Cross Country moving road trip!

We were all packed up and ready to head out on our long drive across the country to North Carolina. We have a little 2 door car and we had to travel with both of us, our lab Kylie, our cat Millie, and our dog crate, cat crate, and our suit cases. It was a cramped car and we were worried it might be a long long trip! Here is our odometer at our condo in Little Italy ready to head out:

Here is Kylie in the back of the car with our seats folded down

Everything fit so we started our journey. Driving through east San Diego county we passed lots and lots of large wind mills

Our first stop was in Phoenix to visit our friend Ryan.Ryan is our good friend from San Diego but he was visiting family in Phoenix. His family was having a bar b que and invited us to have some food and to let our dog run around with their two dogs.

One of their dogs looked a lot like Kylie, look how similar they look
We stayed the night in a pet friend hotel in Phoenix and then headed out for our next day's drive. We passed through Winslow Arizona and did the cheesy tourist thing and stopped on a corner in Winslow Arizona just like the song.

We stopped the next night in Albuquerque to visit our friends Lindsay and Aaron. Lindsay was due with their first baby on the day we arrived! We were hoping to be there to see the new one, but she had the baby the day after we left. We stayed two nights with them in New Mexico to visit and to let our dog once again play with some friends. They have two dogs and they had fun running around the desert mesa next to their house. They chased jack rabbits and tired them selves out

And when they were done playing the dogs took nice long naps in the back yard!
Our cat Millie stayed in the laundry room the whole time. One time we couldn’t find her only to realize she’d been hanging out as high up as she could on top of the shelves

The second night we were there we went to dinner with Lindsay and Aaron's family at a mexican restaurant. It was great to meet their families and enjoy some tasty margaritas

We then drove out to our next stop in Oklahoma City. We nicknamed it Oklahoma Shitty because it seemed like such a rotten city. We were excited to keep driving on the next day! Oklahoma was very boring and very windy, but it was cool to see more wind turbines

We arrived the next day in St Louis for 4 nights to visit family.

Kylie loved the backyard at Jim’s mom house! She played fetch with the toys and jumped in the pool over and over again!



Thursday night in St Louis we went to Jim’s brother Adam’s high school graduation. Jim’s mom works at the high school and was part of the ceremony

We caught a good picture on the jumbo-tron of Adam and mom

The graduating class was 500 students and it took a very long time. Our nieces Ashley and Lauren were obviously not too interested, they passed the time playing game boy


After the ceremony we got a great picture with the family

We got to meet our newest niece Emily too!

We then went to dinner with the family and our 9 year old niece Ashley is now almost as tall as Colleen!

The next day was Ashley’s 9th birthday and we there was a fun family party at Jim’s mom house
We got to visit with our Grandma and Grandpa Harper too
We then visited Jim’s friend Kevin and finally got to meet his fiancé Cady! (Jim is the best man in Kevin’s wedding this October.) We also got to see their new house they just bought.

The next day was Emily’s christening and we went to a party at Jim’s sister Jen’s house. It was great to be there with so many events going on, we got to see lots of family and friends. Here we were heading out of St Louis

That day was our longest drive. We drove 12.5 hours from St Louis all the way to Raleigh. Our dog Kylie seemed to love it. She slept

And she snoozed half asleep with a big smile on her face. The movement of the car put her right to sleep. That day we drove through parts of 7 states: Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina.

On Sunday night, 8 days after we left San Diego, we finally arrived at our new home in Raleigh, NC. Here is the odometer when we arrived
Doing the math, we drove 2,918 miles. It was a fun roadtrip but we were happy to be at our new home and ready to stop living out of our car and suitcase!

Our Final Week in California

Our last week in California we wanted to visit with some of our great friends and be sure to hit our favorite spots in San Diego.

On Sunday we went to The Turf Club for dinner. This is where we had our first date back in 2006! It is a cool little trendy steak restaurant where you cook your food on a big grill in the middle of the place. It is a fun place to go and it was great to see where we had our first date.

On Tuesday we hit up Luigi's Pizza in Mission Beach. This is our favorite Tuesday night tradition where you get a giant slice of pizza (It is giant!) for $1.39 and pints of beer for $1.50. They call it tight-wad Tuesdays. We met our great friends Colleen and Beth there. Our friend Colleen Poswers looks just like Colleen Dahlem! And they act just alike, and both Colleen's are going back to school on the east coast to get teaching credentials to become elementary school teachers! Check out the resemblence, here is Colleen and Colleen

and here is Beth and Jim

We will miss both of them very much!

Colleen even got a tank top from Luigis! We then went to the Sand Bar next door after Luigi's closed. We met our good friend Savitri there: Back in 2006 Sand Bar is where we met at the backpacking planning meeting. And watching the Cardinals world series games in 2006 at Luigi's is where we realized we had a crush on each other and prompted Jim to ask Colleen out for our first date.

