Santa Monica

 This past Saturday Justin and I got in the car and headed to L.A. to spend the day with Sarah.  Lucky for us Sarah has lived there for two years now and gave us a great tour of the area. (Thanks love)  With so much to see we decided to focus on one place for the day and picked Santa Monica!  This was our first view of the Pacific Ocean, and like all bodies of water I found it gorgeous. However this body of water was freezing compared to our warm gulf from back home, which remains my favorite.   I have to confess to you all that my knowledge of this place is limited to what I saw back when I watched The Hills.  The pier is where Spencer proposed to Heidi and it looked so romantic.  Of course this is what I was expecting and was oh SO wrong.  Ironic that they call it reality TV because in actual reality it is filled with street vendors trying to get you to pay for your picture with their snake or buy the $10 CD of awful music that they sing.  Hilarious!  The views from the pier however are memorable.  Great sights of the water filled with sail boats and mountains as their backdrop. 

 

 One of my favorite things to do while traveling is try different local food.  Something we are loving about California is that there aren't many chain restaurants and more little hole in the wall places to eat.  While in Santa Monica we ate at a great place called Cafe Crepe and didn't get crepes, but got delicious tomato and mozzarella panini's.  We sat outside and in between gossiping with Sarah (which Justin loves, don't let him try and make you think otherwise) did some people watching.  The fashion in L.A. is so different from back home.  Skin is in people!

 

In other news... 

 

 It doesn't feel right to leave you out of the experience we deal with every day which is our neighbor.  I like to call him stoop kid.  Well stoop kid is this strange guy that pretends like he has a front porch, which in reality is the community sidewalk and sits out there all day long talking to his pet bird.  He has a little rolling seat that he sits on and this disgusting black leather footstool.  I will try my hardest to take a picture of his set up because it is quite humorous but you know what Hey Arnold always says "stoop kids afraid to leave his stoop".

 

Keep you posted,

 

<3 L

 

90210

 Okay while that isn't quite our new zip code, it's close! For those of you who don't know, Justin and I have decided to travel for the next year. Justin took a travel nursing job in California for our first location and we will be here until the middle of November. While it was tough for me to leave my classroom, we could not pass this opportunity up and the timing just made sense. To keep myself occupied while we are on this adventure I have started grad school. I am working on my masters in Curriculum and Instruction with Reading and loving it so far. Not going to lie, I definitely missed being in school. I thought keeping a blog would be a great way to keep family and friends updated on where and what we are doing, so here it is!

 Our journey out to California went pretty smooth. Thank you to Naj and Brandon who hosted us in Tally. Also a big thank you to Tyler and Angela who let us stay with them and showed us around Austin for two days. What a cool city and I hope to go back and see more of it. After those stops it was Arizona and our first view of a sand storm, pretty awesome. From there all the way to Cali was gorgeous views of the mountains, which we still have not gotten used to seeing every time we step outside our front door. Stunning! We have been in our new Cali town for five days now and we wasted no time finding our local musts. I found a nail salon, while Justin found a great hair cut and Charlie a new school called Camp Bow Wow. Even a target near by which makes me SO happy.

 While living here for the next three months we plan on seeing as many places in California as possible. A few that are on the top of our list are LA, San Diego, San Francisco, and of course Disneyland! 

Keep you posted,

 <3 L