Solana Beach - Home Sweet Home

We will be ringing in the New Year in Solana Beach, Ca. We are moving to the beach! I flew down to San Diego on Tuesday for job interviews and was offered an amazing job opportunity! We know it's a little crazy to just pick up and move. But everything fell together so perfectly we are convinced it's meant to be! We found a great house just three doors away from the most amazing beach! There are dozens of beautiful outdoor malls, and lots of great resturaunts. And of course the ocean!

And Mickey Mouse lives really close - Captain B!!

(Damon & Sybrina Hint Hint!!)

Here are a few pictures. It was such a fast trip that I didn't get a chance to take many. Tuesday the weather was amazing, 65 and sunny. But Wednesday it rained, so the pictures are all cloudy.

Here's our new front yard, we have orange trees, tangerine and peaches too. Lots of birds of paradise plants!

This is one of my favorite things about the house. We have our very own surf shower! So when you come home from the beach you can rinse off the sand and salt. This will be so great for the dogs too!!

Solana Beach is up on the cliff, so you have to walk down some steps to get to the beach. Here is the view from the top of the stairs. This is three houses down from us!!

Here's our beach!!

Toes in the sand, my favorite! I had just got done with my interview, so I ran down the stairs in my high heels and skirt to catch the sunset!

Love the Christmas decorations in Solana Beach!



Once we're all settled I'll take some better pictures of the house and everything else. But I'm so excited about this I have to tell everyone!!

30 is the New 20

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMES!!

James spent his birthday hunting with friends.

Later on we celebrated with friends at the Steelheads game.

James and Jessica have their birthdays super close so we made a big party out of it. They both turned the 'New 20' together!

What a wonderful honeymoon

Maui was absolutely amazing! The best place on earth! Here are some of the 200 pictures we took! I'm taking the lazy way out and not making a slide show. We had the most amazing condo on the island. Here's a close up of the palm tree right out our balcony. The master bedroom and the living room had huge sliding glass doors that completely opened up the entire wall. So the whole condo was open. Hearing the ocean all night, and the breeze through the palm trees was so amazing!

We spent time everyday at the beach

Here's a beautiful sunset from our balcony.

The sunsets every night were the most beautiful I've ever seen!

Here we are at Sonsai's. The best sushi on the island (the best sushi we had ever eaten!)

Hibiscus flowers were everywhere, in so many bright colours.

We were feeling quite adventurous, and our friend that is a local insisted we travel the "Road to Hana". The Road to Hana is about 30 miles long, but it is so whindy and narrow that you can only go about 10 miles an hour! I did manage to survive the Road to Hana, but not without a little car sickness! I always thought that car sickness was something you grew out of....guess not. Lucky for me James couldn't find the camera in time to capture the moment :(

The drive takes on average 3 hours, but there are so many amazing waterfalls and bamboo forests along the way you pretty much have to plan the entire day. Bo, our buddy, gave us all of his camping gear and said if we were going to make the drive that we had to camp out in the national forest at the bottom of the volcano, in the rain forest. And they don't call it a rain forest for nothing! Right when we were getting ready to put the tent up it started pouring rain! Sheets of rain like I had never seen before! We ended up sleeping in the car that night! And while camping in Hana, in the car was an adventure I was ready to get back to our posh condo!

Here's a shot from the bamboo forest. This was an incredible hike with several great waterfalls to see.

One of many beautiful waterfalls on the Road to Hana.

Another amazing waterfall.

We managed to get back to the west side of the island just in time for another great sunset!


We spent lots of time snorkeling! Seeing all of the turtles was one of the highlights!


So now the honeymoon is over. But being newlyweds is even better. We had been together for a very long time before we finally got married, and we both really thought that getting married wouldn't really change anything. But it has changed, it is so much better now!

More Wedding Pictures

Here's some pictures my cousin took of our wedding and the rehearsal. To check out the pic's from our photographer click on the link under Our Favorites. There are sooo many and I need help choosing!

Our Wedding

August 25, 2007

We're Married!

Friday night was our rehearsal followed by a great big family dinner. Everyone had a great time. My super cute niece was the flower girl, she did a great job!

Me and Amber, my best friend, bridesmaid, and new cousin! Our last photo together before the wedding!

Me and my sister Darcy getting ready.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours!

We did it!

Our First Dance, Blue Skies by Willie (our favorite!)Cutting the cake......

Yum!

It was a terrific weekend! Everything was absolutely perfect, including the weather! We have great friends and family that helped make everything possible. And so many who traveled a long ways to share our special day. It was defenitely a night to remember!

