Torrey Pines Hiking

Rylee has been getting her fair share of hiking in at Torrey Pines.  On this last hike, we walked a little over 3 miles and she didn't fuss one bit.  She just put her head down and fell asleep while in the Bjorn.

 

Project Nursery

We got most of the nursery done now and just need to add some final decor touches.  We...er Mike cleaned the carpet and put together the furniture in one weekend. 

 

Building the dresser

 

Building the Crib

 

We put decals on the wall to match our Under the Sea theme

 

Finished Products

 

Christmas 2011

Mike and I took his grandmother, Enid, to her favorite place for Christmas Brunch.  They have the best crab claws and dessert in town!  It has warmed up nicely this week, so we took advantage of walking on the beach to burn off some of the calories afterwards.

Park Hyatt Aviara with Enid

The beach was really crowded with people walking.

Christmas Day SoCal style

Mike took this cool picture of me.  I'm 28 weeks.

Happy Holidays!

We are planning on a nice quiet Christmas weekend in sunny southern California.  It's supposed to be sunny and 70, perfect!  We hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!  Merry Christmas!

Tonight's Dinner

While I was on the couch watching K-State play football, Mike was in the kitchen making butternut squash pie and beef stew.  It was definitely a night of comfort foods.

The Chef...

The stew...

The pie...

Praying Mantis Shedding

Mike likes to buy praying mantises for our plants so they'll eat the bugs.  Pedro II lives in our mint plant.  He's the only one that has stuck around long enough that we've noticed and he shed his skin last week.

Blackout Thursday

For those of you that didn't hear about our blackout last week, we were without power for about 10 hours last Thursday.  I had just got to work and the power went out all throughout San Diego county up to Orange County over to Yuma, Arizona and down to Ensenada, Mexico.  I sat at work for 2 and 1/2 hours before they let us come home.

The drive home was interesting, because a lot of people in California don't know or forget that you have to stop at intersections when the lights are out.  People were just flying through intersections.  No working lights also meant a longer than usual drive home.  Mike was off work for the day and walked across the street to see about getting ice to save some of our stuff in the freezer and frige.  He said it was like Armageddon, people were panicking and trying to buy stuff, but all the stores were closed.  The only place he found open was the liquor store, so he bought some beer.  We had a nice evening in the candlelight and watched a couple episodes of Dexter on what power was left on Mike's laptop.  Eventually, we didn't have anything else to do, so we went to bed early.  Other people were have blackout parties in their neighborhoods.  It was funny how everyone was being all neighborly during the blackout.  We had people in our complex all in the courtyard grilling out and sitting out on their balconies talking to each other.

We were to fly out of San Diego the next morning and thought for sure we'd have to stay home all weekend, but the power came back on at about 1:15am Friday and our flight went out without any delays that morning at 10:30am.

Having something like this happen makes you think you should probably keep canned food, a battery powered radio and cash on hand.  Things we are told to keep on hand for emergencies anyway.  Maybe keeping your gas tank full too, some people were stranded without gas after sitting in traffic.  I couldn't even use my cell phone to call or text.  I thought you were supposed to be able to text at least in emergencies...not the case.

At least the ice cream truck came by....

Praying Mantis Day

A few months ago Mike bought two praying mantis cocoons in an attempt to rid the herb garden and plants of the bugs that were trying to take over. Today, one of the cocoons is hatching and there are hundreds of tiny praying mantis' on the attack! We'll see if they stick around and eat all the bugs but so far so good.

The Cocoon

Praying Mantis

On the attack in the rose bush

Christmas Eve Dinner

Mike and I decided to make a Christmas Eve dinner for ourselves.

The ham

The sweet potatoes

The wine

The apple pie

Our Christmas Tree

We collect Christmas ornaments when we travel.  We share memories of our trips when we decorate our tree every year, which is fun.  Sometimes we have a hard time finding ornaments, but we usually find something last minute or even at the airport.  Here's our tree this year and some of our fun ornaments.

San Francisco Chinatown

Venice, Italy

Syndey, Australia

Big Island of Hawaii

Belize

Alaska Cruise

Operation "Wildflower Hill" Begins Tonight!

We have this small hill on the side of our condos that we have a view of from our condo.  It used to be lush with bushes and small tress, but then it started getting sprayed with chemicals.  We first saw the sprayer in March 2009 and asked our HOA to do something about it.  They said they didn't own the hill, so there wasn't anything they could do.

