Los Angeles

Dad and I went to Los Angeles from Wednesday to Sunday of Thanksgiving week, to see the Notre Dame-USC football game.  Notre Dame had gone 11-0 up until that point, and only our dreaded rival USC stood between us and the National Championship game.  Dad and I had been twice before, to see ND lose horribly in 2006 and win improbably in 2010.

There is a branch of the Minick family that lives in the LA area, my grandfather's brother's family.  My dad has three cousins - Mark, Rick, and Kathy - and their spouses, children, and grandchildren.  This year Thanksgiving dinner was at Kathy's house, and there were 25 adults and 11 kids there!  Kathy and her husband Jim graciously opened their house to this motley crew, and made turkey, ham, roast beef, fish, and all the side dishes.  We had a great time catching up with everyone and meeting the new additions to the family.

On Friday we had a free day, so we decided to stick close to our home base in Orange County and visit the Mission of San Juan Capistrano, an 18th century Spanish mission built by Fr. Junipero Serra, who coincidentally is from Mallorca, Spain (where my company headquarters are), then he went to Mexico City and then founded missions up the coast of California.  The mission has been lovingly restored and is very well-tended.  It's almost a museum, with an audio tour and manicured gardens.  It was very reminiscient to me of the haciendas that I've been to in Mexico, with a central courtyard surrounded by a series of rooms connected by an arcaded hallway.  The main stone church was destroyed in an earthquake, but the small chapel that survives could have been found anywhere in Mexico, complete with the Virgin of Guadalupe.

I didn't take my camera to the pep rally or game, but Dad sent some pictures which I've included below.  The weather was nice this year (in contrast to the freezing rain we encountered in 2010).  We got to the game around 3:00 and walked around the USC campus, then headed into the game.  It was a nail-biter!  Of course we had the worst seats in the house along with all the other ND fans, way up in the upper deck, corner of the end-zone.  At least we had a great view of their new HD jumbotron, which showed every single play as it appeared on TV, which was really nice.  We won, and are headed to the National Championship game on January 7!

I've included a couple pictures of the view from our hotel room, so you can see how foggy it was every morning.