Update from Tiana about the Fires in San Diego
Hello family and friends!
Well, I imagine most of you have heard by now that San Diego is experiencing another firestorm, only this time, its kinda worse. “The four major fires ripping across San Diego County have burned nearly 300,000 acres and destroyed or damaged 1,250 homes and 100 businesses since Sunday. More than 500,000 people have been told to evacuate…” but I wanted to let you know that Eric and I are not included in that evacuation request. We are safe although we’re keeping a close eye on what’s going on by going online every couple hours. If you zoom in a few notches on this fire map, http://www.signonsandiego.com/firemap/, we are pretty much closest to “North Park” or where the 8 and 15 collide, so that gives you an idea.
Both Eric and I have coworkers who have been effected – half of my coworkers have people staying with them…my boss alone has 11 of her family members evacuated into her home! There are thousands of people here in SD to keep in your prayers…
Point Loma Nazarene University, where Eric works and also attends a Master’s program, has closed down classes and most business offices for the week. My Catholic Charities office is actually only 4 blocks or so from a Witch fire evacuation area (in Mira Mesa/Miramar) but we’ve been told to go into work both yesterday and today (go figure! 
The air quality is poor and gives us headaches so we stay indoors with the AC on. My agency, Catholic Charities, plans to coordinate with the Salvation Army and Red Cross to provide assistance. They have prepared for many of us in the days/weeks to come, to volunteer as case managers for those who have been displaced and are applying for FEMA money.
Fortunately, San Diego seems to be doing and incredible job of responding to the disaster…at this point, there are tons of volunteers (probably partly because so many are not able to go in to work and want to donate their extra time), more food and donations than can be accepted, and lots of entertainment at the evacuation sites to keep everyone preoccupied.
If you would like more local SD information you can go here – they’re always updating the front page http://www.signonsandiego.com/
So, that is a brief update in case you had wondered. I received a call from my mom tonight saying people are wondering how Eric and I are doing out here in San Diego so I didn’t want anyone worrying. Thanks so much for thinking of us, really. Please pray for the many many people who are suffering and are tortured with the unknowns… for the firefighters who are feeling fatigued and have not slept since Sunday…
I hope this email finds all of YOU well. I miss you lots and hope to see you soon. I know the timing is bad for this one but seriously, if you’re ever in San Diego, let us know!! We’d love to see you!!
peace and love,
tiana
(and Eric…who also greets you hello and says, “we’re ok”
Wedding Ceremony Pictures!
We have over 2,000 wedding pictures to go through, and last night we whittled down 500+ pictures of our wedding ceremony to bring you the following 247 pictures (if you don’t want to clickity-click-click, here is a link to a slideshow of these pics). Thank you all so much to those who helped out and were in our wedding; we are forever thankful and indebted to you. And many, many thanks to our photographers Naomi and Sam for delivering such sweet shots 
More pictures are on the way! We still have to sort through another 1,500 or so of the reception, wedding party, prep., pics of us, etc.
Also, if you were at our wedding and took pictures, it would be really cool if you could add your pictures taken
to this Flickr group. If you’re not already a member of Flickr, you should really take the time to sign up and learn how to use this great online picture-hosting service! The idea for this Flickr group is that we will soon have a large pool of all sorts of pictures taken from various people. Sharing is good!
Honeymoon and wedding pictures!
Yay, we’re back from our honeymoon. Actually, we’ve been back since the 29th of May, but Tiana and I have been extremely busy with not only our everyday activities, but in unpacking all of our gifts (thank you for all the gifts, by the way! thank-you cards are on their way!) and in unpacking all of our belongings. We’re about two-thirds done, I would say, so wonderful progress has been made. Many thanks to Leigh Nottingham, Jenn Tracy, and Kelly Tirrill for helping out yesterday!
So first, I will post a link to our honeymoon pictures which were taken in Banff, Alberta, Canada as well as Calgary and Edmonton:
While we haven’t received our official wedding photos back yet from the photographers, my ol’ roommate Dave-O had somebody take pictures with his camera of the rehearsal dinner, ceremony, and reception, which can be found … here!
Dave-O’s pictures of our wedding
As soon as we receive our official wedding photos, we’ll let you know by posting a link to them here! Take care, all.
Peace,
Eric
Wedding flower growth!
