Invitations — out.

We hope everyone had a good holiday season. Some of you we saw, and some of you we didn't but wish we could have.

We spent some of our time off putting together our formal invitations, which we assembled ourselves. The invitations are handmade from the bark of a plant that is sustainably harvested. The envelope and card stock are made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper. All natural, and all tree free.

Because it is a destination wedding, there are a few things for you and us to figure out, including time off from work, travel arrangements, and a place to stay, among other things. If you have any questions as you make your plans, please feel free to contact us — or post a question here. We are asking for RSVP cards to be returned by February 20 so that we can then make the necessary arrangements that are number contingent.

The invitations are in the mail!

Jason

Carbon be gone.

In our effort to reduce the impact our destination wedding will have on the environment (50 or so people traveling hundreds of miles), and because we like the organization and the idea, we have made a donation through Trees for the Future. This nonprofit has been promoting sustainable agroforestry around the world since 1989.

We have adopted the village of Bethel in the community of Cabaret, Haiti, which has been devastated by deforestation and global climate change. The project we have sponsored will plant more than 5,000 forestry and fruit trees. The trees are fast growing and permanent. According to the non-profit's executive director, these "beneficial trees will protect the fragile lands and assure that families can continue to live in dignity. Each year, these trees will remove several tons of pollution from the global atmosphere [...] while protecting lands and assisting the natural return of past diversity." Only three percent of Haiti's original forests remains, leaving it brown and barren. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and the deforestation leaves its people vulnerable to flooding and mudslides, which kill many and wash away what little fertile topsoil remains. Eventually the hillsides turn to rock and cannot be farmed.

Trees for the Future fits its program to what best suits each community, teaching people how to better use the land by integrating the elements of their daily lives — trees, people, animals, agriculture — into a system that is self-sustaining. They also train people to spread the knowledge they have gained.

Since the idea is to offset all our upcoming (June 2008) travel, the donation is basically in the names of everyone attending the wedding — so, in a sense, it is your donation as much as it is ours. At 5,000 trees, that's roughly 100 trees per person. Check out Trees for the Future at www.treesftf.org.

Jason

PS: I had two trees survive my planting of the "Save the Date" seeds, a redwood (left) and a sequoia (right). Here they are at about 10 weeks. Anyone else have any luck?

Goodbye November.

Well, the last six weeks have kind of gotten away from us.

As is our custom in the fall, we took on way too many obligations at work and school, so in the lead up to the semester ending, we typically have no choice but to dig in — so if you haven't heard from us or seen us, we've been dug in. Sarah's been working on final projects for her classes in the evenings after work and on her days off. It's all due next week, so we're bowing out of two holiday events we wanted to attend this weekend to make sure that she has enough time to complete her work. I've been steeped in grading during this time. I've been conducting and grading finals and filing grades this past week, with everything looking to wrap up next week around the time Sarah finishes. I also took a French class, which had been going well until the last two weeks or so, when it had to take a back seat — that final was ... not my finest work.

Amid all this, we devoted our time to one more pursuit — we bought a house! We had convinced ourselves and come to peace with the fact that we would have to leave San Diego in order to afford a home, but with the help of Sarah's moms, we were able to become homeowners. We bought the house that we had been renting from Sarah's step mom, Kat, during the past year and a half. It is a 1950's two bedroom, two bath with a huge yard and a pool, located in Allied Gardens (a great neighborhood across the freeway from San Diego State University). Kat happily lowered the price to one we could afford, selling the property under value, and Sarah's mom, Pam, generously payed for our closing costs and our first month's mortgage. The purchase has special meaning for Sarah and her family because her grandparents on her mother's side lived there, as did her dad, Jim, and Kat — so it's a family house, which will now stay that way.

Progress on the wedding has been slow going (see above), but we did manage to get our wedding coordinator up north squared away. Her name is Sarah, and she's very cool. We also ordered the materials for our formal invitations (100 percent recycled, tree-free products — of course), and we will be working on getting those out over the Christmas holiday. There has been wedding dress and reception site drama, but all of that has quietly worked itself out.

From this point forward there should be plenty of activity, so check the site and the blog. We're at about six months out — starting now.

Jason

Best man, Korean man.

The best man has left the country. Chris departed October 18 for South Korea, where he will remain in exile to wait out the rest of George W. Bush's term in office. Actually, he is spending a year there teaching English in Cheongju, which is in the south. He'll be teaching high school age or younger students at a private school.

