Harvest Festival / Halloween :)

Matt's first Harvest Festival / Halloween. We made good use of his Chinese monk garb when we bought an old Chinese wise man's mask :) Carol (the Cop) lent Heidi a little French maid outfit.

First stop of the evening was the Harvest Festival at the Neighborhood Church :) Then we hit the hills of Escondido with Carol and Chris (the other Beatle ;) ) to try our hand at 'trick-or-treat'ing ;) :)

Peace and French love :)
Kameron and Paul carrying the wise, old Chinese monk
Carol, Chris, Jason (as Ugly Betty), Matt & Heidi
our haul at the end of the night :D not bad for a first time, eh ?

Civic duty

No one should be awake this early in the morning .... ok, 7:30am isn't that early ..... but it is for me ;) :P So early, in fact, that as I was driving to Vista, I saw the sun rise ! ......... Jury duty called, so I got up and went.

I sat for a couple of hours, and then got picked for a pool of jurors for a DUI case. We broke for lunch and then came back to listen to more juror questioning ... and then I got picked for questioning.

Suffice it to say, I made myself very clear that I could never convict someone if all that was available as evidence was circumstantial. That was enough to dismiss me as juror #9. ;) :P

iSuccame ...

Meet Matt and his new iPhone.

Business is good and we gotta stay connected ;)

Safe and sound

We are back at our place, everything is fine here.

We have updated our web albums with the pictures from the fire and are getting caught up with the final Orlando pictures as well (apologies for being so far behind).

Keep checking back here to see what other stuff we did pre-fire ;) :) (but it might not be done until tonight sometime because we've gotta track down our mail from this week up north in Murrieta.

--di & matt

Links to the web albums:
Leaving Fallbrook
View from Temecula 1
Fallbrook Visit 1
View from Temecula 2
Fallbrook Visit 2
Fallbrook Visit 3
Fallbrook Church
Fallbrook Visit 4
View from Temecula 3
Fallbrook Visit 5
Fallbrook Fire

News about SoCal fires (and us :) )

We just got back from checking our area in Fallbrook. Everything is fine in our subdivision. It was really dark though, so we couldn't see around anywhere to check on how much damage was in the surrounding areas. With any luck we'll be able to get back in tomorrow and see things in daylight.

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers, and don't forget to send up a couple of prayers for those who weren't as fortunate as us, and also for the firefighters who are working to put those fires out.

We met a bunch of them tonight when we were helping at the Fallbrook church to get food for them and all. very nice guys (and a really cool lady cop :) ) that told us about different places that they had fought fires around our area. Matt even got to talk to some that had battled the blaze near our home. It was a real pleasure to be able to do something other than being glued to the tv, radio or internet looking for news, and help feed all those hungry people and set up a computer where people could check their email and look at fire progress. They kept thanking us for putting things together for them and working to hard to feed them, but to me there's no comparing me in the kitchen cooking to them out in the middle of the smoke fighting the fires. But that's the nice part of talking to the firefighters, you were able to see how genuine and humble they were (plus hear some crazy firefighting stories ;) ).

Here are a few pictures from tonight, but more will be on the web album soon.

--di & matt (11:20 PM)





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We just got confirmation that our house is ok.

More news about this (and updated blog events) later.

--di & matt (3:34 PM)

A smoky surprise

This is the scene outside our house, in the driveway. Though there was no official call for evacuations, we decided to pack things up and go to Temecula.

Unfortunately, I-15 North was blocked off due to fire jumping over it. We searched all the maps and found another back road north, but when we got in the car and on our way, the road was blocked off due to fire.

We then had to take the 'scenic route' ... eight hours later, we arrived in Temecula ... tired, and worried about Fallbrook.

Here is the web album of our trip out of Fallbrook.

An odd occurance

An amazing sight this evening when we stopped at Costco on our way home.

There was so much ash in the air that the sun was just a small ball of red in the sky .... and this is 5:30 PM !!!

A little French in San Diego

Today we found a little piece of the south of France. We got invited to join a group of "Frenchies" in San Diego for a few rounds of Pétanque :)

Born to ride ...

