August 30x30: Days 25-30

Well folks, the August 30x30 challenge is officially over.  I wish I'd gotten photos of every day but it just wasn't possible this go around.  I'm not sure if I'll do this again in the fall or not.  It'll probably depend on how settled we are and what's happening during that time.  So here are my final 6 outfits for this challenge.

Day 25

Day 26

Day 27

(This dress is navy, not black like it looks in this photo)

Day 28

Day 29

Day 30

Be sure to check out what the rest of the awesome challengers wore by clicking the links below!

My version of a perfect day (or 2)

This past week included a couple of nearly perfect days.  After being on the go for so many weeks, it was nice to just relax and enjoy some leisure time together.  On Wednesday we slept in then headed to the beach to relax.  I packed a lunch and we just chilled for a few hours for the first time in weeks.

We ran a few errands, including a stop at a local farmers market, then came home and had homemade french bread pizza 2 ways (Margarita and BBQ chicken) for dinner on our makeshift outdoor patio furniture.

Then we headed back to the beach, this time with Buster.

He's 16 years old and this was the first time his paws ever felt sand.  My grandmother (Buster's original mother) would have enjoyed this moment. She loved the beach more than anyone I have ever known and to see her baby on the beach just would have made her day.

He seemed to enjoy himself for the most part.

He's not a huge fan of the water and there were tons of other dogs around which makes him (and me) very uncomfortable so this was not the best part of the experience for him, I'm certain.

Our first family trip to the beach.

Topped off with what is really the only ice cream I will eat, vanilla soft serve with rainbow sprinkles (and double chocolate for the hubs).

The next morning, Jason wanted to do a test ride to the area where he'll be attending classes this month.

So I sent him off and I went out to do a little shopping.  I found this shelf full of letters and these were the three sitting out front, just like this.

When Jason returned from his recon expedition, we rode our bikes to the local farmers market (2 in 2 days, I know, but I want to check them all out while we have the time so I can decide which ones are worth going to).

This one in Ocean Beach was much better (larger and more selection) than the one we had gone to in Point Loma the day before.

 Jason picked me out a beautiful bouquet of flowers for a most reasonable price.

After some time browsing the market we decided it was finally time to eat some fish tacos.  Right at the end of the farmers market is a restaurant I remembered my friend taking me to when I was out here on vacation a few years ago called South Beach Bar & Grill.  According to the internet, they have some of the best fish tacos in SD.  I don't have anything to compare them to but these definitely set the bar pretty high.

We ordered a plate of 5 different mini tacos and this monster plate of onion rings, a beer and a coke.  It was happy hour and the guy forgot to enter our order the 1st time so he didn't charge us for our drinks, so we ended up paying less than $10 for dinner.  While we ate dinner, we watched the sun set over the ocean out the window and the Cincinnati Reds whoop on the Cardinals on the TV inside.  It was a fantastic evening.

We're looking forward to many, many more days like this here in San Diego.

Settling in

We've been here just over a week now and we're finally starting to feel settled.  Neither one of us are working/going to school/doing much of anything responsible at the moment so we don't have any sort of routine established so we're simply enjoying our time together.

We received our express shipment (unaccompanied baggage) which means we have a lot of clothes, a lot of kitchen stuff and not much else.  Our kitchen here is very different from the one we had in Japan.  It is missing my beloved pantry and has really odd shaped cabinets.  I still haven't figure out how to make the best use of them yet, as you can see (I've never had lazy susan's and as of right now I hate them!  I'm hoping they'll grow on me.).  I'm not trying to complain, I just need to figure out how to make it work for me.

Since we have all these kitchen supplies, we've been making trips all the grocery options in town. We have about 5-6 to choose from with in 10 minutes of our house.  The first time I went to buy chicken and had more than one option I was so overwhelmed it took me 10 minutes to pick something.  There is so much more variety and selection here than we've had in the past 3 4 5 years!  They also have produce here like I've never seen anywhere else.

We thought to pack chairs in our UB but not a table so we've been eating dinner on trash cans (that are brand new and I still cleaned extra thoroughly).

We're slowly finding the perfect place for all of our belongings.  This place is smaller than any we've ever lived for an extended period of time so it's going to be interesting once our HHG arrive.

We did send our bikes with our UB so we've been putting them to good use exploring our neighborhood.

We live close enough to the beach that we can ride our bikes there.  We haven't yet but it'll be happening this week, I'm sure.  We did stop by Ocean Beach one day for a few minutes while we were out running errands.

We checked out a new church.  It was my first time at a "mega church" and it was interesting but it felt kind of like corralling cattle to me and that's not really what we're looking for in a church.  I loved all the outreach opportunities they have though so we'll see.

Everyday here I think "man, what a perfect day today is" then I realize that this is going to be EVERYDAY for the next 3-4 years. I really think we're going to like it here, more than we had hoped.  We live in the perfect neighborhood for us.  Almost everything we could possibly need is a bike ride away, the weather is my idea of perfection, and so far the people have been great to us.  We're looking forward to the next 3-4 years here!

August 30x30: Days 21-24

If you're paying close attention to my posts you might have noticed that days 13-20 never showed up and guess what, they never will.  I was correct to assume that participating in this challenge would make it easy when it came to packing for our move but I totally underestimated how difficult it was going to be to find time to snap a decent photo every day while traveling.  If you look through my ETS road trip post you can kind of see most of the outfits from each day but a full post about them just isn't going to happen.  I kept notes of what I wore each day thinking I would have time to go back and take some photos but I've found more important things to do each day so I haven't and probably won't go back and do that.  However, I didn't give up on the whole challenge.  I might be missing 2 of the days from this weeks update, one of which I didn't even put on real close because we were painting from sun up till sun down, but I've still been participating, even if I have totally sucked at documenting it!  Here is what I do have, and I'm back on track to finish strong with the last few days in August.

Day 21
Now that I'm taking photos inside instead of outside like I did in Japan, a lot of my photos don't show the shoes I wore because we don't wear shoes in our house (yes, we are those people!)  Some days I remembered to put shoes on for the photos and some I didn't.

Day 22
It took some time to find the best place to take the photos so I moved around a bit this week

Day 23
I loved this outfit and I probably would have never worn these items together if it weren't for this challenge!

Day 24
It is incredibly difficult to stand in a way that doesn't make this skirt look silly in photos.  I must have taken 20 shots that day and they all looked funny. Oh well, it's comfy and this one doesn't look bad!

I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the awesome ladies wore all week.  You can check out some of their links below.

New House Sneak Peak

I've been asked multiple times for photos of the new house and eventually I'll have a full post up about our new house but for now here are a few sneak peaks!

There's been a whole lot of painting going on!