We spent another New Years at Mammoth Lakes. Man, I can't get enough of this place. It might very possibly be the most beautiful location on earth. This year, three of us went, Jeff our friend Denise and myself.
For Christmas, Jeff bought me a pair of snowshoes. I've wanted them for years and rented some last year when we were up at Mammoth. Now I own a pair which means if I want to I can really do Mammoth on the cheap. I can hike all day and not have to rent any equipment at all. The first day I snowshoed up to Panorama Dome and up Lake Mary Rd venturing off the trail whenever I could. That is the point of snowshoeing anyway... to get off the beaten track.
The second day I cross-country skied at Tamarack. This is my third year and 5th time out. I was feeling pretty confident from the get-go and decided I was going to try more advanced trails. I definitely pushed myself harder than every before and because of that my failures were proportionally larger. I took a pretty good spill coming off a trail into an intersection. I haven't really figured out how to turn yet and lost my balance exploding into a ball of snow and gear. It must have looked spectacular as 6 people came to my aid. I was physically fine though I lost my nerve and called it a day after that.
As usual Jeff skied and Denise snow-boarded at the main mountain. They explored away from their usual trails too and made it to the back of the mountain avoiding the New Years crowds. Jeff said he fell a few times too, most notably when he skied down one of his favorite trails from last year which had been groomed differently to include moguls this year. The second day they made it to the top and skied/boarded the ridge. They reached the top which is over 11,000 feet in elevation. We all met up at the Village for drinks and limped/crawled back to the lodge together for dinner and drinks at the Tamarack living room.
Ok, I'm going to wrap this up. My writing is God-awful boring tonight so lets get to the photos, which are really the most interesting thing about this blog. We didn't get any people photos this year... just scenery.
Halloween was amazing this year. We had easily 80 - 100 kids and had to close shop after our 8 bags of candy ran out. We knew it would be the best year ever because it seems every house on the block has kids. They were arriving in droves, 10 - 20 at a time. The one thing I noticed is a lot of the older kids didn't bother dressing up at all. Kind of sad if you ask me. Too cool for school I guess.
Still, the older ones seemed to appreciate all the work we did this year. We put up lots of spider webs, added an outdoor fog machine and I even mixed my own series of spooky music. Not the cheesy Monster Mash stuff but actually REALLY scary sounds including moaning, creepy birds, demons speaking backwards, wolves, and sounds from movie clips. Some of the kids were too afraid to even approach the house alone. Jeff watched from the window and just laughed at them. ... which probably scared them more.
Jeff didn't dress up this year but played photographer for me. I dressed up as a ghost. As most of my friends know, I am avidly against slutty costumes. I don't understand them and think most girls just look at Halloween as an excuse to dress like a whore because they can get away with it, forgetting that the point of Halloween is to be scary. Scary Halloween costumes are meant to scare away the evil spirits and personlly I like to hold true to the tradition. Forget slutty nurse, slutty gypsy, slutty cop, slutty beer wench or whatever. Halloween is about spooky costumes I stuck to my guns again this year. Here are some photos from my ghost costume.
Sure it's traditional but whatever... I'm a purist.
Here are some new progress photos of the house. We are still working on unpacking and haven't quite gotten to art yet so the walls are pretty empty but you can see how the house is progressing. Hopefully we can start remodeling the bathrooms after the new year and the kitchen some time at the end of next year.
Pretty Evening Sky
Rainbow after the Rain
Progress of our Livingroom
Getting Around to putting up Pictures in our Bedroom
The Guest Bath for now. We will remodel it next year.
Another shot of the Livingroom. Man, we need art.
Jeff replaced the front screen door and outdoor lighting.
The main hallway (er.... only hallway).
Another shot of the backyard.
Our street looking West.
Our street looking East.
The Front of the house at the garage. We are working on the grass.
The front walkway. We took out the bushes on the left to plant a cactus garden.
We put in a new refrigerator and dishwasher. The table is our staging area... hence the mess.
