Goodbye California

Goodbye beautiful California.
I'm going to miss you. You have been good to me and my heart hurts a little as I type this.


Goodbye day trips to Santa Barbara.

Goodbye annoying 25mph speed limit all the way up the hills to my house.

Goodbye amazing Camarillo parks and playgrounds.

Goodbye super nice mailman, Terry.

Goodbye amazing view of Ventura county/little sliver of the Pacific ocean from my windows.

Goodbye Ryan's angelic nursery teachers who graciously put up with his antics.

Goodbye best weather in the world. Sunny blue skies at 70-80 degrees year-round.

Goodbye good friends who are even better examples.

Goodbye racial and cultural diversity.

Goodbye most amazing strawberries grown in the free world.

Goodbye over-priced gasoline.

Goodbye my most favorite visiting teachers/friends ever - Gayle and Keiko.

Goodbye delicious avocado trees in my backyard.

Goodbye scary county road without sidewalks that I run on in my neighborhood.

Goodbye 10-15 minute drive to the beach.

Goodbye living across the street from one of my best friends and the BEST old-person EVER. Jared's grandma.

 

Goodbye quiet drives down Pacific Coast Highway.

Goodbye kids at the Boys and Girls Club, who made me laugh hard and taught me all the dirty words in Spanish.

Goodbye Roscoe's chicken and waffles.

Goodbye trips to Ventura just to buy lemon bars and thick bacon at Lassen's.

Goodbye two of my most favorite girls ever.

 

Goodbye cute little friends who played with Ryan.

 



 

I am leaving you for another state. One with my family, and reasonable real estate prices.


It's not you California...... it's me.

 

 

p.s. Lisa, don't worry, I'm alive. :)

Moving

Jared and I were married in Utah, where all my family lives.
One month into our married life, J surprised me by pretty much telling me I was moving to Ohio. I was like, what the hell Jared???

His Dad had just moved to Dayton, Ohio from Los Angeles and wanted Jared to live by him.

I resisted for months, but once Jared gets an idea in his head, resistance is futile.
So we packed up our crappy one room apartment, left my entire family, drove to Dayton, and moved into his Dad's basement.

There, Jared bought a nasty old house for Jared to remodel....... sound familiar? Probably because Jared loves to buy nasty houses.

By the way, Ohio is BEAUTIFUL.

A year and a half later, Jared finally finished the house. As soon as we moved into the newly remodeled Ohio house -guess what..... yep, Jared got another idea in his head and we rushed to sell the house. Two months after moving in, we were packing up to live in California.



California did not involve his Dad's basement, and we would be closer to my messed up family, so I was only partiality mad at leaving my pretty new house.

In California, we moved into Jared's awesome grandparents house. After 4 months we bought the house directly across the street. We have been living here for over 6 years.

You saw the before pictures. Our California house was nassssstttty. Jared has spent every second of free time for the last FOUR YEARS remodeling this place.
He likes it though.

It does suck that I have the kids all the time and we rarely hung out as a family. Plus the mess of remodeling is incredible. Also, the amount of money spent on the materials was INSANE. We didn't end up saving any money by having Jar-bear do the work.
But it's all ok, because now it's all done and I can finally relax in my pretty remodeled California house!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just kidding!

A few months ago Jared decided he hates his job and that we need to move to Utah so our boys can grow up with family close by.

We had planned on staying in California the rest of our lives. Jared has always wanted to live here since it is his home. I never though the day would come when Jared wanted to move to Utah.

I had made my peace with the fact that we would never live by my family, so this has been pretty weird. I haven't lived in Utah for 10 years.


A few weeks ago, Jared was offered a job in Utah on the spot. Literally the NEXT DAY, we sold our house.

My self-diagnosed case of OCD led me to pack everything up early, meticulously label everything, and color code each box with duck tape.

We even packed up Ryan:

My kids and I usually garner a lot of pity from other people so I know I'll at least be able to get invites to a few Herriman, UT playgroups.

 I'm scared to say goodbye to everyone and everything here, because I'll probably cry. I hate crying. 

Bad Day

Yesterday was a bad day.

First of all I'm breaking out and my face looks like a topographical map.

I thought I would dress up a little, and by dress up a little, I mean get out of my pajamas. I pulled out some khakis only to find they wouldn't pull up past my post-pregnancy thighs..... looks like I'll keep wearing my maternity jeans for another few months.

 To make myself feel better I ate 3 bowls of Captain Crunch cereal..... with Crunch Berries.

I had to run some errands. Of course it took a lot longer than I planned - as everything takes longer with a feral 3 year old and a tiny baby.

Pretty soon Cryin' Ryan and I had eaten all the candy from the bottom of my purse, and Tyler was screaming for food.

We stopped at some little Mexican food place (no, unfortunately it was not my favorite restaurant ever, Taco Bell) and I lugged the kids and everything else in.

I bought some food and sat in a corner booth, because I know my kids are spirited freaking psychos, and I wanted to shield the other lunch customers from their shenanigans.

Right after we sit down, Ryan grabbed for the drink, knocked it over, and spilled red fruit punch ALL OVER my white shirt. I was pissed.

He looked up at me with terror in his eyes.

I felt so bad. I don't want my kid to look at me like I'm going to murder him.
I said "Dude. It's cool, it was just an accident" and he literally wiped his hand across his forehead and said "Whew! That was close."

We ate. I fed Tyler some baby food, but he wanted boobs. He starts screaming again. I hate breast-feeding in public so I was doing everything I could to calm him down.

 Then, I knew I didn't have a choice.

The problem was, I could not find my breast-feeding cover-up thing. With titty monkey shrieking and everyone trying not to stare at me, I pulled my boob out of my fruit punch-covered shirt and shoved it in his mouth.

While this is not the first time I have flashed people (I did go to college...) it was still weird and uncomfortable and creepy.
I gave the meanest stink-eye to everyone, DARING them to say something to me about it.
No one did.

Then I ate way too much Mexican, ensuring that I won't fit in normal pants for even longer.

Yeah. I've definitely had better days.