First Holiday Away

Tomorrow will be the very first major holiday that Tyler and I will spend far from our families. I keep wondering to myself, when will it set in that we won't be with our families when they gather to feast and enjoy each other? Well, I think it's easy for me to look at it differently this year.

We've been experiencing somewhat of an unintended newlywed stage. Since moving into the house here and unpacking and re-figuring life out together, it's really been blissful. Ya know, like those first few months of living with your husband or wife. I've found myself laughing harder in the last month than I have in a long time... mostly at the ridiculous things Tyler says. Our first year of marriage was a blast, and if it was the hardest year of our marriage like "they" say, then we're in for an easy ride. Our second year was great as well, just a little less normal, obviously. So now that we are on our own again, it's like relearning how much we thoroughly enjoy life together while living in a sense of normalcy again.

So here's how it is for me this year: being far from our families this year is super sad and I'm definitely counting down the days til we are home for Christmas (33 days!), but it's quite exciting to get to spend this holiday in our own way. One of the fun things about marriage is getting to establish tradition or even just get to start our things for our own family.

It helps that we have such a great church family here! I love having this family and people are so great about taking care of us! We had so many invites for Thanksgiving, so there was never a chance we'd be "alone". So we will be spending our Thanksgiving with some of our new family, and I couldn't be happier. I'll miss the crazy noise level of my parent's house, all the kids causing pandemonium, and looking around being thankful that my sister's are the ones that get to take them home (the best part of being an aunt right!?).

So maybe later on, after Christmas or some other time, it will hit me how far away we are from our families and how much we miss them... But right now we are still living the life we prayed for for over a year. It really is bliss for us. It definitely helps to soften the blow of not seeing our families very often. But this year, my biggest thanks to God is that he provides time and time again. I never know how he will provide, what it will actually look like, but I know it will happen. He's never let us down. This year he's blessed us big time with our life here in Tracy.

San Francisco!

Something I have wanted to do every since we moved here was go to San Francisco for the day. It's not a long drive (that is at the right time. It seems like half the days here are considered rush hour) so luckily we can take a day to go.

 This past Friday, November 9th, we finally got to do so! Since it was my first time to spend an extended period in the beautiful city we decided to start with the touristy spots. I didn't take a ton of pictures at everything we did, but I did take a lot of pictures at the Golden Gate Bridge. My oldest niece, Grace, learned about the GGB at her school around the time we were moving to California. It was super fun that she would know even just the smallest thing about the area we are moving to. One of the saddest parts of leaving our nieces and nephews is the idea that maybe they won't understand where we are after being so close for awhile. So it brings me a little joy to know she kind of knows where we are. Whether or not she realizes how far away California is, is a whole different question!

We decided we'd choose where to start based on the weather. We knew it could rain in the late afternoon, we also wanted to avoid the fog that we encountered the last time we went to the bridge (on a brief stop in SF). As soon as we were getting in to Oakland, we got a view of the bay and realized it would be best to go straight to the bridge since it was clear.

First, though, I had to take a picture while crossing the Bay Bridge. I had a conversation with my mother regarding whether or not all the big bridges here were scary so I wanted to show her how big they are. Driving over the bridges around the bay isn't scary because they are so big, it feels like a normal road! And they are so big you barely see water close to you.

 Here you go, Grace! This is the big bridge you've studied. I can't wait til you come see it for yourself!

View of the bay.

View of San Francisco from the bridge.

Tyler and I on a Pier close to Pier 39.

The famous sea lions that hang out at Pier 39.

Taking a quick break at Ghiradelli Square.

I found some beach area! And there were people swimming in this little area. They were crazy. It was freezing outside and I bet the water was a thousand times worse. They must have been training for something.

View of the Golden Gate Bridge from a pier.

Alcatraz

Last view of San Francisco from a pier.

It was a super fun day of just walking around, being outside, and getting a feel for San Francisco. We did stop and have some fish for lunch. Walking around Fisherman's Wharf with that smell of delicious fresh fish, I could not resist! We drove through some parts I'd really love to go back to! We did drive ourselves. I think next time I'd like to take the train to see if it's less stressful when you don't have to worry about parking or driving in the craziness that big cities can be. I'm known as the long distance driver in the family, Tyler handles the cities. I'd go crazy driving in all that! The downside to taking the train would be a little less freedom. But big cities have such good public transportation, so I don't think it'd be too bad!

Well, that's our latest adventure!

Unplanned Event

On September 21st we encountered something that was not in our plan. We had just moved into our house so we were working on getting a lot of things taken care of like painting, getting bills switched over to our names, and of course the wonderful process of unpacking. So on our way to finally buying the official paint we would use to paint our bedroom, we were in a car accident. 

We were stopped at a stoplight, traffic was backed up quite a bit. The car behind us came to a stop and a few moments later we heard a crash, then heard and felt a second crash. Another car did not see that there was a long line of cars stopped in front of them so while they were going probably 40 miles per hour, they slammed into the car behind us, who hit us, and we hit the car in front of us. I was basically a mess considering this was the first bigger accident I've ever been in, and we had only lived here a month, and been in our own home for just days. 

Our car was pretty damaged but definitely driveable the way it was while we waited for insurance to take care of things. The annoying part about this was that we sold my car prior to moving out west so for around a month we had to drive our poor damaged car around until insurance let us get our car in the shop and get a rental. It took a month for the insurance of the driver who caused the accident to get things to where we could get it fixed. Thankfully, two of our small group leaders for students work at a collision center in town so we knew where we could take it and know it would be well taken care of. This turned out to be a bigger blessing than we necessarily knew it would be at the time. 

This has held us up on quite a few things like getting our car tagged in California and getting some insurance things figured out. That has annoyed me a lot because I am so ready to be all settled and have everything switched over to California! So, that's the story of our car accident. There's a lot more I could tell but it's unnecessary. What is necessary to say is that we finally got our car back yesterday! It only took about 41 days to get it fixed and back to us thanks to how quickly insurance moves (or...not so quick!) But I can't say enough about how well we've been taken care of by the collision center, so for any Tracyites reading, I would definitely recommend Cook's Collision should you ever need it, and hopefully you won't! God really blessed us and protected us throughout the whole situation, leaving us without having to pay a single penny and had great work done on our car.