Officially Californians

This post is for the family and friends who wanted to see our new home in California. So WARNING: Lots of pictures.

The night before we left AZ we took a farewell grandpuppy picture. Since my parents don't have any grandkids yet, this picture will have to do.
Jessica with Izzy and Lily. Me with Jade and Jax. Dustin with Squirttle

We headed out bright and early Friday morning. We drove a Uhaul and towed our car on the back. My little bro. Sterling came with us to help with the move. Thanks Ster!!

The drive went really smooth with no problems at all. It took us 15 hours to get there, not to bad since our max speed limit was 70.

Hehe. This how we brought our dogs: Stuck them in the backseat of our car (that was being towed) and loaded them up with rawhides to chew on. I think they were a bit confused about there whereabouts most of the time.

Pulling into our apartment complex early Saturday morning. Finally we made it!

Ours is the one on the top floor. Poor boys had to carry our heavy stuff up 3 flights of stairs. I felt really bad for them.

The dog house/bed. This is where the dogs hang out most of the time. I know the camo house is hideous but they love it oh so much. So it's worth having the ugly thing in our home.

Where I spend most of my days...the office area (aka the corner of the living room). I am doing insurance account managing for my uncle and dad long distance now. And I have LOVED working from home. I'm pretty productive while working in my PJ's all day.

The other side of the living room and our amazing and super comfy couch. Also my view from my desk which is another perk of working from home. And yes I was watching Dog the Bounty Hunter. Don't judge.

**Everything is super plain and unorganized still. I haven't put up any of our pictures or decorations yet. I promise it will be homey and adorable some time soon**

Our kitchen. Hmmm. I love having my own kitchen space again. I've missed my tupperware and cooking utensils.

The only utility closet in the condo. Ugh! I have to cram everything in this tiny closet (besides our walk in bedroom closet that is equally stuffed). We do have our garage below us to store stuff, but it is lacking inside storage space.

Bathroom

Bedroom

Other side of Bedroom

View from our balcony. We love our view! We definitly got the best one in the complex.

So the next few pictures is what I spend the 2nd most amount of time doing during the day: Dog walks. I feel bad for them since they are crammed up inside all day, so we go on quite a few. I really don't mind though because the area we live in is so nice and has great places to walk around.

Hanging out at the grass park across the street from our apartment

The other side of the grass park...this gorgeous view! The golf course is right below, but the dogs like exploring on the hill side.

Walking down the many paths

Trip to the Dog Park. It's only a few miles down the road. It's been nice to take the dogs there to get some energy out of their system.

We have really enjoyed our first couple of days here in San Ramon. We are so happy we chose this beautiful area to live in and feel lucky to have the home we live in as well. We are excited to start a whole new chapter in our lives being on our own in California. We've visited our ward on Sunday and I love how we can move to an entire new region, but still feel the warmth and comfort of the church and it's members. We will miss our family and friends so please.....

COME VISIT US SOON!

We promise to take you to this fun place:
(Pier 39 in San Fran, with Alcatraz in the back)

Merry 2011

This post is long over due since Christmas/New Years was like forever ago. But like always, I'm trying to document our lovely lives.

So Christmas 2010 was spent with both the Allens and Masseys. We spent early Christmas morning over at the Howey's to watch the kidos open presents. Love it! It makes Christmas morning so much more enjoyable. We had a great breakfast with the Allen family.

We then headed over to my parent's house to open our presents but most importantly, talk to the twins (who are on their mish).

Christmas Morning

Talking to Preston (Argentina) while sitting around the Christmas candy table

SKYPING with Taylor (Paraguay). It was A.W.E.S.O.M.E. He loved that we could take the computer and show him our Christmas around the house.

The remainder of 2010 was a cold one. See below. That's right...it was snowing in Mesa (even though it didn't stick to the ground at all).

For New Years Weekend my parents rented a condo up in Pinetop to hang out and go snowboarding. I love mini-vacays!

Driving in the blizzard up to Pinetop. The usual 3 hour drive took us 7...Blah!

Part of the reason the drive took so long...we had to figure out how to put chains on our cars. Us Arizona peeps aren't used to this kind of stuff.

Finally made it to the condo and the hot tub. Hmmm.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! This is how we rang in the new year...playing settlers...

