New chapter

Owen and I moved to CA with the intention of being close to LA.  Living in Brea, we were a good hour away.  Our friends mostly live up north in Burbank or Hollywood, and we found ourselves driving every weekend to meet up.  So, we decided that we needed to find a good location in between LA and Cypress, where I work.  I only had a bazillion criteria when it came to where we would live, the most important...I didn't want to get murdered.

As a general rule of thumb, my mom has had me run possible living locations past my Uncle Harv, who was a police officer down here back in the day.  I would text him different places and he would text back a loving, "run!" "no...probably keep looking"...."let me call an old homicide detective buddy"..."I know cops who wont even go there".  Once, I decided we were going to prove him wrong and went to check out a place that he thought was in a "not so good neighborhood".  It turns out, Uncle Harv knows his stuff.

Finally, we found Downey, a quaint city of 100,000+ about 9 miles from downtown LA, and 12 miles from my work.  Downey boasts the oldest McDonald's in the world and played and integral role in the production of parts for the Challenger.   Moving from Brea (about 30,000 people and sidewalks that sparkled, literally SPARKLED) to Downey was going to be another adjustment in a long list of adjustments over the past year.

So the packing began! We tried to pack a little bit every day- I even wrote out a schedule that we completely ignored that probably would have been really helpful to keep us from getting overwhelmed.  Owen and are both Grade A procrastinators, probably just because when you have to panic, life is more interesting.

Moving Day....take my word for it- everything that could possibly go wrong, did. It's a great story so remind us to tell you sometime!

 Remember that amazing fridge we had to buy when we first moved down?  Well, it's a hundredth of an inch too big and is hanging out in the middle of our kitchen. 

Even though it was a particularly horrible day, it had an amazing ending- we are both very excited for what comes next!

Justin Timberlake!!!!!!

Back in July, my 14 year old dream of dreams came true.  I was going to a Justin Timberlake concert.  To prepare, I listened to his new album in my (car to and from work), I watched "Justin Timberweek" on Jimmy Fallon, and re-watched all of the Justin Timberlake SNL episodes.  Needless to say, Owen was pretty sick of me and Justin.  We sat pretty far away so I couldn't get a good picture...but I was so excited to be within a one-mile radius as him that I didn't really care....


I told Owen just to make whatever face he was feeling...