The rivetting conclusion to the end-of-summer saga! (It's actually pretty boring. I'm mostly just writing it for journaling reasons.)

I believe I left off at the part about how we got home from an 8+ hour drive from Oregon, unloaded the Jeep and took showers, re-packed and got BACK in the car, right? Well, It is true. We got back to Sacramento in the afternoon, and were only home for about an hour, I think. (Moving was such a long, drawn-out event for us this time that it is all a bit of a blur!) We had to get back on the road and head down to Lompoc (Santa Barbara County), where Brett's family lives, because for the next two-and-a-half weeks, Brett's mom would be SO kindly taking care of our cats for us. Brett had to report to the restaurant hiring site in about a week. (Before the restaurant opens, the managers hire their whole staff at an office somewhere near the restaurant. In this case, Islands is in a mall, so they just used a vacant calendar store as the hiring site for about six weeks before the actual restaurant was open for business.) So, Brett HAD to be here, in Monterey, by a certain date, but our apartment wasn't ready for us to move in until about two-and-a-half-weeks after that date. Sooooooo, Islands was nice enough to put us up in a hotel for that time so that we could be there on time. Since we were in a hotel, we couldn't have the cats with us, so Judy took care of them for us. Thank you, Judy!

Anyway, so we got to Lompoc by about midnight that night, visited with Brett's family for a couple of hours, got the cats settled in at Judy and Larry's, and then we hit the road again!

Here are the not-so-happy cats in their crate on the way to Lompoc. They were so noisy! Apparently, they don't like traveling.

The MUCH happier cats in their bedroom window at Judy's.

Next, we needed to go to San Diego. Brett had a storage unit down there full of his old household items from before he moved to Sacramento, three years ago. Since we had been paying rent for the storage unit, for much too long, and we needed a few things out of the unit, we cleaned out the whole thing and ended our lease. Not to mention, we got rid of lots of old stuff. We all know how good it feels to purge old stuff to make room for the new stuff!

The wonderful traffic between Los Angeles and San Diego.

We stayed in San Deigo for only one night, but we made sure to see a couple of Brett's old friends while we were there. We had some fantastic sushi, walked around an AMAZING mall (every store I could want in one location!) and saw a movie with Misato. Brett's buddy, Trevor, met the three of us at Bennigan's or appetizers. He was so kind as to let us crash on his couch that night. The next day we headed straight to the storage unit and got to work loading up the U-Haul. As soon as the truck was loaded, we got back on the dusty trail, Sacramento bound. We finally got to our apartment at about 6 am. I can't remember when we slept, but I'm sure we took a nap that day at some point. That afternoon and evening, we loaded up the U-Haul with the rest of our apartment. My brothers, Harrison, Houston, and Peyton, and their friend David all helped us. We took the next day off, hanging out with my family. Bright and early the following morning, we headed to Monterey with Uncle Adam. That drive seemed very short compared to the Oregon and San Diego drives! Once we got here, the three of us unloaded the U-Haul into another shorage unit since we were staying in a hotel for the next three weeks.

A couple weeks later, we finally got our apartment! We got to work, packing up both of our cars with stuff and making probably four or five trips to get almost everything to the apartment. We were lucky enough to have a few guys from the Elder's Quorum at church help us move the big furniture with their trucks. That afternoon, Brett's parents came to help us get settled in and bring the cats to us. It was so nice to have them here to keep us company and help us do the basic move-in chores like putting contact paper in all the cupboards and drawers, helping us to shift around all the boxes as we got more things set up and putting together our bed. We loved having them around and were sad when they left, but we were so grateful for the time we had with them that weekend.

So now we're here, in beautiful Monterey! Well, actually, we live in Marina, about eight miles north of Monterey, but it's all part of the same area. We absolutely love it here. The weather is perfect- it hasn't gone below the 70's or gone abobe the mid-80's. Fabulous. Our apartment is litterally just a block or two from the beach. Down the road a mile or two from us is the big Marina State Beach with a parking lot, restrooms and benches where everybody goes with their dogs and kids to play. But our beach is really quiet. To get there you have to go back behind our neighborhood on a really quiet backstreet. You see a little sign saying, "Marina State Beach," and there's room for about three or four cars to park along the street. You have to climb over the sand dune (which is a small trek), but when you get to the top, you see the ocean! Once you get down to the bottom of the dune, you see that the beach is really quite private. I've never seen more than a couple other people there at the same time as me, and they're usually a few hundred yards away anyway. I just love it. There is nothing like being able to just walk to the ocean!

So anyway, we're very happy here. The restaurant is very busy and keeping Brett very busy. Victoria's Secret has its challenges which is nice, and I'm soon starting a job at William Sonoma, so I'll be a busy girl soon! I've never really worked retail, so we'll see how I like it!

That about wraps it up! I'll try to make my next posts a little more interesting... I promise!