppanyaki restaurant down at Raby Bay, imaginatively called the “Teppanyaki Bar”: http://www.teppanyaki-bar.com/. As far as our, recently, regular Saturday night restaurant visits goes, this one was ok. The meal was definitely entertaining – Jackson thought it very funny when the chef threw a bit of cooked prawn for me to catch, in my mouth (which i did!) and Jackson also enjoyed watching the cooking of our dinner on the “barbie” right in front of us. The food was pretty good, at $125 for the three of us, it wasn’t a cheap night out – but OK priced for what we got. Our chef had his “L” plates on, and obviously hadn’t been a Teppanyaki chef for too long…. still, he managed to entertain Jackson. Of course Jackson didn’t eat much and told us he thought he was allergic to chicken… and then later also allergic to beef… surprisingly, he has no allergies to ice-cream and he ate that all up post haste! We wondered who had taught him about being allergic to something, so we asked and Jackson informed us “Wubbzy”! Wow Wow Wubbzy is an annoying cartoon Jackson likes to watch…. punish yourself and check out the “wubbcast” channel on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Wubbcast

2/ planning for the us extravaganza is at full steam ahead now…. with only 20 days until departure, and seven “official” full days in the office – time is evaporating. Yesterday, we locked in two very exciting bits of our holiday.

part 1 was we now have a reservation for a Mustang convertible in Vegas. We’re going to hit the open road and do some cruising in the Vegas desert. I’m looking forward to this and have started mapping out a bit of a drive route for us, hopefully we get to see some interesting desert rock formations, and not just lots of tumbleweeds! of course, we’ve also got this tied in to a visit to a major outlets shopping mall, on the California / Nevada border…

part 2 was we’re also now locked in for our Vegas to grand canyon helicopter tour. This will be FUN! The tour is a four hour trip (hotel to hotel) which will include some time on the canyon floor. We’re supposed to fly into Vegas as the sun goes down, which should be pretty spectacular.

the itinerary for the trip is now blown out to 39 pages…. just that alone will be a significant chunk of our luggage allowance!