Happy Hallooooweeen

Jolene and I. Jolene went to UC Riverside with me. We went to UCR the same years and lived in the same dorms our first year. 10 years later (now) we work together! Very strange.

Getty Museum

We went to LA to visit Allen's sister for a couple of days. We went to see the Getty Museum the last day were were there. The other days were spent playing board games: Monopoly, but using a credit card! No paper money. It was very interesting. We also played Cities and Knights. The Getty Museum was pretty nice. The art rooms reminded us of the museums in Italy.

Pinkberry

A new craze in LA is the love for pinkberry. It's a frozen yogurt place that features low calorie yogurt dessert that is low fat and does not use milk. There are long lines to get one of these $5 cups. We have to admit that we are addicted to it. We got two before we left LA. It's very light tasting and goes down really quick! You get to choose 3 fruit toppings. Take a look . . .

Evacuations cont'd

Well, we were evacuated. I received a reverse 911 call last night that we needed to evacuate our home. There were neighbors zipping by with their cars as we were packing the rest of our things. After a couple of hours, they lifted the mandatory evacuation in our area and just put us on standby. The winds shifted and I guess and the fires was no longer heading our way. Phew. We returned home and was able to sleep in our own bed last night.

Over 1,000 homes were lost to the fires so far and over 300,000 homes were evacuated. I can't imagine those who are just stranded at Qualcomm stadium waiting for news if their homes are still standing. We are so grateful that the fires didn't come our way.

UCSD is closed through Wednesday so we get some time to relax at home and avoid breathing the soot filled air. I suppose this will be a good time to clean the house :(

Evacuations

We may be evacuated from our home. We're supposedly in the "mandatory evacuation area," but we're still sitting tight until they come into our neighborhood to tell us. There's actually a lot of homes on our street that are packing up their cars and getting out. We've packed up our things and we are ready to go any minute. This is so surreal.

Fires

Almost 4 years ago to the date, we had huge fires in San Diego and now it's happening again. There are 8 fires going on in San Diego and parts of communities such as Rancho Bernardo, Poway, San Marcos, and Penasquitos are being evacuated. Ramona is completely evacuated. Both of our boss' homes have already been evacuated. UCSD is closed again and we are just waiting home for news on evacuations. The sun and the sky is orange from the fires. They advise us to stay home and stay off the freeways.

We arrived home from LA last night and there was a fire up in Malibu and there are high Santa Ana winds blowing. As we were driving down, the poor air quality was visibly seen. We got home and had to clean the ashes off the dresser and carpet since we had our windows open. This is crazy! I can't believe this is happening again. I'm watching the news and homes burning from the fires as we speak. More later.

Genius Work

We were going through Bird Crazy and saw these bird playgrounds sitting outside. They cost anywhere between $100 - $350 and after taking a look at it, hubby attempted to make one for Poipu. It's pretty darn good! You can see her enjoying herself on it so she agrees!

My best birthday flowers from Nicole. They look so cheery and makes me smile when I look at them. Never seen such beautiful flowers! Our birthday and Christmas presents to ourselves this year is our trip to New Zealand in the heart of their summer. We are finalizing all our reservations for car rental/camper van, B&B's and entertainment. Oh how fun! We will also be spending one day in Fiji. 2.5 more months to go! Can't wait . . .