{"id":924,"date":"2007-12-01T15:32:05","date_gmt":"2007-12-01T20:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/womantalk.wordpress.com\/2007\/12\/01\/two-fun-things-to-do-over-the-holidays\/"},"modified":"2007-12-01T15:32:05","modified_gmt":"2007-12-01T20:32:05","slug":"two-fun-things-to-do-over-the-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/?p=924","title":{"rendered":"Two Fun Things to Do Over the Holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"

The day after Thanksgiving, we grabbed up most of the family and trucked up the 5 to take a free hot air balloon ride. Now this is not some crazy scary cruise over southern California, but a simple ride 500 feet up and down a tethered hot air balloon. Still, pretty cool – especially if you like to get a lay of the land from up above. The Orange County Great Park<\/a>, which is in the very beginnings of construction, is offering free balloon rides<\/a> until the end of 2007 as part of a publicity package bringing awareness to the new park. Kudos to the park planners, who are transforming the retired El Toro Marine Corps Air Base into a sustainable 1,357 acre park, which will include a wildlife corridor that will provide a route from nature preserves in the mountains to the sea. Five miles of runways and taxi ways (3.3 million<\/em> tons) are being jackhammered and reused in the creation of the Great Park. Makes my insides feel pummeled to think of all that jack-hammering, but I’m glad it’s being done.<\/p>\n

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And last week we discovered another fun thing in our ‘hood: an ice skating rink<\/a>! It’s called the Aliso Viejo Ice Palace<\/a> and it’s a full size hockey rink with public sessions every day. When I picked up Bella and her friend after last Friday night’s public skate, their cheeks were glowing and cute teenage boys were good-naturedly yelling, “Good-bye Bella, Bella dressed in Yella!”<\/p>\n

Having grown up on the east coast in the 80’s, roller and ice skating were a big part of my fun kid world (my thirteenth birthday party was at a roller rink!); now I’m thrilled to have a real rink only a couple miles from my house. On Wednesday nights, a paid admission includes a slice of pizza and a soda: definitely my next date request when my husband asks…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The day after Thanksgiving, we grabbed up most of the family and trucked up the 5 to take a free hot air balloon ride. Now this is not some crazy scary cruise over southern California, but a simple ride 500 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-socal-attractions","category-south-oc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}