Californians

It's now official...we are licensed and registered California residents. Only 1 trip to the DMV, in and out in a few hours! (And our licenses are super cool, they have background pictures of Half Dome, the Golden Gate and other famous California landmarks) Although I am very happy to be back in California, I blame my crazy face on the bright sunshine.

Sightseeing

We decided to spend a day in the city so we loaded up our bikes, packed a lunch and set out for an adventure.  We started at Golden Gate Park.  It was beautiful, we saw a waterfall, a beautiful lake, amazing gardens and a lot more.  There is so much to explore there!

We decided to bike all the way to the ocean, just because we could.  It was a little longer than I expected, but I was excited and determined to make it, so excited that I didn't even notice we were going downhill for the 3.5 miles to get there.  After realizing I'd have to bike 3.5 miles back I suddenly felt thirsty, hungry and exhausted.  It was definitely one of my hardest pregnancy moments and I was seriously contemplating sending Dave back to get the car and come pick me up.  I'll just say it was a long trip back and definitely not as enjoyable as the ride there.

Next stop was Baker Beach with an amazing view of the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was a chilly day,but the sand was so warm and it felt amazing!  We had a delicious ( and well earned) picnic lunch there.

Dave wanted to get a closer look at the bridge so we took the scenic route around on our way to get some dessert at Ghiradelli Square.



Dave just about died when he saw the caramel and hot fudge that came out with our ice cream, he was seriously in heaven!  We enjoyed our ice cream in the warm sunshine while listening to some live music there.

We finished the day exploring downtown and window shopping around Fisherman's Wharf. We'll be back to try out a restaurant one of these days.

Bikes

Dave works about 2.5 miles from our apartment, which is awesome!  When we moved out here we decided we'd become a one-car family and Dave wanted to ride a bike to work. 

So he found a great one on Craigslist.  It's a men's bike, but it is covered in pink and purple!  He set out to make it more manly by covering the pink and purple with silver duct tape.  We're also hoping that the duct tape will detour anybody wanting to steal it.

After a trip down to Fresno my parents said I could borrow my mom's bike for a while!  Dave and I are loving riding our bikes around town.  Plus I got it just in time for us to ride over to 7-11 for free slurpees :)

3rd annual Roderick Round-up

We arrived in California, unpacked and headed right back to Texas for the 3rd annual Roderick Roundup.  We live right next to the BART station so we made the walk with our carry ons and the BART dropped us right at the Oakland Airport doors.  Yeah for no parking costs!




The house they rented out was absolutely amazing!  It had 4 big bedrooms, a seriously humongous family room and a big kitchen with a giant dining room table for us all to eat at.  Outside there was a swing and hammock and upstairs on the deck a nice hot tub with a great view of Canyon Lake.





We had such an action packed week! We spent a day out on Canyon Lake swimming and tubing.  We spent another day at Schlitterbahn's which is such a fun waterpark!!!  And as if we weren't already having enough fun we spent another day at Sea World!

Since most of the week we were out swimming around South Texas, we did not get to spend much time at the house.  We usually came home exhausted and hungry (especially still in the first trimester me) We also found time to celebrate Homer's birthday, it was just so fun to spend so much time together, all under one roof!

The Roderick adults

Our New Home

We are loving our new home!  We are so blessed, things seriously felt right in place for us.  When Dave and I came out here for his interview I did some research on Income Based Housing.  There are 3 places that have the program in Pleasanton, none of them with openings.  I toured an apartment at each of the 3 anyways and got as much information as I could, including the fact that to apply for this discounted program you have to do it in person.  For the discounted rent prices, I'd take any apartment that opened up and it would be worth it for me to fly out for a day to get it. Housing is expensive here!

Once we got the job and decided we were gonna go for it, I consistently called all 3 just to check for openings.  And of course our top pick, (the brand new complex with 2 pools, 2 hot tubs, an amazing exercise room, car was station, tennis court, outdoor basketball court, is built around a city park, and is about 2 miles from Dave's work) happened to call me back with an opening.  And it just so happened that it was the very apartment they had taken me to tour, the newly remodeled 1st floor one that was going for over $2100/month.  It was being transitioned over to the Income Based program and we could get it for $1428/month if we qualified. I was already to jump online and buy a plane ticket for the next morning when I decided to just try, I asked her if there was any way I could just fax over the information to her. Boy, did I talk to just the right girl! She agreed to look at it all over fax. I had just recently finished doing our taxes so I had all the information we needed handy.  I sent it over and it turns out our Texas income was just under the limit and we quickly got approved.  I still am in awe how it all worked out, so many blessings!

It is a 1 bedroom apartment, and we are expecting a baby in 6 months.  The thing that sold me was the closet.  The blue/white striped sweater hanging is the half way mark of this closet. It is humongous and more like a half size bedroom.  It will have plenty of space for our little baby.  The rest of the apartment has hardwood flooring, granite countertops, crown molding, etc.  It is such a nice apartment!

We're surrounded by parks with the most beautiful green grass! There are 5 playgrounds, a sand volleyball pit, a baseball diamond and lots of running trails. Also, across the street we have Walmart, Kohl's, Red Robin and L&L.  We seriously could not ask for a better set up!

And just 25 minutes away we have a beautiful temple with an aweome view of the bay and beautiful grounds to enjoy.  We now understand why housing is so much, this is one amazing place!

Dave the "Fire Guy"

This is our first time with a gas stove/oven and it is exciting!  In the past we've always put our cutting boards and baking sheets in the compartment under the oven, so naturally we did that again.  Our first time using this oven something did not smell right.  I asked David and he responded that it was just because it was our first time using it.  The funky smell just got stronger and stronger so I asked Dave again and he went to go check it out and saw smoke.

 Long story short, under the compartment is actually a broiler, not a storage space.  So we opened it to find flames billowing like crazy. Dave sent me to find the fire extinguisher, which I could not find in my panicked state, while he tried to put it out.  My panic was due to the fact that we have a sprinkler system in our place and I had no idea at what point it would go off.  I ran around in circles with my brain going back and forth between fire extinguisher-cover my photo albums-no, find the fire extinguisher-no, find something to cover those valuables, etc. I basically was useless and luckily Dave decided to grab a hot pad and carry out the inflamed plastic cutting boards on a baking sheet and throw them in the dirt.    Magic erasers took care of all the burn marks on our nice bright white oven and we sure learned our lesson!

Goodbye Friends

The Dells hosted a wonderful open house/goodbye get together for us with lots of food and friends.  It was great to be able to see everybody and say goodbye since we were leaving on such short notice.  

Earlier that week we arranged one last get together to say goodbye to our best group of friends.  We couldn't believe that we had such a good group and we were leaving them, that was tough!

Dave said goodbye to his Young Men after spending the week traveling through west Texas and New Mexico with them on their High Adventure trip.

And I had to say goodbye to my beautiful Young Women after 3 years together :(

YES +

I was feeling pretty tired and crumby, everything seemed to hit me all at the same time!  One thing Dave's taught me is that there's not need to suffer through an illness when they make medicines for those kinds of things. Just before I was about to give in and start taking a few different medicines Dave suggested I take a test just in case (because almost every medicine out there says "Do not take if pregnant".  That was Friday night at about 9pm and unlike the last 10  tests from Dollar Tree I had taken this time a very faint line appeared.  I wasn't convinced so Dave immediately ran to the store to get an expensive one which I got woken up early to take the next morning...

We couldn't just throw the test away, so Dave set it on our dresser.  For the next few days randomly I'd hear him go back in our room and yell, "It still says yes!"  We're pretty excited!