Just wanted to share this quickly. Before we moved from the UTC apartment we gave the cats a flea bath. They picked up fleas, we think, at the vet. We wanted them dipped before they arrived at their new home. I have to say, bathing a cat is both sad and hilarious at the same time. I snapped this photo of Smokey after the torture subsided. I think this photo is a good representation of just how pissed she was.
As many of you know, Jeff and I have been out house hunting over the last several weeks. We are looking in San Marcos, California a suburb north of San Diego. It is one of the more desirable cities outside of San Diego yet it is inland enough to keep the prices affordable. A few miles west and we'd be in coastal Carlsbad where single family homes are still a bit out of our reach.
A couple of weeks ago we found a great place in our favorite San Marcos neighborhood, Santa Fe Hills. It was a single family home with two bedrooms and two baths and backed onto a park. The price was great but it needed a bit of work. Several windows were broken and it needed all new flooring. We were up to the challenge and found it to be perfect for us. We put in our bid only to learn we were the first... a good sign. Typically you get a response to your offer within 24 - 72 hours. The fact that it was owner occupied and not a short-sale or foreclosure meant we should have our answer in less than a day. Three agonizing days later we get word;
"another offer has come in and it is considerably better than yours, would you like to up your offer;"
says the seller's agent. We discussed it and decided our offer was not based on whether or not there were other offers but what we felt was appropriate for the property. Another several hours pass;
"are you sure you don't want to up your offer, this other one is considerably more."
Jeff and I discussed and again we determined that the house was not worth considerably more. If this other bidder wanted to pay a lot more then the seller should go with them because we were not about to overpay for this property... we were willing to walk away.
And walk away we did. Or more exactly, we were turned away because as expected the seller went with other offer. We shed naught a tear as the next day there were four gorgeous properties on the market, all 3 and 4 bed, 2+ baths for roughly the same asking price as the 2 bed we had placed an offer on. The Big Guy upstairs was smiling on us it seemed. That Friday we had a list of single family properties we wanted to see and an appointment with our Realtor, Cindy. Moments before we left the house Jeff went online and noted yet another new single family home on the market, and this one was just a few houses down from the place we had bid on less than one week before. (Again, our favorite Santa Fe Hills neighborhood.)
We met Cindy at the first place on our list and she was already on the phone arranging a showing of the place in Santa Fe Hills. (She's good... real good) We saw a couple good prospects and I was beginning to worry that we may have a hard time choosing just one house to buy. Then off to the Santa Fe Hills place. Jeff was nearly giddy when he saw it. It had all the potential of the last place (sans broken windows) plus an extra bedroom and a much larger lot. It also backs up on open land. Unlike most of the properties we had seen, it had already been foreclosed on and was bank owned which meant we wouldn't have to suffer through a six month waiting period to find out if the house was ours. Jeff and I decided on the spot... just two hours after the house went on the market, that we would put in another offer.
Fast forward a full week... Friday, Jeff and I were all but climbing the walls in anticipation. Every conversation ended with... "so what do you think is going to happen?" and "how many bids do you think have been submitted?" or "when do you think we'll hear back?" It was tough but then the call came. The bank countered our offer but also received a new offer just that morning. We heard them out and it seemed fair. We really didn't want to give them the chance to review the new offer either... so we accepted. Unfortunately it was a verbal counter-offer and a verbal acceptance. Nothing would be official until they signed the counter and we accepted in writing. ARG! With this being Friday afternoon and the home being bank-owned we feared having to suffer another full weekend in ambiguity.
Last night we met our friends Denise from my office and Eric from Jeff's office for wine but even as we toasted to no more car payments (Congrats Jeff and Denise) we were cautious not to preemptively toast to our accepted offer. We are not superstitious people but better safe than sorry.
