Our first trip to San Diego

   You have to love going on an all expenses paid vacation! Although we really didn't do many tourist things since we were house shopping and Dave still had to work.... We had looked a MANY houses online before leaving but it is amazing how much you can't tell from photos ie: the neighborhood. Love google earth- kind of scary how much you can see! We looked at 14 houses in 2 days so saw many different areas. After visiting the San Diego JCI office Dave announced that he couldn't see any good reason to drive there very often! Currently Dave works from home most days (as in only going to the office once every 3 weeks!) and plans to continue to the same in CA. Thus we have expanded our potential house pool by a lot! It seems like we will be looking at houses well north of the actual city so Dave can also drive to the LA office at times. It is sad to see how many houses are short sale or bank owned... And yes housing is more expensive in CA but the main difference is that your yard will be smaller and no basement. We are fine with that since we just want a nice outdoor patio area and enough guest rooms for all of you who have promised to visit us:)

  The best part of the trip was that we met several of the friends and were warmly welcomed! We are looking forward to making new friends and know that CA will become home. Of course WI will also always be our other "home".

Along the coast in LA Jolla

                                                   Harbor seals at Children's pool

                         

                                             Dave can't wait to golf here at Torrey Pines

                                          Dave did mention that we could just live on a boat....

                                          The pool at our temporary housing :)

  The weather is awesome and sunny! Not too hot and not too cold and no snow and bitter cold wind chill. The flowers bloom year round and there is an ocean! This is my kind of place!

How did this begin?

  This blog is for all my friends ( especially one named Cathy) who want to know what is happening in our life! Today finds me looking back and wondering what all led to this huge change in our life...
  Having a job is kind of a big deal especially in today's ecomomy. At least one person in the family should be employed. I had to clarify that since next Tuesday is my last day at my work.  For the past 1 1/2 years there has been talk of reorganizing the Solar Renewable Energy team. Since we knew that a job transfer was a strong possibility we decided to be proactive and put our home on the market in March. Much to our surprise we received an offer quickly and moved out the third week in May. We figured we would rent and if we did't get transferred then we would find another home to buy here. We always said we wouldn't move until the boys were through with school. Tristan graduated in May from Iowa State so we were all set!  We found a nice rental 4 miles from where we were living and settled in to see what would happen. We have been living in limbo ever since. Finally mid September Dave was told that they wanted him to move to San Diego! In the usual HR fashion nothing happened quickly but we finally went out to look around the first part of Dec. To be continued....