Our Marley and Me moment!

So...when Jim came home today from work, he opened the door to see a true "Marley and Me" moment with our new foster dog Kylie...Take a look at this picture of our little cute dog laying there innocently, while behind her is shredded paper towels!!! She found the roll and shredded every square of it, there was not one un-chewed square. Even the tube was chewed up. Her reaction sitting there like nothing was wrong was both frustrating and humorously cute!
We took Kylie with us to get Pizza on the patio of our favorite pizza place in Mission Beach, called Luigi's. Before we left we decided to put her doggy back pack on and put some water in it, so she would have water with her if she got thirsty and to try and add a little weight to help tire her out a bit! She looked really cute with her back pack on, she looked like a little service dog! Here we are at home before we left, at the beach, and at Luigi's getting some pizza.

Here is Kylie passed out on our floor, with one of her chew toys, and another time just passed out on the floor. She's all tuckered out!

Kylie is going back to her previous foster home while we are on our honeymoon, we will miss her a lot. We just started making progress with training her puppy manners. She used to pull us on the leash but we are training her with a special leash, some tasty treats, and a clicker that is really popular these days. We hope she doesn't lose all her training while we are gone for a week and half, but we now know how to make progress to try and shape her into the best yellow lab in San Diego.

Some other news, as just mentioned, we are going to Las Vegas tomorrow night (Wednesday) to be with Jim's dad, two sisters, in-laws, and step-siblings. Then on Friday night we head to Belize for our belated honeymoon!!!! We are so excited, there are adventures we will be taking most days such as ziplines, river tubing through caves, snorkeling, and hiking to the Mayan ruins. In addition we will be in a private cabana on the beach so we can't wait!!!

Also, we are flying to Raleigh-Durham on Friday night the 16th of January and staying through Tuesday night the 20th.

We'll post some pictures of our adventues in Belize after we get back! Happy holidays to all, and safe travels to anybody driving or flying!

Doggie Fostering

We started the last week by going to "December Nights" in Balboa Park last Friday night (December 5th). An estimated 300,000 people go the annual 2-night event in the beautiful park. They have lots of lights on, all the museums are open late and are free, they have booths, rides, etc. But the neatest thing they had were all the performers. They have carolers, dancers, musicians, magicians, comedians, etc. Some of the dancers were amazing, they would spin around upside down on their head, they had seniors tap dancing, etc. They also had little kids doing a routine that reminded us of our neices Ashley, Lauren, and Natalie. Colleen was so inspired by all the dancing that she took information from the group and she is going to sign up and take a 12 week tap dance class this spring!!!

Later during the week, we were able to work out a deal with our landlord where we could indeed get a dog (He had originally denied our request). We began fostering Kylie, a 10-month old rescue dog, a yellow lab (See article below this one too for info on her!)

It started out a little rough, on Friday night, our first night with her, we were taking her out for a final walk at 11pm before bed, and we unfortunately locked ourselves out!!! We had to call a locksmith, and the first one couldn't open us up. We had to call another locksmith and he was able to do it. This took almost 3 hours, until 2am. We were so tired, and Kylie had to be really bored, but she handled it so well. We felt so bad for her!

This weekend, once we got our door open, we took Kylie to Dog Beach here in San Diego, a big wide beach where dogs can run without a leash! The dogs can play with each other and run into the water. Kylie runs as fast as a bullet across the sand and is not afraid of the water, and she loves meeting other dogs.

We also took Kylie with us to Einstein Bagels, that has alwasys been our weekend morning tradition, coffee and bagels at the Hillcrest Einstein bagels, where we know the staff and all the patrons. We always wanted to join the crowd of dog owners who sit out on the patio and have bagels with their dogs (Einstein sells 'dog bagels', they look like a bagel but I'm sure they are liver or beef flavor!!!)

Kylie and our cat Millie haven't got along so well, they avoid each other. Millie asserts her dominance over Kylie and shoes her away if she gets to close. Kylie cries because she wants to play with Millie but can't get close enough to play. We are hoping Millie can become friends with a dog someday, but we'll see how it goes!

Tomorrow we are going to take Kylie to the dog parade downtown!

Could Kylie Be Our New Dog???

On Sunday we went to a dog adoption event in San Diego and met a very well behaved cute yellow lab named Kylie.

