Southern California Fires

Okay, I just wanted to thank all of you for your concerns. We have had a lot of our family and friends from Utah calling and emailing to see how we are. Luckily, we are pretty much out of the fires way--besides ash in the air.
Yesterday I went out to our courtyard area on the side of our house. Because it's enclosed, it's usually a great place for the twins to roam and play--NOT TODAY! Everything was covered in ash from all the surrounding fires.

Kids weren't allowed out of the school until a parent picked them up and believe it or not, soccer practices were even cancelled (that's huge here)!
It's kinda weird. Our sky here is still blue, but there is a circle of smoke around us. We have fires on all side of us and even a few miles down the road looks like the middle of an ash storm! If you look at the pics of our area from my previous post and compare it to this one, you can see how awful the air is right now.

My sis Annie lives in San Diego and was evacuated from her house. She's staying with us for now...I guess there's one good thing that came from this :)

Girls Weekend

Some of my friends from Utah (Tiffany, Kristin, Teresa & Lisa) decided to fly down for a "girls' weekend." We didn't really have much planned, we just figured we'd hang out and do a little exploring...
They flew in Friday morning so we figured we'd take advantage of the day and go to Newport Beach. We got to the beach and it was windy and cold--not exactly what they came down for! We wanted to go surfing, but decided due to the inclement weather to go shopping at the cute boutiques near the beach and get lunch at a quaint sandwich shop LSD (inside joke--don't you hate those! Long story, if you want to know, I'll tell ya).
After luch, we decided it would be fun to drive to Hollywood and see the stars on the sidewalk. As we were walking down the street, we noticed a line for the Jimmy Kimmel show. We decided to wait and hope to get in. We were still in our swimming suits so we ran across the street to Gap and American Eagle. In 20 minutes we were looking pretty good! But we ended up getting turned away.
This is where the fun began! We were asked if we wanted to be on a segment of the Jimmy Kimmel show. Originally we said no, but then we found out we might "possibly" be able to meet someone from the band MATCHBOX TWENTY! We were SO in!
Somehow, I was the one that got interviewed on the segment "guess the toppings." Long story short--when they were filming, they showed me a pic of Brittney Spears' backside to get my reaction, and I said to the guy interviewing me, "That's totally porn dude." Everyone laughed, but I got edited out from the show! But that's okay, because I was standing right next to not one but THE ENTIRE MATCHBOX TWENTY BAND!

I actually chatted a little with them and Rob Thomas asked if we were coming to their concert. When I told him we were turned away earlier when we had tried to get tickets, he turned to his "people" and told them to get us in the concert!
This is Rob "getting us in." We got to walk through the back way and even got yelled at by a security guard after they left because she thought we snuck in! She seemed put out when she found out HOW we got in (she continued to keep an eye on us the rest of the night). In the second song, Rob Thomas looked over at us and gave us the "okay" sign.
HELLOOO-heartbreaker!

Saturday, we drove to Pacific Coast (San Diego near the Mexico boarder) and went SKYDIVING! This was Tiff's idea, but we followed her along like lost little puppies! Can you say AWESOME!! Well, that's all we could say--"That was so AWESOME!" was repeated at least 400 times that day! It was so amazing and something I will be doing again!!!

(FYI: there have only been 18 tandem jump deaths WORLDWIDE in the last 28 YEARS! Chances of dying in a car crash are probably thousands of x's greater--so next time you get into your car, think twice; it may be safer if you skydive to your destination. :)

Okay, so after that we drove to Pacific Beach and went SURFING! The waves were pretty big and lot's of them, but I think we all managed to get up atleast a few times. I think I even saw Kristin attempt to get up on her BOOGIE BOARD -ha, sucker! Told you to get a SURFBOARD! Luckily, she was able to trade for one when she realized the limitations of the boogie board :)

We must have worked up quite an apetite, because we all managed to eat $50.00 worth of food at Joe's Crab Shack (each). We literally had people in the restaurant staring at us. Lisa even said to one of the people staring "We haven't eaten in days OKAY!" It had actually only been a few hours :)

Our last day, we drove to Beverly Hills and Brentwood to look at all the stars' homes - can you even call them homes? - MONSTROSITIES! We got "caught" by Johnny Depp's guard (we just wanted a picture). He called us BOLD and DEMENTED (okay fine, he called ME demented-WHAT?). I think he was just lonely and wanted friends :)On our way to the airport, we got a flat tire. I called for a tow truck, but Tiff insisted that we could fix it on our own (I told the guy I'd call him back in 5 minutes). BUT, believe it or not we had the tire changed in 10 MINUTES! Is there anything we CAN'T do???

Good times, good times!
Until next time...

LIFE IN CALIFORNIA

We are finally settled here in California and lovin'it! We have been exploring California and getting to know the area. We have been to 5 beaches (we live 6 miles from the ocean) and we've even been to San Diego for the weekend. We especially like going to the beach for family night and roasting hot dogs and marshmallows.

We live about 20 minutes from Disneyland, but we haven't been yet. We're planning on going next week. More on that later...

The kids are loving our neighborhood! We live one block from a water park, skate park, pool, tennis courts, rock climbing wall, park, Mylee's elementary and Brooks' preschool. All are part of the community we live in. We pretty much walk everywhere we go!

We have tons of great shopping, spas, restaurants, a farmers market and a maggie moos (we visit it at least once a day!) in our local mercantile. We also have great neighbors. There are at least 5 families in our ward that live on the same block as us and TONS of kids.

We are really enjoying the life here, but missing all of you :(
Hope this gets you excited to come visit :)