living on love

memorial day weekend.

saturday afternoon we picked up rans sister, cherie, at the airport who flew in for a weekend visit. that day showed her around ob, walked down the pier, explored the gardens at balboa park, watched sunset as we walked along the beach on coronado, had a delicious veggie pizza for dinner, & some great conversation.

that same night my parents flew in for a few days. sunday we all piled in the car & headed downtown where we met up with don's grandson, callen & his girlfriend. don & callen toured the midway while his girlfriend, stephanie, showed the rest of us around seaport village. it was a super cute area with lots of fun shops, music, ponds, crafters, palm readers, & great people watching. we enjoyed some delicious ben & jerrys ice cream, i tried late night snack... yum, then we walked to the gaslamp disctrict for lunch. on our way home we stopped by presidio park for a little walk & view then ran & cherie walked to the cliffs to watch the sunset & i showed my parents around ob.

on monday ran & cherie spent the whole day exploring coronado island while i took advantage of having an extra set of hand at my house & had my mom help me fill some orders. after hearing about how cool coronado was im a little jealous & now i really want to plan an afternoon date out on the island. 

a date to ramona.

so we have really needed new tires for awhile, like for about the past year, but getting new ones never really seemed to be in the budget, so we made do by just exploring places close to home, combining trips, etc. well we finally got new tires & both of us had the itch to just go somewhere... maybe some place where driving on the highway, the use of gps, & maybe a bathroom break would all be required.

who knows why, but we ended up headed to ramona, a super cute place a little less than an hour away from us. the drive was so pretty... i was fascinated with the giant boulders that were all over the hills, now i wanna know how they got there. oh & thats also why i needed to share 3 photos of them.

our first stop on the main street in ramona was a feed store to look at the baby chicks. they were all adorable & chirpy... brought back memories of the when we bought baby chicks to live in ran's mom's chicken coop. next, we stopped at really cool thrift store with so many treasures! awesome scores all around... ran was so pleased with a book he found he had to look through it before we could continue on. after the thrift store we walked acorss the street to an antique store that had the cutest little candy.by.the.piece shoppe with all the old school candies & some little kids even came in while we were there to buy a piece... cutest thing ever.

such a wonderful afternoon... i think we had both kind of forgot how mind clearing a nice drive can be.

 

old town.

old town is a place that everyone has told us to go to, is incredibly close to our house, & is free, but for some reason we just hadnt made it there... until this past week & now we are asking ourselves why we didnt go there sooner. we both loved it! all the little shops, the museums, the buildings... so much fun & we loved learning about the history of san diego. 

 

seaworld.

yesterday we spent the day at seaworld with rans sister & her family. we all had so much fun sitting in the soak zones at the shows, going on different rides, & seeing all the different animals.

after seaworld we roasted hotdogs & marshmallows over a fire on the beach. we had such a great time catching up with laura's family & hanging out with the kids.

padres v dodgers.

last night we went to our first evening game at petco park & it was the best game ive been to yet. the padres hit a home run & fireworks went off , there was a "3 balls, 2 strikes, 2 outs, & bases loaded" situation, fun people were sitting in our section, high fives all around for every score & every stolen base, & we won!

all of that is pretty exciting, but the craziest thing was the fight that broke out a few rows behind us between a dodgers fan & a padres fan. people were yelling, beers were flying, punches were thrown, & the police were called.

log beach

this week the restaurant where ran works had to close down for a few days to make some repairs to their refridgeration unit so he got a few unexpected days off. when he came home from work after being gone only about 30 mins i was so surprised & so excited that i would get to spend the evening with him. we decided to take full advantage of it & headed to the ocean. we went to the "beach" at the end of our street although to get there you either have to a couple blocks down to get the stairs. we call it log beach because there are a bunch of logs there & we are creative like that =) we had such a nice evening hunting for beach treasures, watching the sunset, & getting misted by the crashing waves.

petco park & the zoo.