She is 9 months old and is alreay potty trained, and is very well behaved, did great on a leash and is a very sweet dog.

Today (Tuesday) a volunteer from the agency brought Kylie over to see how she did in our condo. She seemed love our condo and loved sitting by the window and watching all the downtown action!

Our little cat Millie did great too. Our cat gets really angry when she sees other cats, but seemed oblivious to a dog in our condo unless Kylie got too close to Millie. Then Millie would give a little hiss, a warning swat in the air, and Kylie would walk away.

We walked Kylie around the block and we enjoyed how well behaved she was. She loved to walk on the leash and loved to run on the leash when we tried jogging with her. They say she loves water and swimming so she would love Dog Beach here in San Diego.

We'll keep updates posted here on what happens with Kylie!!!!

Thanksgiving Weekend

Our friends Lindsay and Aaron visited us on Thanksgiving, they drove Wednesday night from Albuquerque, NM. Because of their late start and slow traffic through the foggy mountains, they arrived at 4:00 AM on Thursday. We were all troopers though and got up 2 hours later at 6:00 am to get ready for the Turkey Trot 5k run in Balboa Park.

The weather on Thursday morning looked decent when we woke up, but when the race started, the rain started too! It has rained a total of 0.15 inches since April, but that morning we got over 2 inches of rain in 2 hours! It was miserable, but we all finished. Over 7,000 people ran too, and you can tell they were mostly San Diegans because nobody has rain gear for jogging! We didn't get any pictures because it was raining too hard to take a digital camera out! The race was very crowded, and Colleen had to wait to cross not only the start line, but also the finish line in the race. That never happens! Last year only 4,000 people ran it, they weren't prepared for the huge crowd.

We were soaking wet, the streets were flooded, but that didn't ruin our thanksgiving spirit! By noon it cleared off and the sun came out. We visited Coronado Beach so Aaron could see the Navy Seal training base, then went home to start cooking our big Thanksgiving meal. This pictures is from our breakfast / brunch at Richard Walker's Pancake House after we cleaned up from the race.


For the big Thanksgiving meal, we made homemade cranberry sauce, we mashed potatoes, cut up apples to add to our stuffing, sauteed green beans, cooked some delicious turkey, and had a wonderful meal! In addition to Lindsay, Aaron, Colleen, Jim, we had L.J. over too! And, Colleen's sister Erin and her boyfriend Nate arrived from San Francisco. When we were done with dinner, we played two intense games of Cranium! Then we crashed because we had only had two hours of sleep. This picture is from right after we ate, notice how everybody is tired, even our cat Millie!!!! Also, notice our "fireplace" on the left?!

On Friday, the weather was beautiful so we took the Old Town Trolley Tour of the City. It is a great way to see the city and learn all about neat facts on how the City was founded, developed, etc. We toured Old Town, downtown, Coronado, Little Italy, Balboa Park, etc. When we were at the Hotel Del Coronado we saw a unique sight, ice skating on the beach!














Here is Lindsay and Aaron in front of the Hotel Del Coronado







Saturday we had breakfast on the beach then we went to the zoo. We toured the zoo for 6 hours and walked over 5 miles thourgh the hills and canyons of the zoo. We liked these Koala bears, notice how they sleep in the trees?? Really cute!

Sunday all of our guests left and we began the clean up! We went Sunday afternoon to a doggy adoption event and met a wonderful dog named Kylie. See our above blog for more on what could be our new lab!

Our Search for a Puppy!

We are getting a dog! We have been waiting so long for this!

We had wanted to adopt and looked into a Labardor Rescue here in San Diego. Our application was denied because we dont have a fenced in yard! There are so many dogs that live in our neighborhood and no one has a fenced in yard! We have a dog park two blocks away but the volunteer told us that dog parks were unsafe. What? The dog will live a great life and still get tons of excersise....jim and I will run with it, enter it in 5ks with us, go hiking, camping, etc! We just don't get it!

We are now looking into different breeders to find our perfect puppy! We have both wanted one for so long, and so after the minor adoption set back, we are so excited for it to be a reality.

We have been looking into a breeder called Cedar Ranch Labs. http://www.cedarranchlabradors.com/cedar_ranch_website_025.htm These are photos of the little pups that we get to pick one from. They will be ready when we get back from Belize!