This morning Jeff and I were putting the house out of our minds only occasionally asking "What do you think is going to happen?" out of habit more than anything and decided to get out of the house to do a little shopping. We were at REI when we got an unexpected call from Cindy; "your offer had been officially accepted!" Boo Ya!! We weren't even expecting a call today. Straight away we embraced our excitement by wandering through International Bath & Tile and the Sears Outlet store checking out prices for refrigerators and washer/dryers. Funny how all that built up anticipation finally presents itself. Nothing says celebrate like discount appliances.
Now we get our financing in order and schedule our inspection. I know in the backs of both our minds there is a pull to stay conservative and don't get too excited. We watch enough HGTV to know these things fall through all the time. So today we let out a lower-case wooo. We'll save the big WOOOO!!! for closing day, when we've got the keys in our hand.
We had another great Independence Day at Fred and Debbie's in Carlsbad. You just can't beat their set-up. Their backyard is on the cliff overlooking the lagoon. You can see the Carlsbad and Lego Land fireworks and the La Costa Country Club fireworks, which are in the valley just below. It's the best view in San Diego County in my opinion.
They had a blow-up jumpy house thingy for the kids and giant movie screen set up so all the little ones could watch a kid's flick in the back yard snuggled under the sky. The spread for the grown-ups was pretty awesome too, with fix'em yourself burritos and margaritas. Yum! Celebrating America's independence San Diego style.
Those guys sure know how to do up the 4th of July.
Mike, Danielle, Christie and Jeff at the Whaley House, Old Town.
A week ago Mike and Danielle came to visit from Massachusetts. It was their first trip to San Diego and we were psyched to have them. They're so super laid back, which we are too so we had just a couple of things planned and played the rest of the weekend by ear. Unfortunately they arrived during the peak of May Gray/June Gloom, San Diego's crappy season. It's not so much that it rains a lot, it is just not 100% warm and sunny every minute of the day, like the rest of the year. So of course they get here and it's only about 68 degrees with drizzle, which would last most of the weekend.
Danielle Surfing
On Friday Mike and Danielle wanted the quintessential So Cal experience so they signed up for surfing lessons in Mission Beach. I hung around and took some photos and video. I have to say, for their first time they both did a great job. Both of them were standing on their boards in no-time. I think maybe they should reconsider their day-jobs and and move to San Diego to become beach bums.
Mike's First Surf Lesson
Christie and Mike show some love to the Giant Sloth
The next day we spent at the world famous San Diego Zoo. Jeff and I are members there and love to visit so when Danielle and Mike said they wanted to go, of course, we were up for it. We made a day of it and saw nearly the whole thing. One positive aspect of the cool overcast weather is that the animals at the zoo are more active. We saw of lot of neat species this time including the koalas, giant pandas, hippos, hyenas and best of all, the brand new Elephant Odyssey exhibit that had its grand opening just the week before. This was the highlight of the zoo visit for me. They have a simulated tar pit exhibit that is a must see. I didn't know that we have one of the largest tar pits in the world, just outside L.A. I guess this is pretty common knowledge around here but I had never heard of it. I can't wait to go some weekend to see the La Brea Tar Pits. Thanks SDZ for the cool (or should I say hot) exhibit.
Mike and Danielle goofin' off at the Zoo
Mike and Danielle at the San Diego Zoo's new Elephant Enclosure
Our last night in town we walked around Old Town San Diego and went out for dinner at the Cafe Coyote for some authentic Mexican food and Margaritas. Se snapped this photo in front of this hot sauce store because we liked the sign "hot licks". Yummy! We also stopped at the Whaley House and the old El Campo Santo Cemetery but didn't see any ghosts. Aw well, maybe next time.
Jeff, Mike & Christie at Hot Licks, hot sauce shop in Old Town
We loved having Mike and Danielle visit us here in So Cal and hope they come back again soon. We barely scratched the surface of all the things there are to do here so hopefully when they come back the weather will be a little nicer and we can get around to see more of what San Diego has to offer.
Hi Friends! We're into our second year in sunny southern California. We've had lots of visitors and exciting news so check back often. Luv, Jeff & Christie
