Some QT in the OC

It has been a hectic few months with Joep & I splitting our time between SoCal and Ottawa. Alas we still have a few more months to go but I made the executive decision to take a week off after Easter break so that we could be together for more than a couple of days at a time.

It was the best decision ever! After an incredible weekend with Will & Em in San Francisco Joep & I caught our Jet Blue flight to Long Beach (watching the Lakers lose to New Orleans on the way ... glorious!) where we settled in for a week in the sunshine! Well ... I had a week in the sunshine. Joep went to work every day mmmmmmwahahahahaha!

Sadly I was also working for a few days to meet an unexpected project deadline but it is not so terrible to work when your sitting on a deck over looking the ocean on a glorious summers day!

The week was absolutely lovely and gave us a bit of a taste of the life we will have in the second half of this year. We even made some evening trips to the surrounding suburbs to go shopping and watch movies. All in all a very lovely working week.

The royal wedding on Friday kept me glued to the television (loved it) and to kick off the weekend we enjoyed the usual evening bbq on the deck with some wine. Whilst enjoying a beer and lamenting the fact that we were missing Queens Day in Amsterdam we spotted a mum and baby whale swimming close to the shore ... it was incredible! It is hard to believe that we are lucky enough to live in a place as amazing as this! As if that wasn't enough, we also decided to do a day trip on Saturday and so, after a great night of sleep, off we headed to the San Diego zoo!

This is one serious zoo. The weather was amazing so we spent a good 5 hours walking around non-stop visiting all the animals. We debated over favourites and I am quite clear that my favourite animals of the day were the capybaras. Joep loved the leopard ... we were the only ones at the enclosure for a little while and after spotting us (no pun intended), the leopard got up, walked to the front of the enclosure, stared at us for a while and then walked off again when more people arrived. Joep was mesmerized!

It was such an amazing day and so nice to be warm again. The zoo is phenomenal and I can see us making many more trips there in the coming months!

After the zoo we headed out to dinner at Zoolu which was recommended to us by a few people and is apparently the best restaurant in Laguna Beach. It was less than average and we deeply regretted not going to one of our usual spots for dinner. But still, we tried it. At least we won't die wondering. Feeling contentedly full we walked home for a night of movies and chill out time (we are certainly mastering the art of chilling out!) before Sunday morning when it was time for me to go home. Boo.

Randomly, when we got to LAX on Sunday afternoon there was heaps of security around the airport and they were doing random checks of cars before you even enter into the airport car park. Joep & I were bewildered ... until we heard the news of Osama. The celebrations in America have been pretty insane and its been interesting to hear so many seemingly compassionate and empathetic people celebrating the death of another human being and displaying gruesome pictures on their facebook pages. Joep & I have talked about it at length and thankfully are of the same mind about it. Its the same frame of mind that most of our friends are in as well and its pretty well summed up by the Martin Luther King Jr. quote that many have posted on their social networks - ‎"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

Still this is not meant to be a political forum ... the message to come out of this blog is that Joep & I had a great week together in SoCal and as time goes by we are getting exponentially more excited about the move that is coming up!

Now we just need to get organized for it ...