Their mom is named Karlie:

And their dad is Trace:

The New Dahlem Diggs!

We are finally getting close to finishing the set up of our new condo downtown!

Here is the view out our floor to ceiling windows, we can't see the harbor and ships since we are only on the 3rd floor and there are big buildings blocking our view, but it is neat being in such an urban area with mostly mixed-use high rises (Condos/office/shops, etc) Here are some pictures of the living room as you look in from the front doorHere is looking back towards the door from the end of the living room Here is our new desk / work area:
Here is our kitchen
Here is our bedroomHere is looking towards the bathroom, with our dual closests on each side of the little hallway
Here is our little cat Millie, she loves the hardwood floors, and she loves to slide all over them when she runs! It's really cute!

We are excited to host Thanksgiving this year at our new place. Lindsay and Aaron are driving in from Albuquerque, NM, Erin and her boyfriend are driving down from San Francisco, and LJ will be joining us too!

The morning of Thanksgiving we are running in a 5k turkey trot in Balboa Park. We start and finish right in the middle of The Prado by all the museums, it should be a really pretty run. Lindsay is pregnant so she will be walking the 5k, she get lots of credit for taking part since she's carry a little one with her! :)

The rest of the weekend after Thanksgiving, we will be showing our guests around town, possible doing the fun tourists things we wouldn't do unless we had guests, like taking the double decker red tour bus around town!

Canoe Trip!

This weekend we had a great time going to the Colorado River and renting canoes for a day-long trip though Topock Gorge!

There was 12 of us that went on the trip and we had 6 canoes rented for us. We left Friday evening and hit major traffic, after 3 hours we had only gone 80-90 miles...Eventually we got to the campsite around 10pm. We were camping Friday night at Park Moabi near Needles, CA at the start of the canoe trip. We had a campsite right on the Colorado River. Even though we all got there after dark, Ryan and Savitri were even later, they were on "Savitri Time" and got to the campsite at about 12:15am! We will have more pictures on the blog once people send us theirs, this is all we had on our camera, here we are at the campsite in the morning before we started our canoeing:

It was very cool at night, but the weather on Saturday was absolutely perfect, it was completely sunny, light winds, and about 80-85 degrees. We had a 17 mile trip that day so the canoe outfitter had to start us at 7am, right after the sun came up. At the start of the trip the river goes through the desert, then about 5 miles later we paddled through red-ish brown cliffs in Topock Gorge. The water in the river was cool, but we still swam in the river and we even jumped off some rocks about 15 feet over the river.

We were supposed to meet our rafting outfitter at the take-out point at 3:30pm. Colleen and Jim were the only canoe to arrive on time as the group started getting split up near the end. (We had to turn off the main river channel into a side channel, and then turn off into a small bay where the take-out point was.) When the other 10 people didn't show up, Jim paddled back out into the side channel and river looking for the group while Colleen waited at the take out point. After 1.5 hours of looking for everybody else--just as the sun was dropping behind the horizon--Jim found the others they off on a wrong dead-end side canyon and guided them to the correct take-out point just as it was getting dark! If it had been just 10 or 15 minutes later it would have been completely dark out and cold (the temperature drops quickly in the desert after dark, it very quickly drops down into the 40s at night!) and the other 10 people would have had a miserable night cold and without food!

We got back to the campsite and made dinner by our fire by the river. We had turkey dogs, sweet potatoes, portabello mushrooms, dorritos, chocolate brownies, it was quite a feast! We then played a 2-3 hour game of Catch Phrase. In fact after we went to bed we could hear others in our group still playing it by the fire! In the middle of the night, at about 3 or 4 am, a windstorm starting blowing through the desert and shook the tent so much that we couldn't sleep anymore. It felt like an earthquake because it was shaking our tent so much! As soon as it was light out, we all got up, quickly packed up and headed out. We had plans to make a huge breakfast at the campsite but the wind was way to strong and blowing sand everywhere. We headed to a good down-home breakfast at The Wagon Wheel restaurant in Needles before our drive back to San Diego!

We are back now, showered, in our PJ's and exhausted and it is not even 7pm yet! It will be an early night for us!

The Move, Christine's Visit, Colleen's Birthday!