...and guzzling Sparkling Cider

We woke up bright and early to go snowboarding at Sunrise on New Years Day

It was -9 degrees...Oh.My.Burrrr.

Dad and Mom

Jake and Jessica

Sterling

So after a great day of Snowboarding (with no falls for me...yesss), we came home to our condo. We opened the door and water came POURing out of the front door. We walked in to 6 inches of water on the entire bottom floor. Flooded. I guess that's what happens when it's ridiculously cold outside and the pipes freeze then burst. So we spent 2 hours sweeping water out (barefoot I might add) and trying to get everything off the ground and packed into our cars.

We ended up staying at a lovely Motel 8 that night. Overall it had potential to be an awesome New Years Weekend with the family in the mountains. It was still a fun and memorable one though.

My lack of posting has been due to a BUSY December/January. We are officially moved in to our new apartment here in Northern Cali. Post and pictures of the move coming soon!

cHrIsTmAs time is near

MERRY almost CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! Can you believe it's Christmas in 5 days? December has been flying by and we are ready to celebrate. Owen will finally be home for the rest of the week so we can relax and enjoy the holiday season with friends and family.

I've spent the last week shopping, baking, celebrating, wrapping, working, and decorating. It's been Christmas craziness in my house. So behold...some of the craziness:

Christmas Cookie baking

Thanks to my mom for getting all of the baking supplies

8 hours and 300 sugar cookies later...

Owen's parents are in town for Christmas and we kicked off the week by visiting the AZ Temple lights. We are blessed to have so many family and friends to celebrate the Christmas season with!

Holidays and House Hunting

Thanksgiving 2010 was a great one for us. My family always hosts Thanksgiving Dinner for the Massey family. This year we had 54 people over for a Thanksgiving Feast. All morning (week) was spent preparing for the big day. I love the small traditions Thanksgiving brings: waking up Thanksgiving morning to the smell of the Turkey cooking in the oven, turning on to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade all morning, making last minute food preparations, eating TONS of food then napping in the afternoon. It was a great Turkey day.

Owen was able to play in the annual Turkey Bowl with his friends

3 Turkeys, 30 lbs. of mashed potatoes, 10 pies and a dozen other dishes later...our Thanksgiving feast!

We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and seeing family and friends. We did, however, skip out on the Black Friday shopping. My someday we will experience this crazy day, but we enjoyed sleeping in together instead.

We found a tree at the tree lot and got it decorated for Christmas

We spent the cold Arizona nights being warmed by the fire


This last weekend Owen's company flew both of us to go house hunting (or apartment hunting in our case) in San Francisco. We are moving our little family there in January so we needed to find a place new place to call home. We arrived Friday morning and spent all day Friday and Saturday looking at apartments. Before we left, I made a long list of apartments I found on line to check out. Some of our musts: allows dogs, has washer/dryer, has enough storage space, doesn't cost a zillion dollars, close to a Target (ok...that was one of my musts) , central for Owen's work, and someplace safe looking. We drove all around the bay area looking at all kinds of places. Finally, we narrowed down our search to a city we liked and then an apartment complex. So our soon to be home will be in San Ramon, CA. The city is directly east of Oakland and San Fransisco. 25 minutes to Oakland. 35 minutes to San Fran. I was suprisingly pleased with our findings. The location, apartment quality and price was exactly what we were looking for (even though rent will be twice as much as Arizona...grrr). I have honestly been really nervous about moving to a place where I know nothing about. But now that I know the city and place we will be living in, I feel a lot better. I am actually really excited for the big move. I can't wait to be in our own place again and have Owen home more often. Below are pictures of the condos we will be living at:

I loved the pretty trees in the area.

Since we found an apartment to live in, we spent Sunday playing tourists. We stopped by the Oakland Temple. OH MY BEAUTIFUL! The temple sits on a hill so you can see it from across the bay. It looks like a princess castle and I loved it.

The view from the temple grounds. Oakland is below, then San Fran in the distance across the bay

We headed down to The Wharf in San Francisco and visted the Piers. Even though it was pouring rain the whole time, we managed to see a lot fun things. I forgot how awesome it is at The Wharfs. It is a beautiful place with a lot of fun things to do. I'm excited to visit it more often when we move there. A perfect place to take our future visitors :)