    

i realized its another weekend & i hadnt caught up on last weekends adventures. aside from visiting the beautiful balboa park on monday, we also went to the padres v braves game on sunday afternoon. this time we parked in a different lot & went in the front of the stadium, instead of the back like last time. this stadium is sooo pretty that as we were walking to our seats i kept getting side tracked by different things & would forget we were there to watch a baseball game.

right after the front gates is a big concrete staircase with fountains on either side. the water falling down the walls sound exactly like a stadium full of cheering fans.

after we went to balboa park on monday we stopped by the zoo. its in the same area & they are open late during the summer with special activites going on. my favorite thing at the zoo is the flamingos, they are right by the entrance, & so we visit them everytime we go to the zoo. this time some of the eggs had hatched & there were cute fluffy wobbly baby flamingos all over the place.

we watched a few of the new just-for-summer acts: trampoline acrobatics & these crazy flexible people with exceptional balance...

we road the gonadola from one end of the park & back again to watch the sunset & then listened to the "house" band play some good summertime music, bob marley & the beach boys, while cute little kids danced around.

what sort of summer aventures have you been up too?

the gardens at balboa park.

our latest summer adventure took us to balboa park. the park has 14 museums, picnic & play areas, 4 performing arts theaters, an outdoor pipe organ, a carousel & miniature train, hiking & biking trails, 19 gardens, & thats just the things i can remember.

this place is absolutely stunning with incredible architechture throughout the park, fountains, & gorgeous landscaping. the atmosphere was so laid back as well, the park is open 24 hours a day, there were kids splashing in the fountains, people selling different things, a lady singing opera, & someone playing a guitar.

we got there late in the afternoon & wandered through 5 of the gardens. as we went through each one we felt like we were transported to a different place. when we were walking through the main area we kind of felt like we were on a coastal area of italy (not that i have been to italy, but i imagine this is what it would be like), when we went to the cactus garden i totally felt like i was in the desert, the palm tree garden felt like a jungle... you get the idea.

if you want to see more pictures from our adventure they are here.

one, two, three strikes, youre out.

we kicked off our summer of adventuring by going to a san diego padres game on sunday afternoon. one of the owners of the bar where ran works has season tickets & wasnt going so he gave them to us. i was a little nervous because we hadnt been to downtown san diego yet & then with the added game traffic, but it was super easy to navigate. we are really excited to go explore it sometime... its really easy to forget that we live so close to the downtown area.

petco park was really really nice. behind the outfield there was a grassy picnic area for families with a small baseball diamonds for the kids to play a game on & there was a "beach" area  complete with lounge chairs.

we had great seats in left field, but when we sat down & i saw this sign i got a little anxious. no worries though, there were no home runs.

we sat next to some fun ladies that were very vocal when they disliked a call. there were many "go back to the minor leagues," "you need glasses," & lots of "boo!" in the end the padres lost to the nationals, but we still had so much fun.

adventures in grilling.

as part of our plan to make a fun little area on our patio we bought a little charcoal grill & despite the overcast grey day we are having, we decided to test it out this afternoon. neither of us really knew what we were doing, i have never grilled anything & it has been years since ran cooked anything on lil' smokey, the grill he used to cook on back in the day.

it went a little something like this:

put a few briquettes in the grill, pour on lighter fluid, & light. watch until the flames go out.

"is that what is supposed to happen? maybe we should read the directions."

"oh we were suppose to stack them in a pyramid."

grab some tongs & re-stack the briquettes in a pyramid shape. pour on some more lighter fluid...

"maybe you shouldnt be so close to the grill when you light it"

"eh, me & lighter fluid go way back"

whoosh... the briquettes light up without adding any fire to them.

"maybe we should just put this burgers on"

"i dont see any smoke coming out anymore. you think this is how it is suppose to work?"

add some more briquettes, then re-apply lighter fluid. repeat application at least two more times.

"this is going to take awhile, eh? im gonna go make some coffees."

"what do they look like now?"

"they are starting to drip a little bit, i think thats a good sign."

"you think we should flip them yet?"

repeat this whole conversation every 4-5 minutes & in between hang out with the pets.

" you think they are done?"

"i dont know, let me cut one open. i dont see any pink."

"lets put some cheese on them & toast the buns. plus it will give them time to cook longer."

then stand obnoxiously close to the grill because that will make them cook faster.

1 hour & 15 minutes later enjoy your delicious burger...