I still can't believe I live in California.  Ten minutes from the ocean.  Ten minutes from San Francisco.  I can't believe I've been here for six months.  Someone told me that time stands still here.  Because there aren't any seasons.  I get it.  It feels like spring time.  Like we just skipped winter.  It's odd.  I'm still adjusting to it all.  Moving across the country.  Being a stay at home mom.

  I feel like I'm on an extended vacation.  I'm starting to miss my friends and family a bit.  I'm a planner and I feel good when I have some things on the books.  We have the whole demolition of our new house coming up so that's exciting.  But I like to have trips planned and purchased.  Dates when I know that I'm going to see my family or friends.  I have nothing planned.  So I've been pestering my family.  Course, the whole demolition of our house is going to happen in the next week or two so it's really not a good time to have a lot of visitors.  Hopefully living without a kitchen for a few months will keep me busy and I won't miss my family so much.

The One with the View

Before I get into pictures of our house...let's talk about the view.  We bought this house for a lot of reasons...but the view was at the top of the list!  Photos do not do it justice.

This is early morning.

This is mid day.

 

 

 

Early evening.

The One with the Adjusting

There are some things that are different in California from Ohio.  And some of them are a little harder to adjust to.  Maybe it's just me but some of these things are just bizarre!

1)  Motorcycles.  There are a lot of them.  And they drive higgly piggly through traffic.  They freak me out coming up the middle of the highway.  Geesh!  I used to try to avoid motorcycles.  I'd stay back as far as possible or pass as quickly as possible.  But there's no getting away from them here!

Maybe its that I was in a horrible car wreck flying through the air on the interstate...but I always think of the worst case scenerio when it comes to motorcycles.  A small pebble.  A little wobble here or there.  And then I run over a body.  It's one thing to hit a car on the freeway...but hitting a motorcycle.  I couldn't handle it.  They would have to take me away in a white coat.  I'm not adjusting to this one.  At all!

2)  Drive thrus.  Come on!  People in Cali have cars.  Why aren't there any bank drive thrus?  Why aren't there any Starbucks drive thrus?  They're all over Ohio.  Those peeps in Seattle know they work in Ohio..why not Cali?  People have kids in car seats in Cali too ya know!  There are random McDonald's drive thrus...and your Jack...whatever restaurants...but I need caffiene!!  And a bank every now and then.  This one's not easy either!  Update - I enrolled Max in a preschool...the only one that had availability.  Guess what, it has a drive thru!  I can't believe it.  It's genius but I still can't believe it.

3)  No rain.  It seriously hasn't rained since we've been here.  One day of sprinkles...and it wasn't enough to send Hugo running.  It's been total sunshine for 2+ months.  I can live with this one! Update - We're now in the rainy season.  It's still been like 10 random days with loads of sunshine in between.  I'm loving this one!

4)  Shopping mall.  I'm in need of a shopping mall.  I'll be driving to Concord tomorrow for a shopping mall trip.  I'll let you know how it goes.  It's 20 miles outside of Emeryville.  Seems odd to me coming from the land of retail.  I'm adjusting...though it's weird.  Update - Now that we're in God's Country (aka Marin County) there are mountains, ocean, the city and...MALLS!  Nice ones!  Yay!!

5)  Grocery stores.  I know I've complained about this one but I just haven't found the right place.  Yeah...there are Whole Foods everywhere.  And the Berkeley Bowl..(which is fabulous in its own right) and Trader Joe's.  But we're feeding a family of four here.  And $5 for a gallon of milk that lasts about 3 days just ain't happening.  So I've been going to BB, TJ's and Pak N Stab Save.  I hate having to go to 3-4 different places to get what I want.  Although the fresh fruit and veggies are fabulous!  I'll adjust..eventually. Update - In God's Country there are better Safeway's and a great Trader Joe's and Mollie Stone's (even more expensive than Whole Paycheck) but I still miss my Market District Giant Eagle. 

Overall, life is good.  Being a SAHM is great.  Now if we can just find a house... Update - We found a house!  Yay!  More of that to come. Now that we're somewhat settled, hopefully I'll post some more!

The One with a Little Messy Marvin

It's inevidable.  We're at a restaurant and we sit down to eat and Max has to go potty.  EVERY.  TIME.  It's especially fun when it's just me and the boys.  On this occasion I put Jonah into the stroller and left our food walked toward the bathrooms only to realize that there were stairs and I had the stroller.  So we went back to our table and I got Jonah out along with the diaper bag.  And we walked up the stairs only to realize that the bathrooms were closed.  We could go to the bathroom in the mall. Back at the table and I put Jonah back in the stroller and handed him his cup of milk with a straw.  I started packing up the food and look over at Jonah with the straw in his mouth and the cup tipped all the way back.  Milk flowing all over his face, neck, shirt, pants...everywhere.  Until it was empty.  Then he looked at me and caught his breath and said "Molk".  Yeah buddy...that was milk.

Off to the bathroom and fortunately I had just bought some clothes for the boys.  I changed Jonah into a new shirt and a new diaper...but I didn't buy pants.  So there we were walking through the mall with no pants on Jonah while he ate his burger.

Good times.

The One in Emeryville

So we're in our new apartment.  Open living room/dining room/kitchen.  Two bedrooms.  One with a master bath.  Another bath in the hall.  And really that's it.  But WE. HAVE. TWO. BATHROOMS!  AND. A. DISHWASHER!!

Aww..it's the little things.  I started thinking about how long it had been since I lived somewhere with a working dishwasher.  It's something like 12 years or so.  I'm loving the dishwasher.

So most of our days are spent like this:

But we've started a gymnastics and an art class.  And we also joined a play place called Studio Grow.

