After our Vegas breakdown experience, we needed a bit of a break from all the excitement. We went back to our relaxed Cali life.

Last Saturday, my amazing new job paid for me to go take photos at the Ramona Junior Fair.

Afterwards, they paid for my ticket to the Sip of Julian (including paying me for driving up there and participate in the Sip). This exciting event included a tour around Julian’s many tasting rooms where I sampled wine, beer, mead, and cider — all while taking photos. Andy got off work early and joined me for a wonderful day in beautiful Julian!

On Monday, we went down to Mission Bay for a day of snorkeling. Though the sightings were not as good as before, we did see a couple of octopuses and a lot of cool fish. It was a good day! Downside…I somehow broke my underwater camera so I will have to get another one of those for sure with all the snorkeling we are doing.

All of the animals are happy to be home and getting back to a less stressful life.

We had a surprise visit from Andy’s uncle Charlie, who we stayed with while in Arizona — you know, when our furnace was about to go out. He called us up on Wednesday and said he was 100 miles away so we made plans for a beach day on Thursday.

Uncle Charlie’s wife Michelle is having a family get-together in San Diego so we had a nice big group on the beach!

We had a fun day hanging out on the beach and it only resulted in one wicked sunburn (on me, even though I was using 45 and 70 spf and reapplying!)

We are excited to have family in town and look forward to seeing them over the weekend before they head back to Arizona!

The weather here has been less terrible, below 100° and not super humid. We hope this holds so we can start exploring some more hiking trails!

Loving life in Southern California!