Snow in San Diego County!

It was a strange day for weather on 26 Feb! We had heavy rain, heavy hail and then snow during the night! These pics were taken about 2100 on the 26th:

I took these when I took Piggy on a walk in the morning of the 27th. Looking out at the mountains:

Our snow-covered house!

The front of the house:

The golf course covered in snow!

Piggy 4x4'ing in the snow while wearing her pink leopard-print jacket :P

The back slope:

Space behind our house:

Can't say I was too thrilled with the snow ... as long as this stays a once every 10 years type of deal we'll be okay :)

Valentine's Date 2011

Usually our Valentine's Day consists of pizza and a movie ... but this year I surprised Michael with a trip out (albeit, after Valentine's Day had passed) to pair wine and chocolates!

The class was located down near the border in a sketchy little area - but the hosts were great ... the wine was wonderful ... and the chocolate was DEVINE!!

The Chocolatier's machine (I dubbed thee, the Wonka Factory Chocolate Waterfall):

First we learned about how to pair the wines with different chocolates, and then we tried different percentages of cocoa with different wines (we tried 44%, 74% and 76% ... shockingly, I enjoyed the 44% - milk chocolate - the best) :P

The crystallized ganache ready to be coated with the chocolate waterfall:

Our Swiss Chocolatier showing us how to decorate:

Pairing a Cabernet with a currant truffle (our favorite of the night was a Torrontes white wine with a passion fruit truffle):

Michael enjoying the reds:

I liked the chocolate more :P

After the tastings, we got to decorate truffles to take home!

The chocolates heading through the delicious waterfall:

Yum!!

My mad decorating skills:

The Chocolatier packaging them up for us with a few extra goodies!

What a treat! We loved every minute of it!

Super Bowl 2011

Michael's dad and step-mom came down to watch the Super Bowl with us! Michael tried out his new wing recipe which was fabulous! It was a beautiful day so we hung out on the deck for awhile while the wings were on the bbq :)

Every once in a while a life-flight helicopter will land on the chipping green - that Sunday was one of those days :)

Home Improvements

We loved our tile floors ... but as the foundation settled, the tiles began to crack. Normally we would just replace the cracked tiles, but this tile has been discontinued :( So we decided to put wood floors down!

The before pics:

Our attempt to keep some of the dust off the furniture:

this is the upstairs hallway ... btw - nothing worked, we just spent all day cleaning the house from top to bottom :/

The tile coming up ... the tiles were ON THERE. It took 2 guys 3 days and 2 jackhammers to get all of the tile up!

This was only from day 1 - the dust got about 3 inches thicker!

We were quarantined upstairs while all of the chaos was going on downstairs, so we decided to paint the upstairs bathroom :)

The before:

The after:

Meanwhile ... getting ready to lay the floor:

The crack that was the catalyst for all of this - it went from outside wall to outside wall so the crack eventually would've spanned the entire floor!

The after!! I was TAD while the floor was put down so lucky Michael got to do a lot of the inital cleaning ... but we both worked ALL day to get our house back in order! We LOVE the new floors!

So glad it is done so we can get back to a normal routine!