Blogs are under "Opinion" in the redesigned website and can be found on various "featured blogs" links throughout the site.

You can also get directly to Family Tree at http://familytree.honadvblogs.com/

All the old entries will remain here (I think).

To sign up for an RSS feed so you don't have to navigate the new website to find the blog daily, use this URL:

http://familytree.honadvblogs.com/feed/

(Thanks for the tip, Dad!)

All the blogs -- including some new ones, are here.

If you're looking for a particular blog, you can sub in any other blog name where "familytree" is in this url: http://familytree.honadvblogs.com

For instance, go get to the Capitol Notebook, the URL would be http://capitolnotebook.honadvblogs.com

It's there, I promise!

Blogs are under "Opinion" in the redesigned website and can be found on various "featured blogs" links throughout the site.

You can also get directly to Family Tree at http://familytree.honadvblogs.com/

All the old entries will remain here (I think).

To sign up for an RSS feed so you don't have to navigate the new website to find the blog daily, use this URL:

http://familytree.honadvblogs.com/feed/

(Thanks for the tip, Dad!)

All the blogs -- including some new ones, are here.

If you're looking for a particular blog, you can sub in any other blog name where "familytree" is in this url: http://familytree.honadvblogs.com

For instance, go get to the Capitol Notebook, the URL would be http://capitolnotebook.honadvblogs.com

Over the past week, the kids and I have seen Lego pandas and real pandas, giraffes and okapis, killer whales, beluga whales and sea lions at three different sites.

We saw a pet emu and a costumed Big Bird.

We saw lions in a simulation of their natural environment – sleeping in and on an SUV — at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

We saw baby elephants there, too!

We saw the Shamu show and a walrus who pretended he was in the Shamu show. We got splashed by performing dolphins, then went to feed their buddies in a different tank.

We watched polar bears, grizzly bears, sun bears and koalas that aren’t bears.

We also looked at wombats, pygmy marmosets, echidnas and prairie dogs.

In case you didn’t guess, our trip to San Diego was all about animals. Even our museum visits included the body cast of a dog who died in Pompeii and tons of dinosaur bones. We even drove up to see the seals and sea lions in La Jolla.

Yesterday we headed home.

By some bad planning on my part, we ended up with a four-hour layover in Kahului before flying into Honolulu.

To kill some time, the kids and I cabbed it out of the airport for lunch and walked back by way of Krispy Kreme.

On the walk back, we saw roosters, hens and chicks all over the place.

My four-year-old was just as fascinated with the chickens as she was with every other animal we saw on vacation, including the squirrel she chased up a tree and the pigeon foolish enough to let her touch his tail (yes, I carry antibacterial wash with me everywhere for just those kinds of situations).

Next time I’ll save money and just take the girl to the dump.

Just kidding! I’ll fill in more details of the trip after I get some much needed sleep.

Since my four-year-old’s birthday is still months away, she decided to appropriate mine.

The thing is, in this particular year, I’m an interloper. Easter pretty much overshadows my birthday in every way possible, which is fine with me.

It’s not fine with my daughter, who thinks any birthday is an excuse to party.

When my daughter asked how I was going to celebrate, I told her a giant bunny was going to break into our house and drop a whole bunch of eggs and we’d have to clean them up. Then I dropped her off at school.

The poor thing must have been puzzling over this all day because as soon as I picked her up, she explained to me that the Easter Bunny isn’t mean. He just knows I like chocolate.

Fair enough.

At this point, my 11-year-old jumped in and gave us both a stern lecture about what Easter is really about.

Now my daughter thinks that Easter is the day that the Easter Bunny comes back to life -- kind of like Frosty the Snowman, a friend pointed out.

Whatever Easter is or isn’t, I think that many people would agree with me that it’s not the day to go to Chuck E. Cheese, which my daughter swears I promised to do on my birthday.

Normally I’d be fine with it, but unless things have gone dreadfully wrong, while you’re reading this, I’m in San Diego where I have no intention of hunting down a Chuck E. Cheese. If I’m lucky, I’m also eating chocolate, since that would mean the Easter Bunny managed to track us down in our hotel room.

I planned our trip without any thought to my supposed promise. I was sure that my daughter would be willing to throw Chuck E. under the bus for a chance to see a real life panda, Shamu or a giant Lego sculpture. However, the more I tried to sell her on the trip, the deeper she dug her heels in. It got worse when she realized the trip would mean missing an Easter egg hunt with her friends at school.

I’ve dealt with stubborn preschoolers enough to know that my daughter would be happy enough in San Diego once we arrived. I also knew she wouldn’t forget the Chuck E. Cheese promise.

So yeah, that was me chasing my daughter around Chuck E. Cheese at my early birthday “party” last weekend.

Today, it’s all about Easter.

Once upon a time, preparing for a flight meant picking a good book and buying a pack of gum.

Now it’s all about making sure that the media players are charged and loaded, that the Gameboys both have games and the chargers have all been packed.

The charger situation is so ridiculous that I’m packing a surge protector, just in case there aren’t enough outlets in the hotel room.

It’s so much to keep track of that I’ve barely started packing the important stuff, like clothes and shoes.

That said, I’ve got a lot to do before the kids and I get on the plane tomorrow.

I’ll be back to regular posting next Thursday.