We Must Be In California

Well after packing like an alpaca, and cleaning like Cinderella then driving for two days we made it to Los Altos California! We had some adventures on the trip over, and so far we have been loving every bit of California!

Car trippin 

The bugs on our car

Thursday we left Provo and drove to Winnemucca Nevada. It was pretty driving by the Great Salt Lake, and then the view got ugly while driving through Nevada. We finally got to Winnemucca  and there were bugs everywhere. We stepped out of the car and were attacked, bugs got in my mouth and eyes. The front of our car was covered in a healthy layer of bugs. Never fearing, we braved the bugs and made it into our hotel where we had a pleasant stay and got up the next morning to complete our trip.

picnic lunch in Reno

The house Grandma Grew up in

Our first stop was Sparks, Nevada where my grandmother grew up. We stopped by to see the house where she lived and the church down the road that her dad helped build.  It was fun trip down family history lane. Back on the road we decided that we wanted to stop at Panda Express for lunch. We searched for Panda Express on the GPS and started driving towards the closest location, little did we know that the location actually was inside the student center at the University of Nevada in Reno. Well we pulled up and realized we couldn't park anywhere without suffering consequences. So I drove the car around the parking lot while Brennan went inside to find some food. On my circling adventure I found the building for the mining school, or something like, it was interesting. Finally Brennan got back into the car and we drove away, only to realize that he didn't grab utensils, so we pulled into the nearest gas station hoping that we could take some from there. The gas station was super sketchy and reeked of drugs. We found a bag of plastic utensils to buy and got some drinks and then got the heck out of there. We retreated to a little park and enjoyed a peaceful lunch till we got back on the road.

Lake Tahoe 

While on our journey we made the split decision to visit lake Tahoe (thanks to my mom's encouragement). We are glad we stopped. Even though we basically pulled into a private condo area and trespassed through someone's yard to get to the lake. Well worth the stop. Finally we were on our way to the Bay area. Somewhere along the way Brennan decided that he knew what he was doing and decided to take a different freeway which ended up making us getting a little lost till we pulled out the GPS and got back onto the straight and narrow, and that was only after stopping at sketchy gas station #2 and feeling like we were going to get jumped because we were the only white people. 

Well we finally pulled off the freeway and into the town of Los Altos (that means the heights in Spanish, I have been having so much fun translating every street sign out loud to Brennan).  We were really excited and nervous as we pulled up to my Great Uncle Charlie's house. (I had actually never met him but we had talked on the phone so we knew each other).  Once we got to the house and met Uncle Charlie we were happy and pleased. Uncle Charlie is the best and took us out to dinner right after the tour of his house. He lives in a nice house and everything is super clean and neat. I am scared to sit on the couch sometimes for fear of ruining something. We have already had the privilege of hearing many stories about Charlie's life and we are so grateful to him for letting us stay with him for the summer. 

Morning Run

Library Card! 

Saturday was our first full day here and what did we do you may ask? Well we started off the day with a nice run in the California morning air. We ran to a park near our house where there are tennis courts which means we can play pickle ball! After our run we drove to where I'll be working for the summer and then to the bank to change our address and get proof of an address so that we could get library cards :)   Brennan kept saying that he feels like he just started a new transfer on his mission and he's trying to get to know the area, except he has the best companion ever!   Well, we got our library cards, and by the way, the library has hundreds of DVDs so we picked a couple out to watch this week and Brennan was able to download an audio book for his commute to and from work. 

Downtown 

After our library adventure found the local grocery store and struggled to get through all the organic produce and organic everything (there were leafs there that were as big as my head). At one point I told Brennan to go get some milk. He came back to me moments later saying that he was so confused by all the organic milk and that there was no Western Family so he didn't know what to get :) 

Brennan's Work 

Our last stop of the day was driving out to Electronics Arts where Brennan will be interning this summer. We walked around the campus and it's great. He is going to have a wonderful internship. We saw a glimpse of the bay (hopefully we'll spend more time there later) and found the Caltrain stations so Brennan will be able to take the train to work.

Funny story for dinner on Saturday night. Brennan was being all cute husband like and decided to make dinner. We had planned to make grill cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. When Brennan told me it was ready  I came to the table and looked at the soup and it looked really thick, I asked him if he used water or milk and when he gave me a questioning look I realized he used neither :) So we had some tomato paste instead of soup. We added milk to both bowls so that the soup tasted good! 

Our ward is great and so far everything is rather swell! We are excited to keep up on our adventure and see what the summer brings!