Wednesday we went to Kabuki Sushi, our favorite sushi place in San Diego. The sushi comes around on boats around the sushi bar so you never have to wait for your food, you just pick it up and eat it!

Thursday we met LJ and Vinnie for game night at LJ's apartment. We will miss LJ a lot too and we are happy she has found such a great guy in Vinnie.

The movers then came to start packing up all of our stuff. We had an obstacle course of boxes in our condo:

Saturday morning met Colleen and Beth for bagels at Einstein Bagels in Hillcrest, our Saturday morning tradition.

After all the stuff was gone Kylie and Millie looked very lonely in our empty condo!

We were now ready for our long trip across the country!

Leaving California, heading east!

As most of you know, Colleen and I are leaving California in just under 2 weeks. We are moving to the east coast, to Raleigh, NC. We've each been here 4.5 to 5 years and we will miss it a lot. We met here and wouldn't be married if we each hadn't moved out here. The weather is fantastic, the dark cold blue waters of the Pacific are beautiful, but it is time to move on and head back east. We tried looking for a long time to get a house here, but the market was crazy and even with prices dropping we couldn't get in the door to a 3 bedroom house in an area with good schools. We knew if were going to move the time would be now, and not 5 or 10 years from now when we might have kids in school.

Jim first interviewed in January with the City of Durham, NC public works department, got an offer but turned it down because the work seemed more like a career step down. He then interviewed with the U.S. Dept of Transportation (US DOT), more specifically within the DOT the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in downtown Raleigh early March. This time the job offer was a good one, and the work seems to be a great progression in his career. He will be in charge of program management of all the federally-funded transportation projects in the western 1/3 of North Carolina. (So there will be some occaional day-trips to the mountains for meetings). He will start work there June 8th. They are paying to relocate us and paying for all of our moving expenses so that was a great bonus that we weren't expecting!

Colleen was accepted to North Carolina State University (NCSU) in Raleigh to obtain her Masters in Teaching (MAT) so she can finally be a teacher! She currently is the education director for an environmental non-profit organization here in San Diego and goes to class rooms to teach kids about recycling, watersheds, household hazordous waste, etc. She wants to teach either high school science or elementary school, preferrably 4th or 5th grade.

We are excited to be able to visit the warm ocean waters of the Outer Banks (the ocean water in San Diego is very cold, usually in the 50s or 60s), and the Appalachain mountains, and beautiful fall foliage.

We just secured a rental house in Raleigh, our new address will be:

104 Windel Drive

Raleigh, NC 27609

It's a 2 bed cute brick house:

There is a huge backyard for Kylie to run around! (The dog in the picture was the landlord from when they lived there)

Some additional pictures can be found here:

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/104-Windel-Drive_Raleigh_NC_27609_1104639083

The owners were going to sell the house but decided to rent it out instead. We will have a great big back yard for Kylie to run around. We will also be less than 1 mile from a great area called North Hills with shopping, dining, cafes, bars, etc. After we get settled in for a few months we are going to start looking for our own house most likely in the North Raleigh area or a suburb called Cary.

We both have cousins that live in the Raleigh area and since we have lots of friends and families in New England and St Louis we will be shorter flights away. This summer we have a lot planned:

Jim is the best man in his friend Kevin's wedding. The bachelor party that he planned was a white water rafting trip in West Virginia on the weekend of June 20-21. He will then be a groomsman in his friend Mike's wedding in Washington DC in late July. Then in early August we are going to go for a quick weekend trip to New England for our first anniversary of our wedding on the sea coast of New Hampshire. Then in early October we head to St Louis for Kevin's wedding. Since everything is on the east coast or midwest, living in NC will make travel much easier for all of this compared to if we were still living in San Diego!

Our current plan for traveling across the country will involve us driving with both of us humans, and then our dog Kylie and our cat Millie. For those wondering where we will be, here is our current plan:

-Sunday May 24 we depart San Diego and stop in Flagstaff, AZ for the night.

-On Monday May 25 we will drive from Flagstaff to Albuquerque to visit our friends Lindsay and her husband Aaron. Lindsay is due with their first baby on May 29th +/- so it might be interesting!

-On Tuesday May 26 we are driving from Albuquerque to Oklahoma City.

-On Wednesday May 27th we are driving from Oklahoma City to St Louis where we will stay for a few days to visit family.

-On Thursday May 28th we are going to visit Six Flags, anybody in St Louis feel free to join! Then that night we are going to Jim's younger brother Adam's graduation.

-Friday May 29 we are going to a barbeque at Jim's sister's house for our neice Ashley's birthday!

-Saturday May 30th we are going to our neice Emily's christening.

-Sunday May 31st we are going to drive from St Louis to Nashville and visit sites there, or if we are tired of living out of our car we are going to drive 12 hours straight from St Louis to Raleigh.

