Monterey

A lot of our family have been asking for pictures of our house.  I've been reluctant to post pictures because our house isn't 'finished' yet.  All of the boxes are unpacked and everything is put away, but we haven't hung pictures and we still need to get some things for the house.  This house is a lot bigger than our home in Virginia.  It has 1903 sqft!  That is huge for California and us.  We would never be able to afford something like this out in town, so we decided to live in base housing.  It's 2 stories, 3 bedrooms and 2.5 baths.

 Front of the house

 The driveway is on the left, and there is a 2 car garage attached to the house.

 View when you enter the house.  The door to the left is the downstairs bathroom and the door to the right is a closet.

 From the front door, looking left.

 From the front door, looking right.

 Kitchen

 More kitchen.  Through the doorway there is the laundry area and a storage room.

 Attached to the kitchen is a nook.  We need either a small kitchen table or an island here.  You can see the family room just past Annabelle's bowls.

Family room.  AKA Rob's office.

I haven't posted any pictures of the upstairs, because it's a work in progress.  Our room is finished, but the spare bedroom furniture needs some work.  During the move, the legs on our chest of drawers and dresser snapped or cracked.  The furniture pieces are not damaged, they are just missing legs.  Also, the 3rd bedroom is pretty much empty.  In our last house, we used the 3rd bedroom as a storage area.  Well, here we have an internal storage room AND external storage space in the garage.  Once we finish the upstairs, I will post pictures.  If you want to see it sooner, you'll just have to come visit us!

More Road Trip...

As I mentioned in my previous post, we drove from Virginia to Florida and stayed in Florida for a week visiting family.  We got up bright and early on Labor Day to start our cross country drive.  We loaded up the car, got our baby girl and we were off!  I've made this cross country drive a couple of times as a child and teenager.  It's so much more different as an adult...it's boring!  Especially the drive across Texas.  Ugh, not fun at all.  The first day we made it to Texas.

 The start of our trip

 Poor Annabelle, she had to take 'medicine' to make the trip.

 The sun was just a little too bright this day...

It took ALL of the second day to get through Texas.  It rained a lot the second day.  A tropical storm landed off the coast of Texas and provided fun driving weather.  We ended our second day of driving in New Mexico.

The third day we made it to San Diego!  Rob and I were DONE with driving.  Okay, okay, Rob drove the whole way.  It's not that I didn't offer, though.  Anyway, we made it to Beau and Katie's house.  They moved to California last year.  Katie and Beau were nice enough to open their home to us for a couple of days.  They even let Annabelle stay, too!  It was definitely a nice break from the driving.

 Beau and Anna Cross

 Beau, Rob and Anna Cross

Me, Katie and Anna Cross

 Anna Cross and I at the USS Midway

Anna Cross, Navy Pilot. 

 This is the house I lived in when we lived in San Diego.

 This is the High School I attended my sophomore and part of my junior year

 This used to be a McDonalds.  It was my very first job!

 And FYI, I was employee of the month the first month I worked at McDonalds!

 It was a little bit cooler in San Diego than Annabelle was used to.

Annabelle LOVED Anna Cross, she was just the right size for kisses!

Thank you to Katie and Beau (and Anna Cross!) for letting us stay with them.  We had such an awesome time!

Up next...Monterey!

Road trip

After an incredibly long deployment and an amazing vacation, it was finally time for us to leave Virginia and move to California.  We were splitting up our trip into three parts.  The first part we would drive from Virginia to Florida to visit family (and pick up Annabelle!).   Second part we would drive from Florida to San Diego to visit our friends, Katie and Beau (and their daughter Anna Cross).  Third part we would drive from San Diego to Monterey.

We were both very excited to leave Virginia.  It wasn't a bad place to live, we were just ready to move on and experience new places.  And we were excited about seeing Annabelle again.  My parents were nice enough to take care of her while we were in Europe and preparing for our move.  I hadn't seen Annabelle in 6 weeks and Rob hadn't seen her in 7 months!

We stayed in Florida about a week.  Here are a few pictures from our drive and visit.

I will post more about the rest of our trip later!