Oakland

Aubrey and I both have colds so we weren't sure what to do today as its Jared's day off. We didn't want to stay inside another day. We decided to drive up to Oakland and Berkeley to see the area. We stopped for some mexican food and just drove around. We ended up at the Temple on our way back. I've never seen such a pretty Temple before and Jared had never been in a visitors center before! The view over Oakland and San Francisco from the temple was amazing. I can't wait to see it on a sunny day.

We stayed to wait for the Christmas lights to turn on before heading home. Not all the lights made it on while we were there.

NEW HOUSE

We finally found our new home! We don't move in until the end of the month but now I don't have to worry about it over Christmas.
It's only about 4 miles from the hotel so Jared can still bike to work, it's also close to church and a really great school for Aubrey next year.

It's the duplex on the left in this photo. There are 2 sets of duplexes on this driveway. At the end are 2 single car garages (we get one) on each side and then a common yard area with a picnic table and more orange trees. The 2 little trees in front of our place are orange trees and there's a tiny lemon tree in the back as well. There's also a couple huge avocado trees that are on the property line behind us that I'm hoping will drop some food on our back door! It's a cute little single story duplex with 1000 sq.ft. with a pretty big but older kitchen. The living room has a big bay window as well as a smaller one in the dining room (you can see it in this photo). There's a laundry room with hook-ups so we'll have to buy a washer and dryer but it will be nice to get away from coin laundry! The private driveway will be nice for Aubrey to play in, especially down at the end where the garages are - it's a round space like at the end of a cul-de-sac. There's a nice park just up the street that has a water park too and is right next to the community center. The area we are in is called Willow Glen and it has it's own little village to it. We are just south of the village by a couple blocks but on the main road of it - so it's in walking distance.

We could move in right away but we have to give a couple weeks notice to the moving company to get our stuff out of storage so that means after Christmas. As nice as it would be to be moved in before Christmas, it's probably better that way as Jared has to be on call Christmas Day for a couple hours in the afternoon and that makes it easier if we were all still here. He also works New Year's Eve and they have a big party in the lobby/lounge area of the hotel that we can come down for as well.

SAN FRANCISCO

Yesterday we were looking for something to do and we were just going to drive as far as Palo Alto but we ended driving all the way to San Francisco (about an hour). It was a cold wet day but we drove all around and mostly stayed in the car. We saw the Painted Ladies ( aka the Full House houses), the crooked Lombard Street and we walked on the Pier and had some lunch.

SANTA CRUZ

I'm running out of entertaining things to do that don't involve shopping. I'm not very good at it. The hotel room is hard to stay in all day especially with limited toys. Today Aubrey and I drove 40 mins to Santa Cruz. It was a nice little drive and so nice to see the ocean again. We watched the surfers, drove around and went to the beach. The board walk was closed but looks like it would be fun in the summer.

CHRISTMAS IN A HOTEL

This will be a new type of Christmas for us this year. As it stands we will still be here for Christmas. Today we picked up an artificial tree for our room. Normally the hotel has some on hand, but they seem to be missing! Jared bought a couple for the hotel and we get to use one. Aubrey helped me decorate it tonight.
Since we already have decorations that are packed we didn't want to buy to much, and I'm sure we will leave them here, but I want a star topper so Jared challenged me to make one - so I did. I crocheted one and it works pretty good!

HAPPY HOLLOW ZOO

We went to the zoo today and the great thing about it was our previous zoo pass was good for this zoo too.

It's not a huge zoo and there aren't a lot of animals but they were some that we've never seen before so that was nice. Half the zoo is just a huge play area - which Aubrey likes more than animals anyway! There was a huge playground and lots of little rides that didn't cost anything extra which was nice.

Aubrey loved rides! She went on her first roller coaster with Jared and I can see lots of amusement park visits in our future!

CHILDREN'S MUSEUM

I thought I'd give Aubrey a day off from shopping or house hunting so I took her to the children's Museum. It's within walking distance from the hotel.

I was impressed with the full sized real fire truck and ambulance. They were her favorite part too.

We walked back and checked out the pool on the way back to our room. The water was cold. It will take a really warm day to get me in there!