Spangler Family Communication Center

Thanks for the the link, Sarah. I have posted it along with one I found earlier on the sidebar under "San Diego area Guides."

I chose to put mine up because, among other things, he is a guy that relly likes showing off San Diego. One of the best parts for me , though, was the list of places to avoid.

His point is this; if the locals think that it is dirty, dangerous, yucky, or otherwise lame, why waste time? He cuts through the "tourism bureau sales pitch" to let visitors know the real deal. Try this link so you know what I'm talking about.

Sarah,

Niki and I saw the Coronado one, and almost fainted at it's beauty. We liked it a lot, it was close to stuff, and it was soooo charming. But alas, it's taken.

Check out this Google map. I'm posting it so it can be referenced as we look at houses.

I'm sure we can all agree that we can find larger and less expensive houses the further away from the beach we go. However, we need to decide how far we are willing to drive to get back into San Diego.

Sarah, the third one on the list that you posted is pretty far away from San Diego. Temecula is about 60 miles north of the city. I thought that Escondido was far, but it is only 30 miles.

So, I pose this question to all. How far are we willing to drive to get to where we want to go?

Greetings, I hope you hear from the third one on the list. While they are all wonderful...my personal fav is #3!

Good morning family,
I finally made it back. Thanks Greg for helping to fix the problem. I don't feel like I'm too far out of the loop because I've been able to read the posts...just not respond. So on with the planning. Sarah Shark....you are awesome! Thank you for making this your hobby. I feel like I don't have a life right now...but time will take care of most of my business!

See you on our space!

mom

Well #4 and the grandparents have just invested in web cams. We are in the processes of setting them up. Anyone who is anyone should have one. We love that Maama can watch our seedlings grow when we are in texas. If everyone had one we couold watch their seedlings grow. Julie will set up story time with Maama. Yes that's right folks she will read to your little ones before they go to bed once in a while and give you the well deserved break. Mark and I spent hours and weeks and years and Centuries picking out our cam and we went with the Logitech QuickCam Fusion. It seemed like the most bang for the buck. It runs about $100 and it has speaker phone. There are ones with speaker phone for as little as 35 dollars. We would love to watch your seedlings grow and Mike we just wanna watch you. You can introduce your dates to Mom and Dad and #1, #2 and #4. It's good times had by all.

Fill in the email form to get a copy of the blog in your email if you want one. Once that is done, you will finish a confirmation step from bloglet.com. However, you will get the blog from feedblitz.com in a couple of days because I have some "back-end" account managment work to complete before you get your email copy.

Bloglet is "broken" but Feedblitz created a work-around. It really does work.

I can just see it now, a trailer for an upcoming holiday blockbuster....

(Deep, menacing voice)"In a world, where online vacation planning goes online...

There is a women who trolls the internet looking for innocent homes to borrow...

She is...

the SarahShark!(insert blood-curdling scream here)

No online rental listing is safe from the critical and fierce gaze of this property predator.

instinctively weeding out the weak, weird, and worn-down, she hunts for a meaty temporary domicile as the mightiest Christmas carnivore the world has ever known.

Beware...
SarahShark prowls as we speak." (Add another scream here)

Sarah, you are awesome!

Jess,

That is a good question. I know that time-shares are very rigid with thier rental dates and require a sunday-to-saturday or similar arrangement.

I don't know for sure if ALL of the vacation rentals will be the same, or if there is flexibility in the schedule.

My guess is that is varies from property to property.

One thing I thought i noticed about dates is that some of the houses seemed to be based on saturday to friday, or friday to friday, something like that. And we are looking at wednesday to tuesday or thursday to wednesday. Does anyone else know if this will be a problem?

Now that we know the WHERE, now we need the when. After that, it's filling in the details. But we need a date as soon as possible, so that we can book the house we find as quickly as possible.

Mark and Jess said, "Our preffered time frame is December 20 to 27."

While is is actually 8 days, I get what you are meaning. We will be renting for 7 days. So our date range from above with be either 20-26 or 21-27.

I prefer the latter myself, so vote your opinion on the new poll. Choose your DATE.

The poll was 60/40 San Diego. With that said, SAN DIEGO is our destination and I open the floor for discussion and comments. If you have concerns to raise, raise 'em and we'll deal with 'em. There will be more question than answers initially, but we'll get there.

Also, when I say San Diego, I mean the greater San Diego county area. I would include areas up to and including 45 minutes away. If memory serves me right, La Jolla is that far away, maybe closer.

I'll look for a really good San Diego map to post up here.


So, Post your feelings, and we'll take the next step- Lock in on dates.

There are two polls open for voting. Polls will be utilized to guage readiness to make a consensus decision. For each "Family group", you only get one vote. You are on your honor, so don't stuff the ballot box. There should only be 5 votes for any poll, so if I see more than that, I'll know that Mark is cheating.

Polls are also annonymous, and I can't tell who has or has not voted, so just do vote when you see a new one.

I will post the results of a poll when completed, and will propbably post a follow-up for clarification.

Why use polls? It is easier to collect answers to a single question, then scrolling through half a dozen posts.

Get used to them, you will see them often.

Greg

On the right sidebar, you will see a place for you to "subscribe" to the blog. When you put in your email address, you will be mailed a copy of all the previous day's posts overnight. That way, when you check your email in the morning, you have all the stuff from the previous day.

Be careful using your work email. Some companies(like mine) automatically block a lot of "Junk mail" traffic, including this one, even though I want it. Even if you use a web email like hotmail, it might be put in your "junk" folder until you tell hotmail that it's ok.

One caveat though, is when you read the email version. The tag at the bottom of the post the shows who posted it, does not transfer to the email version.

But, If everyone signs their name at the end of their post, in the body of the post, no problem.

