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!

House offer #5, and a few other fun pictures to share

So our storage unit is huge...10x30...and COMPLETELY full, floor to ceiling.  A few days ago, we thought maybe we would go look for a couple of things, but no chance!  :)  

 We were able to get my bike out and found out that Addison can ride it...freaks me out!  She's so big and so cute!  Love her.

 Carter turned SIX and had such a fun birthday week!  Love him.

The kids and I met one of my favorite people in San Francisco yesterday and spent the day together.

 We stopped on the wharf and watched a magic show....Carter was thrilled to be able to assist the magician!

The kids played in the sand and water while Jen and I were able to chat for a bit.

The whole day we were in the city, my real estate agent kept texting and calling me about a house that we were trying to decide if we wanted to put an offer on.

We just happened to drive by it on Sunday on our way to church and they were having an open house so we stopped in.  We liked it better than we thought we would (we had seen it online), and it was in the same neighborhood (and ward) as the last house we offered on so we let our agent know and told her we would think about it and get back to her.

*Keep in mind the last house had 30 offers and went for $100,000 over asking price (INSANE!) 

So, long story short, our agent called the listing agent yesterday and found out there were a couple of offers already.  So, we decided to just go for it and offer full price, nothing over.  That way if someone was going to go way over on this one too, we wouldn't be too sad because we really couldn't compete going that much over.

Our agent called us this morning to let us know 

we got it!

We have to laugh because the street is Morning Glory, which is totally a street name that could have come out of our Utah neighborhood (AND, we struggled with that stupid weed the entire 9 years we lived there!)  :)

It has 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms (totally bigger than what we were expecting), a 3 car garage, a pool, and needs a little work.  Exactly what we were looking for on paper.  I think it's going to be great.

another no on a house.  crazy!  this market is insane at the moment.

So...the search continues.  again.

At least we had a 6th birthday to celebrate (on the 6th..makes it his GOLDEN birthday!)

Santa Cruz

We took our first outing to the beach since we moved here.  We decided on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.  The drive was about an hour and so beautiful.  We can't get over all the trees EVERYWHERE here.  This picture if pretty much terrible (time for a new camera!) but just shows the beauty we are surrounded by!

 I love this picture...swim trunks are a little too big, and he's having too much fun to care!  :)

 We didn't get wristbands or season passes, just let the kids choose 1 ride (they decided on the log flume).  It was a really fun day!

 Of course we couldn't pass up this giant donut on our way out.  :)

We took highway 1 up the coast to Half Moon Bay (a big surfing spot) on our way home.  So beautiful!  But it was much colder there with lots of fog and mist.

It was a great day!  Next up...someone cute turns SIX this week!

Another Offer

We are putting an offer on this cute house this weekend.  They have had it on the market about a week and will go over offers on Monday.  It is darling inside, has a pond right next to it, tennis courts, trails, and backs up to a park.  So, although the yard is a little smaller than we have been looking at, and it is only a 2 car garage, we are still going to put an offer on it.  I imagine they will have tons of offers so we are not holding our breath (plus if we get it, that means we have to move from this amazing location we are in now, which includes every restaurant/shopping I have ever heard of within just a few blocks.  It is awesome).

And here is a peak at the backyard: