Lots of laughs!

Gabe had a good afternoon playing. Every once in a while, he gets this toy 'stuck' somewhere and he loves how the little springy guy hits other objects when he plays with it. This kept him giggling for a good 10 minutes or more.

More fun in the bathtub!

Easter

Easter was definitely different for us this year, since we weren't with any of our own family.
We started the day by going to church. We went to the same church we tried the week before, just because we didn't want to try a new church on Easter. But I still do want to check out some other ones in the coming weeks, just to see what else there is.
After church, we drove to California City, which is about an hour away. A family we had met at the church the week before invited us over to have Easter dinner with their family. So that was nice to be included in that. It was fun to get out and meet some more people. We spent a few hours there, and headed home around 4. Gabe hadn't napped yet (and hadn't gotten a decent nap the day before either) and wasn't going to last much longer before turning in to a crab. So he slept in the car on the drive home. We got home and just had a quiet night hanging out.

Weekend shopping

On Saturday we drove down to Bakersfield and did some shopping. We hit up Sam's Club, Walmart and Ashley Furniture and were pretty successful at all three places. :-) Gabe was a trooper and was very patient through it all.



At Sam's Club, we got a new printer/scanner (our old one didn't survive the move). We also got a bunch of bulk food and household goods. Good thing we drove the van - although we probably could have squeezed everything in the car. After Sam's we grabbed lunch quick at Farmer Boy's - a Culver's type fast food restaurant. The food was pretty good, but a little expensive for fast food. Walmart was more groceries and household stuff. Nothing too exciting.



At Ashley Furniture, we looked around for quite a while then finally decided to go ahead and order the things we liked. We got a counter height table with 6 stools.

The table has a butterfly leaf, which we really like. When the leaf is out, it's a big square table. The 6 stools fit around nicely, even without the leaf in.

We also ordered a sleeper sofa. (Hopefully it will get a lot of use from the many visitors we hope to have!)

Turns out, that same morning my mom ordered the same sofa and chair (although just a regular sofa - not a sleeper) in the same color as we did. Too funny.

Unfortunately the sofa sleeper was not in stock in their warehouse so it could take 5-7 weeks to get all of our furniture, but hopefully it comes in sooner.

After we finished at Ashely, we headed back to Tehachapi, with a quick stop at a farmer's maket for some fresh apples, oranges, almonds, and walnuts. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant in town, then headed home. But the shopping was not done yet - we ordered some stuff from Amazon when we got home, including a new cell phone for me, a mount for the tv in our bedroom and some fun orange luggage (since we will be flying a lot more now).

First Steps

Gabe took his first steps today all on his own! He's still pretty wary of just standing without something to hold on to, but if there's something fairly close in front of him, he has started taking a couple steps to get to it!

Grocery shopping...

I paid $3 for a pound of butter today. And that was the sale price. That was half off the regular price. CRAZY! And slightly depressing. At Cub, butter was $3 to $4 a pound full price and sometimes went on sale for 99 cents. A lot of groceries seem a bit higher priced out here. It's kind of annoying, because the store's brand is distributed by Supervalu (MN) and so the store brand packaging is the same as Cub's store packaging - just different store name on it. So I know it's the exact same thing, but a lot of the stuff is twice the price. But I guess that's what you get when they have to ship it from MN to CA. :-(  General Mills cereal is a lot higher priced too.
Luckily we are able to get much fresher produce here than in MN and usually the price will be much lower. So hopefully that will help offset the prices of everything else.

One week...




Gabe loves to put objects on this gear toy, push the button and watch them spin around.

 




I got a shoe-shaped luggage tag and it is Gabe's new favorite toy. For whatever reason, it makes him laugh so much!

   
Well we've been in California for one whole week. It was a tough week, but we made it! On Thursday, Gabe & I drove down to Lancaster, dropped the van off to get tires rotated and then spent the day with some friends. It was fun to see them and for Gabe to get to play with some other kids.

This weekend we got our DirecTV installed - hooray! There is no broadcast tv reception up here in the mountains and no cable, so satellite tv is the only option. That will be a bit of a change - I was totally happy with just free broadcast TV in Duluth.

We also drove in to town to check out some furniture stores for a table and chairs. But apparently only one of the 3 listed is still in business and they didn't have much in stock. They had a catalog you could order from, but not sure how I feel about spending a bunch of money on something I have no idea what it looks like in person.

Today, we checked out a community church nearby. The people were all really friendly and welcoming and the service was pretty good. We'll probably check out a few more just to see what other options there are, but we'll see. Afterwards, we came home and Gabe had a nice long nap, Adam mowed the yard and I got some unpacking done. We've been grilling a ton this week (bbq chicken, steak, hamburgers) and tonight we grilled some Kabobs. Grilled onions are my favorite!



We made some Kabobs (Beef, pineapple, red & yellow bell peppers, onions & mushrooms) for dinner tonight. They turned out awesome!



Dinner Time



Not a whole lot on the schedule coming up. Need to run to town for groceries and a few other things some time early this week and need to work on unpacking some more. I was invited to a ladies night tomorrow night in town with some of the people I met today at church, so I'm going to that. Other than that, nothing planned yet.

Our new place...

So, I thought we'd start a blog to try to keep people up to date with our family now that we are in California. So, to start, here are some pictures of our house... Still a big mess - quite a few boxes left to unpack, but thought I'd post pictures anyways.

Some pictures of Gabes room... He has 2 closets and a bathroom in here. At some point we will be moving another bed in to here as well

 

From Gabe's room to Dining room



Dining area - the bed will not be staying here :-)



Dining area to Gabe's room - closet on right

From the dining room - kitchen area to living room

A nice fireplace across from the kitchen

vaulted ceilings everywhere

Kitchen - lots of storage - hooray!

from the kitchen to fireplace

laundry closet in the kitchen - had to buy our own washer and dryer

skylight in the kitchen

bedroom door on left - front door - kitchen on right

bedroom - sorry, dark pic

the bedroom is huge - we have plenty of room for computer desk and my crafting desk :-)





weird loft/storage area above the bathroom...

good sized walk in closet with built in dresser

Bathroom - connects to living room. Yes, that is a patio door on the right side of the picture..... very strange. There are patio doors in every room of the house except the kitchen and Gabe's bathroom...

Living room - furniture to be rearranged

Living room - kitchen behind

Front of house from street - not the greatest curb appeal

A view from the front of our house - unfortunately was very cloudy

Backyard with a brand new big shed for more storage

Back of the house - the landlord is going to have a cement patio poured sometime soon so we'll have a nice patio in back