The sprayer came back this Spring and Mike ran out to talk to the guy to ask why he was spraying and killing everything.  The guy said that it was a fire hazard area, so he had to spray it.  He said he used to have someone helping him and they would just pull the weeds, but due to budget cuts, he just sprays everything.  He also said the chemicals were a safe "salt mixture" although he was covered in protective gear and a mask and we could smell it through our open windows.  He did mention to Mike that he wouldn't spray any flowers that he came across.  This gave Mike a great idea.  He ordered 5 pounds of wildflower seeds online and made a plan to spread them all over the hill and hope they would be growing in this coming Spring.  We are hoping to make the hill pretty and keep the guy from spraying again.

View from our condo, picture of the hill taken when we first moved in May 06.

The hill today

The sprayer

The hill after being sprayed in March 09

Let the experiement begin!  It's supposed to rain this weekend, so we are spreading the seeds tonight in the dark.

Our First Big Earthquake

I'm always saying that I never feel the little earthquakes we've had since we've moved here, but I felt this one today!  It was a 6.9 magnitude (upgraded to a 7.2) one down in Baja Mexico.  Mike and I were sitting at our computers when the building started shaking.  We were doing the laundry and I thought our dryer was spinning out of control.  We just kept looking at each other and things started rattling on the walls.  We both got up and ran under a doorway while we waited for the shaking to stop.  It kept going, so we ran outside and that's when it stopped.  This all happened in about 20-30 seconds, but it felt like at least 5 minutes.  My heart is still racing as I'm writing this blog.  The cats are still a little spooked as well.

Mike had just secured our bookshelves to the wall last weekend.

I thought I'd let everyone know all is well, just a little worked up, since it's hitting the news and another 4.1 one shook outside of Sacramento shortly after we felt this one.

There are actually a lot of little aftershocks going off as I write this that we are feeling:  http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/latest.htm

Our Roses Are Blooming

We have rose plants on our balcony in red, pink, and white.  Our red ones have opened first as of yesterday!

Our Summer

I decided I needed to make a post, can't believe I've neglected the blog for 2 months. Does anyone ever read this anymore now that we are all on facebook? Even my parents are on there.

Well, we spent most of our summer enjoying San Diego. It has been really humid lately and I'm looking forward to our fall. We usually have several visitors in the summer as well, this year Mike's mom and sister and a few of his friends came to visit. We made a trip to Napa Valley over Labor Day weekend and had a great time. I'll post some photos next week.

Mike currently has a friend in town and we went out for a walk on the beach last night and caught one of the best sunsets I've seen in a while. We see a lot of great sunsets (as we post a lot of pictures of them), but this one was just amazing!

House Guest

There's not been a whole lot to blog about lately.

Mike's mom was out here for her Spring Break in March. We tried to go whale watching, but the trip was sold out when we got downtown. They did, however, get to see the whale that has been in our harbor since the beginning of March. It sounds like he (Diego) is still hanging around: news story link.

We are off to San Francisco, one of my favorite cities, this weekend to visit some friends. Hopefully, we'll have some fun pictures to post when we return.

In the meantime, we had a visitor today. Imagine carrying towels to put away and seeing this little guy in the middle of the kitchen floor. Let's just say I got a little startled! It took me about 20 minutes to chase him out the front door with the broom. He kept hiding under the door and playing dead! That's now been 2 animals that I've had to chase out of the house while Mike has been at work! Anybody remember the bird that got into the house? We had to put a screen up to keep birds out, because we kept getting hummingbirds in the house.

See ya later little guy!

It's Christmas Once Again in San Diego

We enjoyed a nice day taking Mike's grandmother to the San Diego Symphony Christmas concert. It was a lot of fun, they even had a sing-a-long at the end. Last year we took her to see The Grinch. We are already planning for next year to see The Nutcracker. After the concert, we enjoyed some dessert at Extraordinary Desserts in Hillcrest. It was a great day to get into the Christmas spirit.

We are heading out to Missouri for Christmas on Wednesday. I was just checking the weather and saw that it's actually going to warm up while we are there...from highs in the 20s to a high of 65 the day after Christmas! I was sort of looking forward to some cold weather and snow! Mike, not so much. I guess we'll have to wait for snow when we are in Colorado skiing for New Years!

We hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

New Camera

I've been complaining that our current camera needs updated. It's a good camera, but doesn't really zoom in very well or take close up pictures very well either. Well, we started looking and found the Olympus SP-570 UZ. We got it a few days ago and have been testing it out around the house. We are really impressed with these pictures from our balcony garden. As you can see from the previous garden post, when we tried to focus in on the blueberries, they turned out blurry. We can't wait to use the camera on our next trip.

We also celebrated Mike's birthday this weekend, a month late. I got him tickets to a cage fight as he really enjoys UFC fighting. It was tons of fun and the crowd really got into the fights. We also went to the Padres-DBacks game today and were disappointed that our "winning streak" had been broken. Every game that we went to last year, the Padres won and Adrian Gonzalez hit a home run...but not today!

We would have had a better picture with our new camera!