California!!!! I never thought this would be our home, but we are loving it. It has been a BIG transition for the family after being at BYU, but we have been here for 1 year now and we are treating it like a working holiday. One of the harder transitions was getting the children up to speed with Californian schooling. The other possibly harder transition was finding new specialists and resources for Isaac. Learning which doctors to go to and where!! Working out our health insurance for all of Isaac's issues has been a major headache.
Thank goodness for fun!!!! Giants baseball game in San Francisco.
To keep me SANE I really look forward to Date night with Dave. Sometimes when every day is filled with therapy for Isaac and medical appointments, I NEED to have something to look forward too! With some friends one Saturday night we headed to San Francisco. This city is a blast! It is also great to go with friends who know their way around and know the best spots to go.
Isaac's EEG, St Mary hospital.
Isaac has a rare type of epilepsy. This EEG for Isaac was to monitor seizure activity in his brain. We had to keep him up till 12:00 then wake him up at 4:00am so that he would be asleep for the test at 9;30. We nearly couldn't get him to sleep for the EEG though. The nurse informed us that we would have to come in again and do the process all over again. In a calm but forceful voice I told her to give me 5 more minutes!!!! I'm happy to say we did not have to go in a second time!!!!!
Beach day's!
Love the beaches here but really miss the ones back home. The water here is considerably colder and you have to head out after lunch once the fog has lifted and the sun is finally hot (though many days in summer the fog doesn't clear at all and it stays cold). And what ever beach we want to go to at least an hours drive away. (Miss being so close to the Perth beaches!)
Isaac's 3rd birthday!
For Isaac's birthday we went and explored the bay area and enjoyed a picnic. Savannah made a Disney cars birthday cake for him. We had been in northern Cali less than a month and we were exploring our home town in a touristy kind of way!
He was so happy when the children finally got home from school and could play with him on his birthday.
Gran and Grandad got to have a quick visit as well. It is always so wonderful to see family however big or small. I wish I had more photos of this because grandad was on the trampoline too. (It was very funny!) Isaac was in heaven!
Half moon Bay. We always forget that when you drive to the coast that the temp drops 10 degrees. We were all COLD.
It was close to halloween and we were all very amused by all the pumpkin patches and halloween fun there was to do. Love Grandads SCARY look!
In November the Bennion family and our family were invited to go to the Johnson's cabin. It was amazing. 3 stories and it fitted 12 children and 6 adults easily. Very, very fun!
Going on a hike near the cabin. The children all had walkie talkies. Total hoot.
Halloween
Before halloween even started we had about 5 halloween activites on our calendar. Through church, school or friends!!! Oh my goodness............... halloween is bigger than our Easter. Crazy!
Gorgeous Emily Carpenter was a friend from the MBA program. She is also in our ward here in California. We went to her house for dinner and she showed us how to have some halloween fun. When we move back to Australia, this will probably be the festivity the kids miss most!!!!!! It is the thing I will miss the least!!
Another halloween craziness was organized by friends from the ward who divided people into about 8 teams who then for a week were involved in pumpkin carving, playing practical jokes on other teams as well as other activities that they would score points on. It concluded with each team on a Halloween themed Amazing Race to determine the winner. It was a lot of fun.
Pranking one of the other teams. The children thought this was the best thing around!
Our car.Pranked!!! Some of the things teams did to us, or left on our door step!! The best prank was one evening when Dave was working late at work and I happened to be on the phone to him. It was about 9:00 at night and the door bell rang and I knew it was probably one of the other teams pranking us. I open the door thinking there would be some scary treat on the door step.........heck no! About 7 of the henchmen team members were hiding around the corner and one of the young men, Travis, was dressed like Chewbacca from Star Wars and came running at me. As I retreated back into the house scared out of my brains he ran in with this pretend sword. I have never screamed louder in my life and YAY, I had 7 witnesses watching me freak out!!! So funny!!! This naughty team got a little out of control and before me Travis had broken into our friends home and freaked one of the children out, not realising the parents weren't home. Another team kidnapped children and took them to baskin robbins. Very, very fun!!!!
Kids have only have half a day of school, the rest is halloween craziness!!!
That about covers the first 4 months in our new home.
