Cassidy Ellen Wells

Luke and Valerie had their baby today at 11:52 a.m. She was 8 pounds 3 ounces and 19 and 1/2 inches long. That brings our count up to 2 nieces and 1 nephew. Sean's parents are first time grandparents (which, of course means she will be completely spoiled!) She is really cute. We are excited to see her when we go home for Christmas! Congratulations Luke and Val!! 

Sandcastles

Today, I took Sean on a date. I didn't tell him where we were going. I packed some things to use to build sandcastles (the sand toys at the store were too expensive, so we used dishes!) I put everything into a brown paper bag so he wouldn't know. We went to the beach and I dumped it out and told him to imagine it as shovels and castle molds (instead of spatulas, plastic cups and mixing bowls) He laughed at me! It was really fun... our castles were falling apart all over the place and didn't look like much, but the company was good and it was fun trying to build them anyway. We love being so close to the beach!! 

trying to smile without getting sand blown into my eyes!

making shapes in the sand was easier then building castles

It was windy on the beach today!

Caution: falling branches!

On Sunday afternoon, while Sean was out home teaching, our neighbor knocked on the door. I answered it... He asked if I knew who owned the black saturn that was parked below. I said that it was ours. Then he says nonchalantly "um a tree just fell on your car." So I walk down to see how bad it was.... he overreacted a little bit, it wasn't a tree, it was just a branch and didn't land on the car it just scratched the side as it fell. The apartment management came to take pictures and tell me that they had insurance. They were kinda over doing things with all the pictures and questions! (they must have been scared to get sued over it.) And the car? Well it just has small marks in the paint that could probably be buffed out.... we are however going to take the money that their insurance will pay for the damage. Oh, and a side note: the tree next to it had a branch fall down too just 2 days later! (this time no cars were involved.) Crazy huh?

Bikes!

That's right, we bought bikes... used bikes, of course. The price of gas is completely INSANE here right now (just like everywhere else in the country) And, since we aren't millionaires, and don't have loads of money to spend on gas, we decided that bikes would probably be a good investment. Sean got his bike about 2 months ago and Melissa got hers like a month ago. We ride them a lot. We ride to the library, to the store, to the Chinese restaurant (only once), on the bike path, to the park, to the beach... lots of places. Sean also rides to work (most days). He rides to a ferry landing about 5 miles away and rides the ferry (for free!) across to Coronado Island. It's been pretty fun having them to get around on.

Sunset Cliffs

Here are some pictures of one of our favorite places in San Diego. The place is called Sunset Cliffs, there is about a mile long ridge of cliffs over looking the ocean. It's close to our house and we go there a lot to watch the sunset. These pictures are from a time we went a few weeks ago. It was kinda cloudy that day, so the sunset isn't as colorful as usual... but still pretty. 

Indoor Fire

Yesterday we planned to have a fire on the beach with the Raadgeps. We had everything loaded in our cars and we were all excited to roast hot dogs and marshmallows... We drove to 2 beaches and the bay to try and find an open fire pit (you wouldn't believe how many people have that same idea on 4th of July weekend!) After driving around for awhile and walking the beaches to look for a pit that wasn't already being used... We all decided that pan roasted hot dogs and electric burner s'mores sounded just as good, because by that time it was 9 pm and we were really hungry! We always have fun with Sam and Mike even if our plans don't always work exactly how we plan! Here are some pictures of our night...

Mike, Sean and Samantha eating s'mores

Happy America!

We went to the pier in Ocean Beach to watch the fireworks tonight. There was supposedly going to be 50 thousand people on the on beach in that area to watch... and I think every single one of them was there! It was crazy how many people there were!! The show was great (we didn't get very good pictures because we left the better camera at home!) When the finale ended everybody brought out bags of marshmallows and started throwing them at everyone everywhere! We didn't know about this little tradition so we were caught off guard in the middle of a crazy full blown war... it was insane and really funny! There were like 20 at a time coming at us constantly, and those things kinda hurt when they fly at you fast! These Californians are weird :)

HAPPY 4th OF JULY EVERYONE!!   

Oh Leaves

Yesterday, Sean went down stairs to work on his bike... a few minutes later he asked me to throw down one of our melted spatulas. I went down to see how he was going to use that to reposition the brakes on his bike. This is what I found...

Leaves are always falling on our balcony from the tree above it. We are constantly having to sweep them up in to piles and put them in bags to get them off because the balcony is completely closed in, or so we thought... Sean found an opening along the bottom of the balcony but it was packed full of leaves and other junk and since we don't have neighbors below us right now he figured it was a good time to clean it out. 

This is all the junk that came out of there. Hopefully they aren't planning on putting these blinds back into the apartment when they are done upgrading it. Sean's arm was really dirty after he was done!