Showing posts with label Our Home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Our Home. Show all posts

Thursday, May 31

Our New Home

Finally after months and months of searching all over Los Angeles including, parts of San Bernadino, and Orange County we found it. And I mean the city too when I say IT... Josh has a bit of a commute to work everyday and while we knew Simi Valley would never work for us for a few reasons, I knew we had to be somewhat closer to his work...There were just a lot of items on our check list... Newish home, diversified city/neighbprhood, Good schools, higher than a rating of 5 please, lots of families, Mall {first on my list lol} view of some sort, room enough for the seven of us, lots of younger families in ward...just to name a few off the top of the list...

The night before we were going to make an offer on a home in Porter Ranch I was poking around on lds.org on the church house maps to see where there were a lot of church buildings...I noticed there were a lot of wards in the Santa Clarita area including TWO stakes! That's a lot...The population is only 176,000...We had to look here! And so the next day April my sister in law and her friend Anna who lives here in SCV took me out to see two sets of new homes that were selling and bam! This was just here waiting for us...pretty much, since it had gone thru two potential buyers and they kept lowering the price on it especially now that the year was closing in on them we got some pretty cool incentives to buy it! and now we are pretty much stuck! Awesome interest rate ;) Not going anywhere anytime soon! and I am pretty happy about that since this stake is pretty darn awesome...and I say stake since I have some friends in all the wards! But seriously Mint Canyon is pretty bomb... For you Tina... ;)

And living closer to the family is pretty nice I must say, yesterday we got to go and spend the day with grandparents and cousins and then turn around and drive home...And living closer to L.A. is pretty fun too! and I was missing those mountains...;)









 Our Secret Park  









Our home is just to the left of Deveon's ear ;)


An only one mishap from our double move...



Tuesday, May 1

Goodbye to our old home...

This was the day I drove Lexi, Noah and Lily down to Grandma's before flying back up a day later for our big move to So Cali! Which by the way was suppose to consist of Josh driving a truck, Brother Jesse driving second truck with girlfriend at the time Shelbee and me driving Josh's car down to Simi...Except half way through the loading up day, We realized we were not going to cut it with only two trucks! So who had to drive a small Uhaul down to Simi??? ME! I almost cried but I stayed strong...had to put my big girl pants on and just do it! It was pretty awful but whatevs! Shelbee had to drive Josh's car so we were all alone in our cars/trucks...

Back to our drive down to Simi with the three little ones in my car, we stopped at In'n'Out for lunch and Noah shouts to all the people standing in line "Hello to all the People of the World!!!" Had me laughing...oh that kids does not have a shy bone in the body!

This is our Cute home in Elk Grove ;) Man this is weird seeing this picture...Kinda miss it :( It was a beautiful home and we had three of our five kids here...I'm glad I took all these pictures of the rooms so I can always remember and show the kids when they are older...I love seeing photos like that of my childhood homes!

Living Room looking into the Kitchen

 Boys Bedroom


Our Office/Lily's Room hahaha...see her pack'n'play? We are ghetto like that...Noah did that too...oh well...


 Our Family Room

Our Kitchen


Our Laundry Room/Mud Room


Our Living Room



Our Bathroom Downstairs



Lexi and Noah's Room


Can't believe it's been 8 months now since we moved from this house...Wow... Seems crazy but I will always have some fun memories in this house and we are loving our new house! ;)

Friday, March 2

Yes, We are still alive...

I guess I just dont know where to begin... We finally made the move back down to Southern California and I should feel complete since this is what we have wanted for a long time but I have mixed emotions. We are only a half hour away from the family {on both sides} but we are still a half hour away so we again find ourselves somewhat sort of lost in a new town with a new ward Again! I really miss my best friend Tami and her adorable little family that is growing and changing without us there in Elk Grove I know we will always stay close and visit often, especially since we have already visited eachother a total of three times since August! and a fourth trip is already in the works lol... I have to admit that since we've moved, it is even unsettling to even go onto my blog without tears coming to my eyes as I think of all my Elk Grove memories. My whole blog began while in Elk Grove {well technically it was started in Simi at the end of a Europe trip and I wasn't sleeping since I was still on Euro time} but our life was in Elk Grove and seeing all of those pictures makes it painful to look at remembering our house, our parks, the kids friends... I know change is hard and even though this is what we wanted it is so painful to let go of the past. I would never trade it for anything, some of the bestest friends we have we met in Northern California but I think getting this out will help me to start the new chapter in our life. This week has been especially hard since I am not really enjoying being the new girl anymore. But I know these things take time, but patience is not a strength of mine.

I just wish it would start to feel normal again soon.

My kids have now gone to 2 schools since we moved from Elk Grove. We stayed in Simi for 4 months while we sold our EG home and looked for a house here in So Cal. They attended Wood Ranch Elementary which we Loved! I love Simi ;)

House Hunting was NOT fun. Someone said it was fun...It was fun for about a minute...No, you know when it is fun, when your not intending to buy. While we were in Elk Grove, me and Josh would just take an occasional Saturday and just pick a city we wanted to move to out in Sacramento and we would go look at model homes or drive around and see some areas we would maybe move to. That was fun. But we could never decide on a city. We would settle on a city or area, until the next time we went looking, and bam! we would find a new area we loved! hahaha...

But when it came down to actually putting an offer on a house...That was scary and not fun.
We looked everywhere in Los Angeles near Pasadena or Duarte {where hubby's new job is}, including Brea in the O.C. and Chino Hills in San Bern., We actually put an offer on a house in Brea, I secretly hoped it wouldn't go thru since I just didn't feel like it was the one. They didn't accept. Then the night before we were going to put an offer on a Short Sale REO in Granada Hills, I went online to look at the model homes in Santa Clarita my Sis In Law April told me about and since it was in our price range I deceded to give them a look before we made the offer. Here we are in Santa Clarita and we are quickly learning that this city is L.A.'s best kept secret ;) shhh...you didn't here me say that...

Josh's new job is amazing. I think he really likes it. He has gotten used to his commute which is hardly any traffic and is ~5o minutes to and ~40 minutes home. That's great for L.A. ;) We live here off the 14 so he takes the 14 to the 5 to the 210. He is getting to know lots of good restaurants in the fancy Pasadena area since his co-worker lives out there. Then he takes me! Josh does research in a lab as a Nuclear Pharmacist for the Beckman Research Dept. at the City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte CA. yes it's a mouthful ;) he works on cute little cancer induced mice :( but one day he might cure cancer ;)

I knew I had to vent before I could move on start my blog again. That this was just a hiccup in our little world. Josh and I have new callings in our ward which is helping to make things seem a little more normal and we spoke and are going to sing in church in a couple weeks. We have met some really nice families in our community and some really nice girls who all love to excercise at our church every morning except Tuesdays when we go to the park {they even let me be an instructor for a couple zumba routines that I made up} I really enjoyed it!...

I had actually thought about starting a new blog and ending this one but I decided that's not me. I want all of it here together. My world. My blog... My favorite people and my favorite blogs.

I'm excited to finally take our yearly family pictures next weekend. They are at least 3 months over due but maybe I can get Easter cards sent out instead of my usual Christmas cards! lol

Please leave a comment if you have a blog and you're not on my blog list...;)

Next step...Uploading my pictures from September to now...