The Big Move to California

Be proud of me, I'm tackling the mountain of posts I haven't done. After this I should be only a year behind...

The move went as well as we could have hoped. My parents came in to help and did a fantastic job! Moving would have been a total nightmare without them and I'm so so grateful. I was slowly packing up throughout the last few weeks in Texas, so it was actually pretty quick in terms of moving them to the 26 foot rental truck. We were going to have help come in the evening, but my dad and Sam did it by noon! So we decided to just leave that afternoon instead of the next day. My mom and I cleaned what we could (I did pay for a cleaning service, so that made it a lot less stressful). I took pictures just in case we needed to find new renters in a year, but our renters told us they are staying for another year, so the pictures are just for this blog instead. Here's our back porch:

I forgot that little girl cut her bangs. She's still super cute!

Love this house!..even though we had to do so much for our renters in a year (roof, painting cabinets, new dishwasher, freon for AC, new facia in the back, new water heater...) Be good house!! No more breaking down on us!

No pictures really of the actual trip, but Sam drove the big truck (huge kudos to him, that was so scary!), my dad drove Sam's Kia, and my mom and I drove the van filled with little goblins I mean children. Instead of two long days, we did two short days and a long day. Did I mention that the whole trip was solely on I 10? That made it easy! We stayed in the middle of nowhere Texas the first night. Then we drove just past Phoenix the next night, then ended in good ol' Lala Land. I don't recall any major incidents so we were very lucky. The only picture we took of that exodus was Sam's:

Really, I can't imagine driving this thing!

We had three ward members come and help us move (Rex, David, and Alex) and they were super nice. Sadly we couldn't fit our nice couches through the door of our house, so they became the garage couches. The garage became a cool hangout space, with many toys, pull out bed, fridge and microwave. If only it had a bathroom it would be complete!

My parents stayed a few more days to hang out with us and babysit for our TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY! We couldn't do anything fancy or too long (I was still nursing) and I was in the "this place is soooo expensive" mode, so it was a dinner and movie kind of anniversary date. 

Checked out the beach. 

Sand fortress.

Look at these lovebirds. I didn't realize Sam
was wearing crocks. Bahaha!

Best decision of my life! 

We could still use some practice with dipping...

We downloaded gift cards from our AE rewards and treated ourselves to Ruth's Chris. All amazing except the house dressing on their salad. That has to go back to the drawing board.

Now to be like an Instagammer and post a picture of our food.

We had time to spare so we went to Redondo beach to take a romantic walk.

Had the place to ourselves! (Almost. Some people walked in after this shot)

We went to see Cruella, and I thought it was well done. 

My mom sent a picture of this while we were gone:
Don't worry, it was cherries. Or was it...?

Sam had a few days to spare before he started so I requested he make a swing set. As most projects are it costed us more than I thought but the finished product was really nice and perfect for our needs!

We are definitely going to try to take it back with us.

Noah's seat came in and Eli was the first to try it out.

This is what I envisioned!

Another thing we did before Sam started was head to Leo Carillo State Park. Joseph was really into tide pools and this is what he was really looking forward to. There aren't any good tide pools near us so we went an hour north up to Malibu. The north part of the park was closed, but where we ended up was super nice! It's always an adventure taking four young kids (including a young baby) wherever we go, so Sam and the boys did a lot of exploring while I looked for wild life in between the rocks.

Cold morning looking out for new creatures.

Look at this anemone!

Look at this crab!

Explorations start.

Elijah always has a zest for life.

Look at this sea cave!

*swoon*

Time to go through the cave.

Turns out the north part of the park was closed
because they were filming there. Whoops!

Time to go back through!

Look at this little guy! He's grown so much
since this picture was taken a year ago.

Crabs, crabs, everywhere.

Dead lobster head.

So many sea anemones. 

Then it was time to relax and play in the sand.

These kids can get along so well when they want to.

I guess Eli was our favorite to take pictures of this trip.

I know I posted pictures of this little guy during his monthly updates, but I mean, look how little he was!

I forgot to put sunblock on Noah at the beach and part of his face was pretty burnt. 😬😬

Now for the fourth. It was on a Sunday, so other than going to church, we went to see fireworks at the temple. It's on a hill (as they tend to be) so we could see fireworks across the city. Very beautiful.

Look at his little outfit!

Eli's outfit.

Eden's too.

Look at this temple at night!

Our view.

Even the temple was celebrating.

We have been very blessed to have this temple so close to us.

I'll end the blog post here because next was a visit from Sam's parents and sister (with her daughters). That deserves its own post.

Summer 2020

We managed to have a fun and little busy summer. Sam started working (😩) as well as starting his chief resident duties. June was pretty much filled with that. In addition, he poured hoooouuurs into the event known as the Eye Ball. It's the Senior resident's graduating celebration in the program and he worked really hard to make it enjoyable for people present and attending over zoom. Here is a link to all the amazing videos Sam created. Here is also a photo of the graduating class since I can't find any photos of the actual event. It was soooo awesome. The food was great, the videos were all entertaining, and I didn't really hear a single complaint. Some people even told Sam it was the best Eye Ball they've attended. I've only attended two but this one was for the books, that's for sure!

Other than that June was a little quiet at home. I was starting to get into a little bit of a depressive state with Sam being gone and stuck at home with our spawn day in and day out. But we survived! I think Eli had a little bit of depression for a while too because all he wanted to do all day was build with blocks or legos. When we did have an activity outside of the house he didn't want to go. Luckily I can say he is his very happy self again and all is well. Here is where we found Eli one day when he disappeared for a little bit:

We found him under our bed asleep!

His favorite isolation activity.

We decided to try out Sea World for the 4th and had fun being out of the house!

 

We were able to stay for the beautiful firework show and ride rides (Eli loves them).

Eden loves wearing masks. Just maybe not on her face!

I found more photos of Emily. Here you can see her dewlap pretty well.  

Look how green she looks in this picture! I love how green anoles get.

I spoiled Sam with this chocolate berry nut cake. My baking is really hit or miss, and although it doesn't look completely professional, this is one of the best cakes I pulled off!

Sam's birthday meal for good measure. Happy 31st Sam!

Found a little toad on one of our walks.
Joey wanted to keep it, but no more pets!

Here is a picture of the day we released Emily. It was so sad and we really didn't want to, but it was best considering the cricket shortage in the stores and not finding good alternatives. Hope you are doing well out there, girl!

Can you find her 😉?

 That concludes this post. We celebrated Eden's birthday in Albuquerque, where we went the very beginning of August. But that's for another time!