week ONE

Somehow I have lost my camera, it might be in the car, it might be really really lost.. I just know that it is NOT in the house because I have looked everywhere! And I can't look in the car because Jade has it at work.. yes, Jade is at work at 10:30pm... ugh. I am honestly so thankful for this job that God has provided for us, but I am struggling right now because Jade is working the "night shift" for his first few weeks which leaves me at home with the kids from 10 pm until 6 am in a new apartment in a big city.. Thankfully I have great family and friends who pray for me and call me late at night to check on me :) So here are a few pictures off of my phone.. a little blurry but Kayla told me that since I wrote TWO long entries prior to this one, that I HAD to put on some pictures haha.. So here is something that was amazing to me.. out Target is HUGE and has 3 levels.. thus it has a cart escalator.. I went grocery shopping and it scared me to death to put my cart through this little gate and send it down the steep slope- but everyone else was doing it so I went for it.. and I took a picture haha

My cute little security guard.. I made Jade take these pictures his first day.. well, his first NIGHT on the job. :) He is struggling with the new schedule of being up all night and trying to sleep during the day with some much to do around the house and noisy kids, but I am honestly so so proud of him and how well he is handling it all!
Campus security.. watch where you park or he'll get ya!!
I have written a little about this on facebook for IKEA has been a very big part of our first week in California! Our first trip ended with a few random things in a bag and us feeling oh so overwhelmed by the experience of this massive store and many options. After a night to gather our thoughts, measure our apartment and look through the catalog.. we loaded the poor kids up again and headed back to IKEA.. this picture is of that 2nd trip :) Halle thought it was pretty great, but Will was hating this place and I am pretty sure if we ever go back he will scream. :)
Parking garages... hmmmm. There are no parking lots around here. Everything has parking under it. They take a little getting use to! Will starts yelling as loud as he can as soon as we enter a parking garage- he has realized that they echo and he loves to make noise :) Our apartment has parking underneath of it as well. This morning Jade was trying to get some sleep after his 5th night of working and I thought I would load up the kids and take them to church.. all by myself haha As you probably know, this is a big undertaking for me, the ever dependent wife who usually just wants to stay home. But I had decided on church and was SO ready to get out of the apartment for a while so I got up early, ironed all our clothes which were SO wrinkled from being in boxes. I made breakfast, got the kids dressed, locked Will in the bathroom with me so I could shower, got myself ready and finally headed down the elevator to the parking garage. I loaded Will and was about to load Halle when she started screaming "I have to go POOP!" She was freaking out so I could tell it was urgent. I told her to run to the elevator and push the "up button" and I ran around to get Will out of the car because I couldn't leave him in the basement.. we took the elevator up and then I ran to the apartment in my cute church shoes, dropped Will off, ran back to the elevator and picked up a screaming Halle who was saying, "The poops are coming!" and ran her back to our apartment. Anyway, we never did make it to church .. :( oh well, we will try again next week :) This picture is of our car in our apartment's garage.. Hondie (our car) is parked next to.. yes, that is a Porsche. We were laughing and saying how our car is out of her element just like we are out of ours :) Halle keeps saying that she loves her "new Halle house" and that she is glad that we came to California. We survived week 1 :) We will see what week 2 holds...