Well, we are loving life in California. This morning we got up early and enjoyed surfing with some couples from church. It was quite the experience, as I have never been surfing before. Loved it! So fun to be back in the ocean again. It brought back sweet memories of Rimshaw family vacations at the Outer Banks. Ahhh, that feeling of exhaustion from being in the sun and swimming in the ocean :)  The water was lovely; we wore wet suits, and at first the water was cold, but its warming up. Water temp is 65 degrees now! I warmed up quickly (seeing that I spent that 1 hour being trampled by the waves and exerting more energy than I have in over a year.) Darren was kind and said things like, "It actually is really tiring. No wonder you're worn out." I smiled and thought, Darren, honey, lets be honest, at least people weren't asking if YOU were ok out there...

and to clarify: I use the term surfing loosely. Darren got up and looked pretty good. We'll just say that I'm not quite to the point of looking like those surfer dudes in the competitions. I did ride some sweet waves :) but am still working on catching the wave AND standing up on the board. It requires a lot of strength (strength I don't quite have.) But we're excited to go surfing more. We want to get better, and its fun that we LIVE here and can go often :)

Darren is actually going surfing again with some guys after church tomorrow while I go to a baby shower for 2 different ladies in our community group. 

Day to day life is fun out here. One of my favorite things is our time in the mornings to have breakfast, drink coffee and talk before Darren goes to work.  Fresh produce is cheap out here, so we eat lots of fruit for breakfast (and sometimes eggs from the neighbors chickens :) 

Chris Melander came and visited us last weekend! All the way from Baltimore :) We got to introduce him to California beaches, downtown San Diego, the i5, and our favorite sushi spot and coffee shops. 

Life has been fun and sweet. Darren and I are doing well, and enjoying each other and everything new out here. The transition hasn't been difficult yet like I thought it would be. (The only difficult thing so far is the fact that, how do I say this...the UV rays are SO much stronger here than in Knoxville. Being ingenious like I am, I decided to go for a walk on the beach last week. The sun feels so warm in the fresh, breezy air out here, so I put on my bikini and wet for a lil' stroll in the sand. Lets just say that there are parts of my body that haven't seen the light for years now...and that they now know how hot the sun is here. That gave sleeping and hot showers a different spin for about a week, and I learned that even though the weather is gorgeous and you don't sweat out here, that doesn't  mean you aren't getting large doeses of our ultraviolet friends. 

So that's our latest! We are loving life, lovin' each other, and praying that we learn to love God and love other people more while we are here in this new city.