Christmas Tree Lane

After I finished a short Christmas picture session with our good friends, the hub & I went to a quick dinner & decided it was a good time for Christmas Tree Lane!

Here's one of my favorite pics from the afternoon

We love them!

I've grown up going to my hometown's Christmas Tree Lane, but nothing compares to the one where we live now!

Found out last night that it's the longest Christmas Tree Lane in the WORLD! Amazing!  We love gong every year.  This is their 90th year and there is no city financial support, it is run strictly off of donations and a group of people get together every year and string the lights in all the cedar trees and each house is responsible to do their own lighting.  You can also tune your radio to a certain station and hear "Christmas Tree Lane" music.  I love it!

Here are some pictures...a lot of them. :)

The entrance

AND THE GRAND FINALE!!

This is the last house on the street, and boy oh boy, they go all out.

Beautiful sunset

Driving home tonight and I was admiring this as I turned down our street...

Nothing like a train through your backyard

So, many of you have probably heard about the high speed rail coming to good ol' California.

Last week we got a letter in the mail from an attorney that was advertising their services to help us get our property appraised before the High Speed Rail Authority comes at us.  We haven't had any 'official' documents sent to us saying that they are for sure going to take our home and our land, but we are always getting information flyers about the HSR  I know we are extremely close to the boundary line, if not within it.  In the past our place has been on lists that show properties that they are taking and then the next one we get we are safe.  It keeps changing every other week.

I tried to do some research this morning on the current standings and there really is no good information out there.  All the newspapers are just opinions and he said she said crap and the HSRA website really doesn't have a whole lot of updated information.  I think they are keeping us all in the dark as much as possible so there is less to fight against.  However, the number of people sueing the HSRA is huge, which is just continuing to set back the date when they would like to break ground. 

So I guess we'll find out if they are taking out place when the show up with a million dollar offer. Hah.

Our only hope is that IF they do decide they want our place...lets just hope they take the whole 10 acres and not the back 100 feet or something stupid.  We are pretty darn close to the tracks that they are going to build it along, so I have a feeling, we are in for some trouble.

No matter where we stand on the list of victims, it doesn't change the fact that this stupid thing is going to take thousands and thousands of acres of agriculture land.  I don't see how that is beneficial since CA is THE largest producer of food in the nation.

So I leave you with this.  It pretty much sums up the feels of every single farmer in CA...and a alot of other people that actually have some common sense.  

If you think this whole high speed rail boondoggle is a great idea, I'd love to hear why exactly you think removing thousands of acres of food producing land is a good idea.