Our Camping Trip

James loves the outdoors and plans several camping trips every year with friends. So every summer we plan at least one camping trip together. This year we went to an amazing place and I'm not going to tell the name becuase I loved it! The whole time we were there we didn't see one other person. We had the entire place to ourself and it was beautiful. And I know if I post the name on the internet that next summer when I want to go back we will be joined by more people, and more people the next year.

Here's our own private lake! If you look closely in the far edge, on the right hand side you can pick out James fishing in his float tube.

While James was fishing for awhile I took our dogs on a little hike around the lake.

I love my dogs, they are so fun to go camping with! We decided to take a break from our hike and take a little nap.

Some nature photo's - a blue dragonfly

The stream that fed into the lake.

San Diego

So we just got back from a week in San Diego with James' brother and his family. We had so much fun and I am feeling so fortunate to get to join this awesome family! We went to some great places for dinner, went to our first professional baseball game - GO PADRES! - enjoyed the beaches and the ocean, and just had so much fun. One of my favorite times was just bbq-ing in the backyard and joking around with everyone. I can't wait to go back, or better yet, move there!!! Here's some pic's from our week.

James at Petco Stadium before the game.

Here is me, James and his brother JJ after the game. Padres lost, but it was still a great game.

We went to watch the sunset on the beach.

More time at the beach! My hair gets crazy curly with all the humidity.

One of the coolest things that happened while we were there was getting to see all the Hanson's surf together. JJ, James, Josh and Seth all woke up at 6:00 in the morning to go catch some waves. It was their monday morning "Board Meeting".

James looks like a pro!

Crazy

I can not believe how fast June flew by! And what a crazy month it was. This was suppose to be a nice calm summer that James and I could just enjoy before our wedding. It has not turned out that way!

Reason to go Crazy #1: I remember when I was in high school, running for student council my senior year, and how they told me that part of the responsibility was planning the 10 year reunion. I guess I didn't think they were serious! So now here I am helping plan the reunion that's one week before my wedding! Planning another party for 200 people! My fellow student council members and I sent out a little questionaire about the past ten years to everyone, and one of the questions was, knowing now what you didn't know then what would you do different? And I would have to say to myself, don't run for student council you're getting married the weekend after the reunion - don't be crazy!! OK, so it's not quite that dramatic. Luckily my amazing friend Whit has totally stepped in and taken control of the whole reunion thing. I would be lost without her!

Reason to go Crazy #2: All that last minute stuff that piles up a month before the wedding. Now I know why everyone told me to just elope! You think you have everything so organized and perfectly planned, and that your wedding will be the first in history to go off without a hitch. Everyone I met with for wedding stuff told me that I was the most organized bride they had ever worked with. I had my colour coordinating planner full of helpful hints with everything all planned out to the smallest detail. I think a small bomb went off in my bag (that colour coordinates)! Who ever said 'life is what happens while you're busy making plans' should be either shot or given the nobel prize. If it weren't for my very best friend in the whole world I wouldn't have been able to get through this. And my advice for any engaged girl out there. I know we all dream of our perfect little reception with flowers and ribbons, dream of it since we were so small. But when you were seven I don't think you realized that all of those flowers and ribbon were going to cost thousands and that they'd all be thrown away the next day. So take the thousands and save yourself the headache because nothing goes the way you plan.

So I just read this, and I know it sounds very negative. I am so very happy to be getting married and our party will be great, but I definitely needed to vent a little. Isn't that what blogs are for anyway? The good news is, we finally got our engagement photo's and I have to say that we make a very cute couple! We had over 360 proofs to go through, there's another reason to go crazy! It was nearly impossible to choose. More good news is we are leaving for San Diego in two days. I am so ready for a vacation. We are going to go hang out with James' brother and his family for a long weekend. It will be so nice to relax a little.

Here's our super cute pictures. This one is probably one of my favorites!

I think this is everyone else's favorite.
You can tell how much fun we had! Our photographer is great! I can't wait to see the pic's from the wedding.

Race at Tamarack

My little sister Darcy and I decided to run the Tamarack 10k over Memorial Day weekend. It was so fun! We got so lost trying to find the start line, it was quite an adventure. But we ended up finding everyone. The trail was so beautiful and it was perfect weather for running. After the race we hung out at Tamarack for awhile.

The race was a benefit for the Make A Wish foundation. The Make A Wish kid was there, an adorable 7 year old girl. Her wish was to have breakfast with all of the Disney Princesses. She got to go to Florida with her whole family to have her wish granted.

We asked one of the volunteers to take our picture at the finish, he was a funny man, who made us pretend to be crossing the finish line for our pose. We were standing on one foot for like five minutes as he tried to figure out the camera!

Darcy on the trail acting so hot and tired.

Our muscle shot.

Home sweet home after a fun day trip.