surprise!

yay!  Marty surprised us and came home a day early from his trip!  He scared us though because he pounded on our door at 9:45 last night.  Carter of course ran over and whipped the door wide open...I had a brief moment of fear, hoping it wasn't some crazy murderer on our doorstep!  :)

I planned on taking the kids to the Jelly Belly Factory today so we are waiting a few hours and hoping Marty can leave work early and come with us.

for now, I will leave you with a couple of pictures I took walking around by our apartment (I can't express how unbelievable it is around here...we wish we could just plant our new house in the apartment location...I guess that is why our 1 bedroom rent is nearly as much as our 5 bedroom house is going to be!)

No, he is NOT really drinking from the doggy water fountain, just pretending.  People are seriously dog crazy around here!

Marty did not get to join us today.  :(  But we still had fun!  

Muir Park

My mom and I decided to take a drive to Muir Park (it took us about 45 minutes to get there) with the kids. I can't get over how beautiful it was!  WOW!  I know God's whole green earth is beautiful, but I am just noticing it so much here.

 These little chimpmunks were so cute!!  And everywhere. (Why aren't MICE this cute??  I kept thinking if they were mice, people would be screaming and running from them...instead everyone oohs and aahs at them and takes their picture!)  :)

 This is a hollowed out tree.

 See the owl?  He was sleeping and there was a small group of people looking/taking pictures of him and as soon as I snapped the picture, he looked right at me.  So fun!

 The kids had a little treasure hunt to do while we walked through the park, and this was the reward at the end (there is a little treasure box with a combination lock hidden behind this National Park Symbol).  It was a LOT of fun!

When we left the park, we saw a sign for Highway 1 and just took it on a whim across the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was amazing!  

and then stopped at the ocean for a bit.  It was a little cold, but fun nonetheless.

 And, of course, beautiful!  :)

Not sure what our next outing will be.  House stuff I suppose.  I think I found my flooring so as soon as we close on the house, it will just be boring house stuff for you to read about!  

My mom leaves tomorrow (boo!), and Marty will be home in a couple of days (yay!) so until then I will think of something fun to do.  Any suggestions?

Beautiful Oakland Temple

Grandma Vegas flew in.  YAY!  We decided to detour up to the Oakland Temple on our drive home.  Wow, it was BEAUTIFUL!!

Happy Weekend!

Friday

The kids and I drove out to the Oakland Zoo.  We had a good time!  They have a sky ride there so this picture was taken from up above.

 This giant turtle could have been the favorite animal of the day though.  He was HUGE and awesome!

 Cute little palm tree that we drive by when we get on the freeway and my kids are always like "oh, that's so cute!" so I took a picture so we could remember it.  Ya, I know...;)

 Saturday

We decided to drive out to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk beach again.  So did the rest of the state apparently.  There was SO. MUCH. TRAFFIC!!  It's normally about an hour and 15 minutes or so, but took us over 3 hours on Saturday!!  

 This is just a little inlet of the ocean.  The water was so dang cold!  No idea how the kids stayed in it for so long.

 Sunday

We celebrated FATHER'S DAY!

 Minecraft has been the game of choice around here lately, and Marty was glad to have uninterrupted play time all afternoon.

 The new grill...we needed one for our apartment, but this one will also be so great for the beach and camping.

 It was a great, happy weekend!

Grandma Vegas is coming in a few days and we can't WAIT!!!  

the good, the bad and the ugly

So here are some pictures of our 1977 home.  We are excited, and hope all goes well.  Getting the loan was a little more difficult than we thought...well, getting our payment down to what we were comfortable with, but I think it's all good now.  Inspections are Wednesday so assuming everything is good, we should be able to close mid-July and then do some work before we move in there.  Anyway, here you go:

 I love the step down into the front room.  I mean, I don't LOVE it, but it just makes me feel like I'm back in the 70's.  Especially since the wall on the right is floor to ceiling MIRRORS!  No gold veining or whatever it is called like we had in our house in the 70's, but still...the house has character!  :)

 The master bathroom (pictured) and the kitchen have been updated so at least that is done!

 This is the room that Addison really, really wants, but I believe it will be a home theater (yay!!!)

 The kids Jack-and-Jill bathroom

 The wood paneling...another sign of the 70's!  This is the laundry room.  Don't worry, we'll be painting and hanging new cabinets and it will be super cute!!  I loved my blue laundry room in Utah so I will probably do the same color.

 This is the garage.  Marty hates it, I don't mind it actually.

 This is kind of weird, not sure what we are going to do here.  The kitchen is just right there on the right (I didn't take a picture of just the kitchen.  I will do that next time we go over).  Any good suggestions??

 This is one side of the house.  We are thinking MAYBE we can do a garden here, not sure if there will be enough sun.  I'm sure Carter will just love digging over here...his favorite backyard activity!

 The backyard is in pretty good shape.  See those plants?  One is a lemon tree and one is a lime tree!  Now THAT makes me super happy!!!!!  YAY!

 This is the other side of the backyard.  We will replace the shed, put a little fence of some kind around the pool equipment, and another thing I love is that there is a door from right here to a bathroom!  YAY!  (That door right there is into the garage, the door is on the wall there on the right side of the picture).

 And this is the front.  No grass, but we may change that.  It's a little closer to all the neighbors than we were hoping for (front and back), but it will (hopefully) be just fine.

Now we may not be able to go to the beach every weekend.  :(  Oh well.  Home Depot is just as fun.  

Almost.

apartment tour (this is for you Grandma Paris) and anyone else who's interested!

This is standing at the front door, looking straight in:

the kitchen/dining table is just to the right of the door:

This cute spot with our fun poster Jami made us, on the wall between the kitchen and our "bedroom" ;)

I just realized I didn't get one straight on of our bedroom, but I'm just standing in our room looking out into the kitchen/family room:

 Straight across from our room is the kids room (the bed didn't make it so one of them is on the trundle and one on the floor...it changes occasionally...right now it's Carter on the floor).  They have a sliding glass door out onto the balcony.  There is also a door out there from the family room, just to the left of the couch...you can kind of see it in the other picture, just past the boxes!  :)

 Then there is a laundry closet, bathroom and closet (I'm standing in the same place for the picture of the kids room and this one, just turned around to snap this one):

 And the view from the balcony.  It is absolutely beautiful here!!!    This one is looking left:

 This one is looking right:

and the best view of all:

And that's it!