Corinne introduced us today.

A very beautiful animal.

We all spent the afternoon together, enjoying the wonderful weather and peaceful countryside.

Wanna see more pictures ? Check out the web album of our horseback riding experience :)

A new addition

Meet Matt's new office chair.

A wonderful find off of Craigslist :) Now Matt can work the hours he does in proper comfort and ergonomic posture ;)

We met up with the seller outside The Shakespear (the British pub in San Diego) and managed to fit it somehow (I still don't know how) into the car.

Hurray for Craigslist. And hurray to proper sitting :)

A little British in San Diego

Members of the SD Ruby Brigade got together tonight at The Shakespear to throw around some planning ideas for the next few meetings as well as other side projects. The evening was a little reminder of the pubs we left behind in England :) We would definitely recommend the fish and chips ;) :)

While the guys talked, I tried my hand at some night shots.

aMAZE-ing corn

We had an interesting time at a corn maze in Temecula today :) We had all sorts of sights to see :) from pumpkins, to farm animals, to an intricate corn maze. You'll see more a-MAZE-ing pictures in the web album ;)

Sunset on the Ocean

A great, afternoon walk on the Oceanside Pier with Zulita and Gordon. So great that we even caught the sunset on our way back to shore.

Goodbye Florida :(

Well, it's time to leave again. After such a long time not seeing each other, and then spending weeks together, it's kinda hard to leave. But we can always look forward to a future trip together. We love you guys !

The apartment isn't ready just yet ... but hopefully it'll be done soon .......................

Tigger getting in some quality time with Matt before we leave.
Final look at the house on our way to the airport.
Heidi and Eileen with the newest addition to our penguin collection :)
Leave it to Matt to get a smile on our faces ;)

Party time !

Another reason to celebrate :) well, actually, two ! Bahama Breeze was our place to party with our friends and just have a good time together. What a way to end a great trip in Florida :)

Happy birthday little sister :) (and Naveen too !)

Leen & Naveen, smiling and celebrating 1 more year :)
Getting together with friends: Matt, Heidi, Zach, Leeny, Naveen Tere, Mark and Jon
Though not my birthday ... I did get a taste of this and it was DElicious mmmmmmm :)
More pictures on the album :)

Sweet Sunday

Happy Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirthday little siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiister ... well, almost ;) :)

We had a little pre-birthday celebration at Karen & Tim's house.

Just a few more pictures on the web album.

A night on the city ;)

To check out some 'night life' around Orlando, we checked out City Walk by Universal Studios. It's a cool area filled with restaurants and a man-made lake that is just in front of Universal Studios. Though we could have gotten in to the park, we chose not to because they had everything set up for the whole Halloween theme stuff ..... some sort of haunted, horror circus.

We knew we had to follow E.T. to go home ;)Akkk !! I knew I didn't get into basketball for a reason ..... man this guy is HUGE !
The rotating globe outside the entrance of the amusement park.
Looking over the man-made lake at all the restaurants outside of Universal Studios.

Hitting the coast

We had to take full advantage of the awesome weather today, so we pulled out the old Orlando day trip book and decided on Ponce Inlet.

We had fun taking pictures and climbing ALL the way up to the top of the lighthouse (you're only seeing 1/2 of it in the picture here :P )

At one point there was this freak downpour while we were in the little gift shop. Outside the door to the parking lot, it was pouring down and dark, cloudy. And outside the door towards the lighthouse and the rest of the 'outdoor museum', it was bright and blue, sunny skies. A sight that none of us had ever seen before.

Check out the Ponce Inlet web album.

Trying new things

Tonight we tried out 'Macaroni Grill' for the very first time. Matt and I had seen it several times and every time I saw one, I thought of Leeny cuz she's said it was really good.

So now when all four of us went, I looked over the menu and almost immediately narrowed things down to 2 things !! :) Small little victory for someone who takes forever to choose something ;)

I decided on the Boursin Filet (Matt made his own pasta). Suffice it to say, absolutely delicious !