So the move is officially over! We pretty much have everything set up and ready to go and be livable again. Our building is really nice with our pool and hot tub and the great views. We are loving our new neighborhood. Being right by the harbor and seeing the tall ships every day makes Colleen happy! Everyone that lives around us are young professionals and young married couples, it is a great scene. We have lots of cafes, bistros, bars and restaurants all around us and we walk everywhere....we love that! Millie, our cat, loves the big main room with the hardwood floors and sprints and slides all over the place to get out her energy! Sometimes when she starts running, her feet slip on the hardwood and she just runs in place for a few seconds until she gets traction, it looks like the cartoons! She also stares out of the big floor to ceiling windows all day.

Still, we were sad to leave our old neighborhood and didn't like having to move. Millie loved the whole moving process though, check out her playing on the boxes while we were waiting for the moving company to arrive!














Even though Colleen is smiling here, it wasn't nearly as much fun for us to move as it was for Millie:














So far this is the only picture we have of the inside of the new apartment right after we moved in before we got it mostly set up, we just found our camera again so we'll get more pictures up next week! (See the next blog down for more info on our new building and location)














It was great to have Christine visit once again and to play host. We really enjoyed her company! We ran a 5k race in Balboa Park on Saturday night, it was a night time 5k that started at 7pm.














Right after the race we went home, changed, and went to an early Halloween party. Colleen was a St Paulie Girl, Christine was a Bass Ale Girl, and Jim rounded out the beer theme as he was a beer keg. (His costume was a 'working' costume, it really dispensed beer!)

































Colleen's birthday was on November 1st and she was taking yet another CSET (CA teaching exam) this time in Earth Science. When she is done with all her tests she will be licensed to teach Elementary School and High School for General Science, Biology and Earth Science. Phew! After her exam, we all went out to Wine Steals in our old hillcrest neighborhood for their Saturday evening wine tasting with a small group of friends.

We have lost our camera sometime after moving so unfortunately no pictures to enhance this post. Send us positive energy that we will find it! (Well someone must have because tonight we found our camera!!!!!)

We will be camping and canoeing this weekend so we will blog when we get back!

Getting ready to move :( Christine coming to town :)

Well, as some of you may know, our landlord is selling our condo in Hillcrest so we have to move. We are moving on Wednesday Oct 29th to Little Italy. We will be in a 20-story new high-rise (although only on the 2nd floor). The building has a roof-top pool, hot tub, etc. As of October 29th, our new address will be:

425 West Beech Street

Unit 312

San Diego, CA 92101

Here is our building, we are in the lower part between the two towers:
We are not thrilled about having to move again, however we do like the Little Italy neighborhood in San Diego, you get the downtown lifestyle without all the crazy clubs, parking problems, and traffic, etc that are down in the Gaslamp part of downtown.

The area is very dog friendly (everybody seems to be walking a dog around in Little Italy) and our unit is dog friendly too, so we might be able to finally get our dog that we've always wanted!

Our building will be 2 blocks from the Little Italy light rail station. So when we don't carpool, Jim can just hop on that to work instead of taking the bus like he does now. We can also take the light rail to the movie theater/mall at Fashion Valley, etc.

And we are only 3 blocks from Sante Fe Depot where we can take the Amtrak Surfliner to Anaheim/LA and the Coaster Commuter Rail to the Del Mar fair and races.

(Jim will also love living just 1 mile from the terminals at the San Diego airport!)

Tomorrow night (Friday) Christine is coming into town from Boston for 9 days! She is a great friend of Colleen's who used to live in San Diego (She was the Maid of Honor in our wedding!). We have a lot of fun things planned, we are running the Light Up The Night 5K in Balboa Park at 7pm on Saturday (a night time road race!), then after that we are going to a Halloween Party at our friend Ryan's apartment. Also planned, we are also going bowling next week in the East Village part of downtown, and Saturday Nov 1st is Colleen's birthday! (Too bad she has to take the CSET test that day for her teaching credential!) We can't wait to hang out with Christine, we hope she doesn't mind a bit of mess as we move that week! We will be really busy but it will be a lot fun!

Coming up the following weekend on Nov 8th-9th we are camping and canoeing on the Colorado River with 12 friends, so we'll be sure to post more about our adventueres in moving, with Christine, and for our canoeing/camping trip!