First Day in North Carolina

We arrived late night on Sunday night the 31st of May into our new home. We were excited on our first day to visit the neighborhood and start exploring around town. Because Kylie slept all day on the drive from St Louis to Raleigh she was all wound up with energy so we played fetch in our new huge back yard and tired her out. It is so nice to have a huge backyard after being in a tiny high rise condo!


We then started our day by grabbing a quick breakfast across the street and then heading 1 mile down to North Hills. North Hills is a neat dining/shopping area that is built to be urban but the parking is all underground so it is a great mix of where urban and suburban mix. North Hills has free outdoor concerts every week during the summer, a farmers market every weekend on the commons, and lots of cool stores like REI and great cafes and places to eat.
http://www.northhillsraleigh.com/


After exploring around North Hills we visited some of the other neat areas near our house.
We are only about 1 mile from part of the Greenway trails around the Raleigh area. Over 100 miles of trails, some paved and some unpaved, criss cross the area. They provide a nice shaded trail to hike, jog, or bike around the region. We went down to the segment closest to us and started a hike through the forest:

Also near us, about 1 mile away is Shelley Lake, you can kayak, canoe, fish or hike around the perimete of the lake. We went down to visit it:

Part of the greenway system goes around the lake and even over some of the creeks that feed into it:
Colleen always wanted a garden, so on the first in town why not make a trip to the garden shop to buy tomatos, basil, bell peppers, and other plants to grow. She planted some in the garden around our big deck

And she planted basil in the planter boxes on the deck

We took a break to shoot some hoops in front driveway

We then excersised the dog some more in the backyard. Because Kylie got to excersise so much, she was very happy, check out her smile

Colleen had some fun on the big swing in our back yard that hangs from a huge tree:

We were so tired from everything we did that day that Jim took a nice nap in the hammock that the landlord left in the back yard:

Our house is a cute 1600-sf 2 bed / 1.5 bath brick ranch with a 0.48 acre yard. There is a dining room and an office too. Compared to our tiny condo in San Diego our new place seems huge!

There is a nice fire pit in the backyard that will be great to set up our camping chairs around: There is a large deck that will be great for relaxing on the summer nights:

We have a big tool shed and workshop on the side of the house:

And all of this for $600 less per month than our rent in San Diego. When we get the inside set up we'll post pictures of that! We are also going car shopping for our new car. Right now we only have Jim's 2 door little car so we need to get another car for Colleen to use to get to school. We'll keep you updated on any new adventures we have here!

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!