We will keep everybody updated as get closer to our move! We hope to do a few more things in San Diego while we are still here, like the Hornblower dinner cruise along the harbor. We'll try and post pictures of that.

Have a great week!

Weekend Day

This weekend we took advantage of the nice weather to spend time outside! On Saturday we hung out with Colleen's cousing Charlene who is a sophmore at UC-San Diego in La Jolla. We went to lunch downtown in Little Italy, by our condo. We sat in the outdoor seating and enjoyed a delicious lunch. We then to Coranado Island, Point Loma, and saw Charlene's apartment at UCSD that has a million dollar ocean view. Not bad for a college dorm!

Sunday we went to Balboa Park with Kylie

We then came back to our condo and had a nice lunch up on our common area deck. On the 8th floor of our building there is a deck with a pool, hot tub, and gas grills. Between the other high rises you can see a portion of the harbor and cruise ships. We took up some homemade lemonade, some fresh cut strawberrys, and played a long game of scrabble.

Later that night we went back up to the deck for dinner. We made more homemade lemonade and made some nice chicken kabobs. It was a delicious dinner and a great view from the grill.

Cedar Creek Falls

This past Saturday, we went for a great hike to a waterfall and swimming hole in the mountains about an hour away near the town of Julian. The waterfall was called Cedar Creek Falls.
We went with a few friends, and our dog Kylie.
We had to first drive 8 miles on a one-lane gravel road to get to the trail head. Then the hike was a 2 mile downhill hike into the canyon of the upper San Diego River and Cedar Creek. At the end of the trail is a great 90' high waterfall with a swimming hole. The swimming hole is about 100-150 feet across and can be up to 10' deep, perfect for a refreshing swim. Even though the outside weather was sunny and warm, the water was very cool because it is fed from snow run-off from higher up in the mountains. (The waterfall can dry to a trickle in the summer when the snow has all melted and the weather is drier.)

Our dog Kylie had a blast swimming! We would throw a tennis ball out and have her fetch it. Then us humans got brave and swam across the cool water over to the side by the waterfall.
Every time someone jumped in the water Kylie would swim out after them to greet them, it seemed like she was nervous about people being in the water and she was going out to try and save them!

What made it really interesting was...unknown to us the "San Diego Off-Leash Dog Group" decided to make a hike down as well that day. At the waterfall waiting for us was about 50 people and 30 dogs all off leash, so Kylie was very excited! She was the only dog who was swimming in the water though (one other lab did for a little bit).
After playing around in the waterfall we ate a light lunch then began the hot uphill 2 mile hike back out of the canyon. We then went into the town of Julian for a late lunch/early dinner.

Our Vacation Day!

Because we are in California, we get a unique holiday off, Cesar Chavez Day, every March 31st. We decided since we had the day off (and it was a picture perfect day out) to enjoy it like a vacation!

We woke up and did our weekend routine of getting bagels and coffee at Einstein Bagels with our dog Kylie

Then to get our dog some play time we went to the dog park at Balboa Park
Kylie met a friend, this husky named "Buddy". Kylie found a big stick and played with Buddy:
Then we headed over to Coronado to go to the beach. Luckily they have a dog beach there where dogs can run off leash so we got to enjoy the beach without leaving our dog at home. Kylie loved playing in the water and got soaked! We enjoyed being in the sun, but the water was cold so we only went into the water knee deep, we aren't as tough as the dogs

It is funny seeing all the dogs running around with Coronado Hotel in the background, they are living a life of luxury!

It was nice to be at the beach on a weekday when it wasn't so crowded, it actually was enjoyable and felt like a vacation because we are usually so busy on weekends getting our chores and errands run that we can't relax and enjoy the day as much
After the beach we did a mile or two walk through the neighborhoods of Coronado and saw all the beautiful houses. We both said it reminded us of that movie "Pleasantville" where everything is picture perfect. Everybody's lawns are perfect, there isn't one pothole in any street, and everybody seems to have a perfectly kept house. It sure made us wonder who all the people were that had all those houses and how they made their money to be able to afford to live there.

After that we dropped Kylie off at our condo and headed out for some fun downtown

We went to a new bowling alley/restaurant named The East Village Tavern. Jim even used a Miller High Life bowling ball which our friend Kevin would surely love
After bowling, we went up to our roof top pool and hot tub to catch some rays, swim in the pool, and dip in the hot tub

After the pool we had to make a quick trip to the vet for Kylie then dropped her back off at home again. We then headed to our Tuesday night tradition, "Tightwad Tuesdays" at Luigi's Pizza in Mission Beach. We brought our camera but forgot to take any pictures. But they have really cheap pizza and beer ($1.35 giant slices of pizza and $1.50 pints).

We are now sitting at home relaxing after our busy day! We are going to try and get some pictures downloaded from last weekend's hike to Cedar Creek Falls, a 90' high waterfall with a large 150' wide swimming hole complete with a rope swing!