In the past few weeks he's been getting settled and getting to know the other teachers in the program, who are all young Americans like himself. He also got to spend a few days in Japan on the company dime while he worked out his visa, and has been hiking the nearby national parks (see pictures). He even managed to find a couple Korean guys who make decent burritos. He hasn't started teaching, but he says the students in the classes he has observed have been amazed at his shoe size.

At 6'3", he says the girls giggle when he walks down the street.

Jason

The fires for us.

We thought this might be a good place to let everyone know how the fires that have burned hundreds of thousands of acres across San Diego County have impacted ourselves and our families.

Sarah's mom, Pam, and step mom, Kat, have been evacuated from Ramona since Sunday afternoon. They first heard about the Witch Creek Fire while having lunch together after a play, and by the time they got to Ramona, the east end where Pam lives was already closed off. The police wouldn't let her through in a car ... but had no problem with her walking past the roadblock, so she trekked a half mile up the road to get her cats and a few necessities, then drove out in her other car. Sarah's moms have been staying with their moms in Santee and Oceanside.

It has been difficult to get information out of Ramona, and while we were fairly certain that Kat's place was safe on the west end of town, we were less sure about Pam's, which is located along Highway 78 in the very heart of the burned areas. She had some word from her step brother, who works for the CDF and stopped by her street, but he wasn't able to identify her house specifically. Yesterday, my dad was able to talk him and I through several police barricades and we confirmed that Pam's house escaped the fire — just. The flames burned to within 100 feet of her home (see picture; click image to enlarge), charing much of her property and leaving behind a still smoldering oak we spent some time snuffing out. Several of her neighbors lost their homes.

My dad's sister Carol and her family evacuated for a night out of Carlsbad. My cousin Monica and her family evacuated. My cousin Theresa and her family spent several days at the stadium in their RV. And another cousin of mine evacuated and may have lost his home in Ramona, but my dad and I couldn't be 100 percent sure because the property was blocked off, but from what we could see and what we found out from someone coming out — the area where he lives was a total loss.

My dad, who is an Engineer with the La Mesa Fire Department, never got sent out to fight the fires. On his off day, he and another guy checked on the threatened homes of other firemen.

As for Sarah and I, we have only been affected indirectly — with the exception of the constant ash fall and the apprehension that comes with massive fires burning to the north, south, and east. Her work was closed for a few days when Poway was evacuated, and her school has been closed all week. All my colleges have been closed all week, as well.

Jason

Little big trees.

I wanted to make sure the seeds we sent everyone in the "Save the Date" announcements were viable, so on Sept. 12 I opened one of our extra postcards and planted the 50 or so seeds that were inside using the methods that I mentioned in the Sept. 11 blog entry.

They're alive.

A few days ago I noticed a few little trunks trying to push their way to the surface, and as you can see in the pictures I took yesterday, two of them — one sequoia and one redwood — have succeeded. In the pictures, the sequoia is the one with the penny, the redwood the other. A third (not pictured) hasn't shed its seed casing yet and is a redwood as well.

Though the species are close cousins, they start off quite different and never really get too similar in appearance. What they share is greatness in their genes — one with the potential to be the largest thing to have ever lived (sequoia) and the other to be the tallest thing to have ever lived (redwood).

It's hard to imagine that these two seedlings, overshadowed by a penny, are racing toward 2,000 tons and 370+ feet, respectively. But it's true.

Jason

The itinerary!

The itinerary is up on the site! This takes care of one of the four pages left to be completed. I'll soon be able to move away from my obsession with creating the site. Rather than spending the last two hours grading exams, I instead spent it finishing this page. But it was totally worth it because now that we can see all the cool things we'll do once we're up north for the wedding, we really can't wait to be there with everyone.

We've outlined the week of June 22 - June 28, which are the dates that Sarah and I will "officially" be in Eureka. Seeing as how it's nine months away, things are still a bit tentative for us, as I'm sure they are for you. I know the formal invitations haven't even come out yet, but since it's a destination wedding, I figured you all could use as much information you can get as early as possible. We'd still like everyone to wait for the formal invitations before making lodging reservations, but if you need to request vacation time way in advance, the list of events on this page should help you get a sense of things for the week of the wedding.

This list is not what you must do while there. It's just what we're doing, and what we'd like to do with you. And, we're open to suggestions if you find something you'd really like to do that we haven't thought of — nothing's written in stone. Post all suggestions below.

Jason