Greg

Everyone, Here are the steps to put a link to a website in your post. We will use Seaworld as an example.

First, Copy the web address of the site you want to link.

Second, Open a new post on the blog. Type what you want, then highlight the word or words you want as your hyper link.

Once the word is highlighted, click the chain icon,paste the link in the dialog box and click OK. Then the highlighted word will be underlined and a different color. All Done!

Hey! Scroll down and take the poll. This will part 1 of many.

Click here to check out a listing I found for a place in Escondido. It is about as far from San Diego as Encinitas is. There are 4 bedrooms and lots of beds. I am not looking for approval or consensus to move foreward. Just showing what I found.

I did mean a whole week. And because of the long weekend it would only require 4 vacation days. Hope that wasn't too confusing.

Once I saw that Jess was looking into a vacation rental, I thought to myself, "Brilliant!" The vacation rental makes the trip much more kid-friendly. Additionally, total food cost is reduced since we aren't eating every meal out. That said, we still need to look into the right place.

Based on my personal experience with vaction rentals in beach communities (multiple retreats with The Master's College Student Life dept) reveals that the houses are generaly "small."

This means that the bedrooms are barely larger than the bed that is in them, and there will likely be one bedroom that has a bunk bed. Also, when the listing says "3 BR, sleeps 6-10", it means that each beroom will sleep 2, and that there are 2 hide-a-beds sleeping 2 each.

So, here is my thought for the time bieng, so we can coordinate what we all think.

At minumum, we need 5 bedrooms. This number assumes that [1] the bedrooms are large enough to accomodate children sleeping in thier parents room (using pack-n-plays, or air mattresses etc.) and [2] that the parents WANT to sleep in the same room as the children. :)

From this point, we can compare and contrast the different properties by amenities, location, cost, etc.

Location: I think that anywhere in SanDiego county would be fine. If you look on a map, that includes cities like: Oceanside, La Jolla, Carlsbad, Encinitas, Coronado(which is an island, by the way), and Greater San Diego (Mission Beach, Mission Bay, San Diego).

Oceanside, La Jolla, Carlsbad, Encinitas are all north of San Diego by about 30-45 minutes(give or take). So the rentals in those places may be a little less than in Mission Bay.

My initial research for a house of this size will be between 3-4k per week before 10.5% "hotel tax."

Believe it or not, I think that is really resonable.

I will post some of my finds soon.

I found a webpage that outlines the month-by-month weather averages by NOAA. Click the link, and you will need to scroll down to the bottom to read about San Diego in December. As far at it being "HOT" in December, the answer is no. Way too cold to enjoy jumping in the water.

However, a vacation home will likely have at least some view of the ocean, or some sort of body of water. Sunsets will still be pretty awesome, even in December.

I am really struggling with the direction that I should be taking. I have been slipping in my scholastic endevors. I have been in a tail spin wondering what it is I should do yet not taking any action.

I would like to ask all of you to pray for clarity and insight of God's will for me and my life at this time.

I think that four days would fly by but it might just be the right amount of time.

I would really like to showcase some of my recipies. I would love to do some cooking and just enjoy the time with all of yous guys.

A picnic at the park with frisbees, relaxing and the little kiddies. That would be cool.

In Mark's opinion,
#1 Our preffered time frame is December 20 to 27. Tis makes it to where most people only need to take four vacation days.
#2 I think we all need about 1500 to 2000 dollars to have a blast. I hope 2000 is on the real high side but it may be good for planning.
#3 I don't know about everyone else but I think a beach house is always worth it. THe sound, the smell the sunsets. Good stuff. However, Palm Springs or palm desert i am seeing has some luxurious houses that would also be way cool.

Now as far as Good lodging or good events I think that I would lean towards good house just in case we can't get the ;ittle excited about the events we still have a great place to hang out. But, events also need to be starting to be discussed soon.

All that to say, West coast has my vote. Until further notice.

So what is up. We finally get signed up and everyone disappears. Let's start planning

We have finally made it. Sorry to keep everyone waiting. Let the planning begin. I have done a little lokking on Craigslist. If you are not familiar go to sandiego.craigslist.com or even you local city and you can find all kinds of stuff. I looked up some vacation rentals and found some cool stuff. THere were a couple that we would have to get cozy but we would feel like we were living high on the hog. Any way, we are open.

Let's try this...

Michael is on, all we need is Mark and Jess. I have also posted a link to a chat room we can use in the near future to collaborate all at once. Stay tuned for a poll on when a good time for a group chat could be.

All water being equal, one alternative to So. Cal. Is Gulf coast. With the exception of Miss./Louisianna. a beach in southern TX might be a good adventure.

That is if warmth and water are the most important aspects to the Spanglerfest.
Love, Mike

I think the idea of a vacation rental house is great! Greg and I don't feel any huge need to be by the beach. If we can save some cash by being inland more, cool with us!

-Niki

Before we go to town on this blog, we need everyone on board first.

At this point, we still need Mike and Mark and Jess. Once they have logged in, then it is a virtual free-for-all with one exception, do not comment to a post.

With the amount of posts that we will be putting up, it will be too easy to overlook a comment. The only indicator that there is a comment, is that the little digit beneath the post changes.

As soon as everyone is locked in, I will post a survey for IM. If we can get everyone together for an IM chat, we can get all of our options and opinions out at once. At that point, I'm sure that there will be daily postings, which we will all need check on a regular basis. I am looking into ways for everyone to monitor updates to the blog. I'll post my findings soon.

Until later!

Good Job, MOM! Soon we'll all be on here.

Well, here I am! I hope to see the rest of you all soon. If I can do this, the rest of you guys certainly can!! Let's makes this a great vacation!!!

Love to you all!