Wow, I can’t believe it’s been a whole month since I last posted here. Well, I wanted to finally post pictures of the progress of our wedding flowers. It’s been really rainy and cold, so the plants haven’t been growing as fast as I would have liked, but that kind of stuff is beyond our control, and that’s okay. I think from here on out it is supposed to be pretty warm, so that is good!
These are from yesterday (click to enlarge):
Sweet Peas in hanging pots
More Sweet Peas (middle) and Desert Bluebells on the right.
The full scene of growing flowers.
Yet more Sweet Peas out in the garden!
Planters.
Lots of pots too.
Another view.
Bulbs coming up.
Full picture set so far. I’ve been spending a considerable amount of time transplanting the seedlings, so I hope now that they’re mostly transplanted, they’ll grow bigger and quicker with more room to spread their roots.
The rains
Over the course of the last couple weeks, San Diego has been getting rain. Thank God. However, growing little seedlings is difficult when they get flooded. A couple of our seedling trays are covered with a transparent plastic for protection/warmth, but some of our other seedlings are not, so we have been having to move the trays of seedlings indoors when the elements demand it.
Also, having stray/resident cats around that walk on the trays doesn’t help when the seedlings are delicate. I’m a bit worried about the Baby’s Breath, which have been sprouting rather vigorously, but have met the weight of some cat paws. I’m in the process of transplanting those now because I also want to give their roots more space to grow; their little seedling trays can no longer hold them. I was also thinning some of them out, but this site says that they grow best crowded.
Most of the Cupid’s Darts are ready to transplant as well, which is very exciting. The Flax is still growing, but they are very delicate.
I’ve planted a bunch of bulbs as well, but some of the unplanted ones have gone missing, so I will have to buy some more! How does one lose bulbs?!
Pictures to come soon.
Invitations are out
Invitations went out at the beginning of the week. The website is done. Our flowers are growing (pics to come later). Honeymoon hotel resort is booked as well as the roundtrip plane tickets there. We’re currently looking for an apartment/house to rent. Things are moving along well. We love you all.
Wedding website launched!
The blog you are now looking at is integrated into the just-finished Wedding Website for Tiana Lin Reinhardt and Eric Austin Lee!
Enjoy: check it out, and feel free to drop us a note on the guest book page!
We will be making regular updates to this blog as time approaches to the big day.
We love you all!
Potential Wedding Levity
We could potentially have an inflatable church at Dos Picos! But… we’re not gonna
In the meantime, check out these pictures!
Some New Pictures of Us
 Peek-a-boo #3 Originally uploaded by ericisrad. |
Tiana and I made a third trip to our wedding site at Dos Picos park with Tiana’s Dad Laz and his wife Denise. We wanted to not only show them our wedding site, but also check out the progress of construction on it.
You see, our wedding site is not done being built yet. We are not worried though, because since the last time we were there, the construction crew has made enormous leaps and bounds in progress on the site.
Before leaving the site though, we decided to take some cheezy-yet-fun pictures of each other. The one featured in this post is my favourite not only for the lighting, but also the way the blue colour of Tiana’s eyes come out so well in the picture.
We’re very excited and are looking forward to seeing all of our families on May 20th!
Here is the Flickr gallery:
For real this time: We’re growing our own flowers
Apologies if anybody thought the last post was real concerning our “knitted wedding” — we’re not actually doing that.
However, what we’re really doing is going to plant all our own flowers. Back when I was in junior high in Merced, CA, I used to do this with great enthusiasm. I planted hundreds of bulbs around our house and just about all of them came up and it looked gorgeous! I planted crocus, hyacinths, blue grape hyacinths, tulips, daffodils, and gladiolus.
We figured that not only would it be a money saver, but it would also be a lot of fun to do. We’ve already bought most of the seeds and bulbs for the flowers we’re going to use.
This morning I called into 1360 AM in San Diego to talk to Bruce Asakawa on the “Garden Compass” morning show. Him and his co-hosts provided some helpful advice. We’re thinking of having those super blue, bearded irises as one of the main flowers as our colour theme is bright blue and brown. We’ll also be growing plenty of white flowers such as white alyssum and baby’s breath and a few other nice-looking flowers and bulbs.
I’ll be posting some pictures soon of what we bought, and I also hope to keep you all updated on the progress of the flowers, complete with pictures!
There are 125 days left till our wedding! Much joy!