Homemade Gifts

I made a couple little gifts for Justin this year (don't worry I bought something nice too!).

The first one was a little map gift based on an idea found on Pinterest and described here.  It shows St. Louis ("met"), Denver/Littleton ("married"), and Sunnyvale ("live").  I just used the picture as inspiration and printed maps off of the internet, cut them out, and put them in a Target frame.

The other little thing was this ornament made from a key to our old apartment.  I just made a little tag for it with the place and dates we were there and on the back it has a note about it being our first apartment.

So there are 2 little projects I made for our new place.  I have a few more ideas so we'll see how motivated I'm feeling.

0 to 60 in 3.7

Justin brought home a Tesla Roadster to play with and we enjoyed it for the night.  It goes fast.  0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds.  Yep, that's fast.  It was awesome and also a little terrifying.

Also, it's tiny.  See?  It's hiding behind that bush.

You can do it Justin!  You can escape the tiny car!

And of course I insisted we take pictures with it.  Got to love the forest green with gold wheels!

Maybe in some future life we'll be able to afford a car like that :P

Christmas Week Part 2 - The Alspaughs

Once we said goodbye to Justin's family, we got to turn around and welcome mine!

We only had about a day and a half with them so there were fewer adventures but we still got to take in downtown Sunnyvale and Mountain View.

And, most importantly, we got to go here:

This is a huge museum detailing the last 2000 years of computing history, from the abacus to the debate between PCs or Macs.  My dad collects old computers, components, and other paraphernalia related to the development of computers so he actually has some of this stuff in his collection too but other things are really one-of-a-kind and really a special treat to see.  Even if you're not a huge computer nerd (we can't all be...), it's fun to see how much of the "history" you once owned (PalmPilot? Apple Newton? 3 1/2 inch floppy disk?).

Remember these?

Christmas Week Part 1 - The Chars

We've had Justin's family here for about 4 days and my parents for a couple days after that so this has basically been one long awesome Christmas week.

For the first time (including when we were living in Irvine) we were able to host a dinner in our apartment with people sitting at a table instead of on the floor.  With Justin's family we visited with other family members in the area (great-aunts, second cousins, etc.) and visited the Golden Gate Bridge.

We also explored Half Moon Bay to walk on the cliffs, see the seals, and eat lunch at a haunted restaurant that use to be a speakeasy (sadly there was no sign of the ghost that day). 

 

There were seals but the beach is closed to keep people from walking too close so I couldn't get a good picture.  Instead here's a picture of the sign:

Near the restaurant there was this sign.  Look closely - see those people out on the trail with the extreme danger?  Yep, those are my sisters-in-law.

 Visits with the Chars are always an adventure!

Chirstmas!

Just thought I'd give you a quick peak at the apartment before Justin's family comes this evening.

We got a Christmas present in the form of a free 7ft tree from Home Depot.  Guess that's the benefit to waiting till Christmas Eve to get a tree.  That worked out for us since that was the first day we had enough space in the apartment to put up a tree.  Now we've got our tree, stockings, lights on the balcony, and presents.  So ready :)

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Fastest Unpacking in the West

Since we had less than a week between moving in and having family visit for Christmas, we've moved pretty fast with the unpacking.

Here's a shot of the living room with the new couch and tons of boxes and bags sitting around.  And the fish tank which was of course the first thing set up.  We love our little guppies!

The boxes left after the kitchen was unpacked.

The patio became a dumping ground for everything that just needed to get out of the way while other things were unpacked.  Since then everything has found a home and we got a sweet table and chairs for out there.

In the midst of the chaos, we got a new Ikea table.  Nothing we love more than putting together furniture :)

And finished!  We already had the 2 white-covered chairs and with the addition of 4 black adjustable stools, we can seat 6 people.  We're pretty excited to host Christmas dinner when family comes.

So all it took was 6 days of work, 3 trips to Ikea, and a little bit of cramping boxes into closets and we're ready for visitors!

If you're thinking of moving yourself...

...seek professional help.

We managed to move ourselves and all our belongs the nearly 400 miles north to Sunnyvale.  And it is not something I would ever want to repeat.  I'm very impressed that we got everything down from our old apartment, into a U-Haul, through the 7 hour drive, and up into the new apartment.  By ourselves.  Including the stairs.  But, seriously, never again.  We had planned to leave on Saturday but quickly realized we were kidding ourselves as we spent all day Saturday packing and loading and left on Sunday instead.

Source: Uhaul.com because I somehow forgot to take a picture of our truck.

Things that saved our butts:

• An appliance dolly rented from U-Haul - it has straps for tying stuff on and rollers on the back for getting up or down steps.  Also, a wheeled cart borrowed from the apartment office.

• An elevator down from our old 4th floor apartment
• An extra roll of paper towels left in the old apartment to clean up the very last second dropping of a glass bottle of Bailey's
• Music for the drive and NPR podcasts for when my voice started going out after 3 hours of singing along
• Superhuman strength that comes from realizing that your sofa is wedged in the stairwell and you have to lift it up to free it even though a few minutes ago you couldn't lift it at all
• Plenty of patience with each other

Since our new apartment doesn't have an elevator, the unloading was a pretty challenging experience.  Then we decided to quickly find a couch on Craigslist so we could get it home using the U-Haul before having to return it.  And it was getting the couch up the stairs that almost killed us.  And, yes, we might be slightly crazy.

But it feels so good to be home!

Bonus Picture: Justin cuts up a kiwi using the knife from our emergency kit and a pizza box as a cutting board because we'd packed everything else.