And on the weekends when we're not looking at houses, we're doing fun family things.

Now if we can just find a house and a babysitter...I think things will be good!

The One with the first week.

 
Finally.  We're in California.  It seems like it took forever to get here.  And I'm sure there's lots more work ahead!

We landed and still had to pick up Hugo and pick up my car.  We had it shipped earlier so that we would at least have one car.  So the car service drove us to the storage and Andrew drove my car back to the airport to pick up Hugo and meet us at our temporary house in San Rafael.

It was a cute little house with a great view.



There was a hiking trail at the end of the street and a cute little park with a playground only two blocks away.  We liked it!

The house itself was small and had lots of nick-nacks but we made due.  We had to take AB to the ferry every day since we only had one car and there was definitely some adjusting to the new time zone but a few day time car trips helped out with naps.  And it made for some good sight seeing for me!

We went to the park almost every day.

There were sequoias in the park...so lovely!

We even started seeing some of the same people every day and I'm sure if we'd stayed we would have made some new friends.  I think Max was adjusting perfectly.  Which made it hard to leave.

After 10 days, our moving van arrived and we started moving into our apartment.  We were excited to get our own stuff and looking forward to adjusting to our new neighborhood.

The One with all the Running

So before I get to where I left off, I'd like to tell another story about a trip to San Francisco.

When I was pregnant with Max, Andrew owned his own company and had planned on taking a few weeks off after I gave birth to spend as a new family.  Well I didn't have the most story book birth experience.  (Jonah's birth experience was as close to perfect as anyone could ask for.  I only wish that every first time mom could experience what I did with Jonah.)

Aaaanyway...(I say that a lot in my story telling), Max was three weeks early, and Andrew had a photo shoot scheduled in Minneapolis or one of those cities in the middle of the country.  He was ready to cancel so that he could be with us but I insisted that he keep the photo shoot.  So instead we decided to take a trip to San Fran during my maternity leave.  I mean if we're all going to be hanging out doing nothing but spending time together, we might as well do it in a fantastic city.

So when Max was 10 weeks old, we flew to San Fran.  The trip was awesome.  Max was great on the plane and during all the walking and we even had a babysitter one night and went out for a fabulous dinner.  It was a really great vacation....until we came home.  I remember sitting at the gate and our plane was obviously late and they finally made an announcement that the plane was late and listed all the final destinations that needed to come up to be re-routed.  Columbus was not on the list.  But we knew we had a tight connection in Phoenix...and I had to check the stroller so I went up and asked.  She was one of the rudest and most annoying people.  She looked at me and said.."Was Columbus on the list?"  I said no and she said then we did not need to be re-routed.  I looked at the girl behind her and she agreed.  So I checked the stroller.  Looking back, I should have pushed a little more punched both of them.  So of course you know the end of this story.  We get to Phoenix and me and my 10 week old ran.  We ran as fast as a new mother holding a 10 week old could run.  AB stayed back and waited for the stroller.  Once he got the stroller, he ran.  I could see the gate up ahead...two nicer ladies waving their arms..."hurry, hurry".  I got to the gate and said..."my husband is right behind me.  He had to wait for the stroller."  They told me that I could get on but that they couldn't wait for him.  Ha!  So you expect me to get on the plane with my 10 week old and leaving my husband here?! That's funny.  I waited and waited...and then they closed the gate.  And then I waited and waited and then we saw him running.  I started walking toward him so that he would at least stop running.  We couldn't believe it.  They would not hold the plane for us.  I seriously wanted to punch those first two ladies.  We went to the counter and explained what happened.  There were no other flights that day.  We had to spend the night.  They put us up in a hotel and gave us some food money and some incidental money.  And then I realized...I had packed my breast pump and didn't have it with me.  Anyone that has ever breastfed knows how horrible this is for an exclusively pumping breast feeding momma.  WORST! NIGHT! EVER!  I tried my hardest to get Max to feed.  I tried whatever I could to relieve my pain.  But nothing worked.  I had a hard time with milk production and this was no help at all.  Moral of the story, always carry on your pump.  You never know what could happen.

Sooooo, back to our moving story.  We get to the airport and there were again some delays.  And we had another close connection.  I started to get worried.  I did not want a repeat performance.  And we were flying through Detroit!  At least when we got stuck in Phoenix, my friend James came over for a visit.  But Detroit?!  Argh.  We finally got off the ground in Columbus.  It was short flight but we were worried.  Once we were closer to Detroit the flight attendant started giving out gate locations.  We scouted out our gate on the airport map...it was going to be tight!  We put a plan together.  I would stay with Jonah and wait for the stroller.  Andrew and Max would run.  It's funny.  We had this plan of grabbing some lunch and taking it on the plane.  Didn't happen.  As soon as I saw our stroller, I strapped in my 25lb child and ran.  My flip flops made a really annoying "clip clop" noise and it echoed throughout the airport.  It was so loud and annoying that everyone would stop and get out of my way.  Just imagine hearing a really loud "clop, clop, clop, clip, clop" and turning and seeing a 30ish (I like to think) mother running while pushing her bushy top blonde boy in a crappy stroller.  Ha!  I guess I would get out of her way too.  We had to run from one concourse to another.  There is a shuttle tram but it wasn't there when we got to it...so we kept running.  Jonah saw the tram at one point and pointed and said "choo choo".  Too bad we didn't get to ride it.  We got to the gate and they were announcing last call for boarding.  There were around 8 people standing around trying to get on our flight stand by and she said if we did not board, they would give up our seats.  Shew....we had BARELY made it! 

We were off to our new home.  Sweaty, tired, hungry and with a leg cramp.  But dude we didn't have to spend the night in Detroit!

These two crashed once we got off the ground.

PS - I added a few pics on the last post.