welcome home.

Well I'm sort of tired of writing about our travels.. lol it seems like way long ago and my memory isn't wanting to regurgitate all that information again ( I already wrote like 20 pages in my journal )! So we'll just skip that and go onto the next best thing in our life!!

So we got back to the states and spent a week with my family in Utah and then spent 2 weeks in LA with AJ's family. Those 3 weeks were so needed! It was nice to catch up with family and have warm meals every night and just enjoy their company. But as you can imagine, at this point we're just SOOOOO ready to have a home. To have a place of our own, to eat our own food, to have our own schedules, etc... Well our blessings continue! As most of you know, AJ is starting school at Stanford next week and we're just so excited for him! He's getting his MBA and is thrilled! His cousin lives just 6 miles away from campus in Woodside and we're fortunate enough to be living in their guest house/cottage. It's darling!! I don't have pictures right now, because I'm getting it all cleaned up and decorated, then I'll post pictures. But for now... picture this! White siding, dark grey porch (great for sitting out there in the summer), grey doors, small newlywed kitchen, smaller bathroom and one bedroom. It's pretty dang small.. but it works for us!! We love it! I can't wait to make it ours:)

Well so we get there Thursday night and we unpacked the Uhaul and got all the boxes in the house. Obviously that makes for a complete mess! It was CRAZY!! We were up until 1am just unpacking things and trying to organize, but it was such a long day we eventually had to drop everything and just go to bed. Well our air mattress wouldn't blow up, so we just slept on the floor. Our first night, in our first home, on the floor. LOVE IT!

The next morning we woke up early and went to Target, loaded up in supplies there (thank you to everyone who gave us gift cards!!) and then to Ikea and bought a bed and some other things. Boy was it fun! I finally felt like a normal newlywed, buying our first furniture. So we got home and I continued to unpack everything and AJ put together the most amazing bed ever! WOO HOO AJ! Building beds with his bare hands:D We spent the entire day unpacking and smashing boxes and cleaning up.. it was crazy once again, but we were starting to see progress!

We laid in our new bed that night completely exhausted! It wasn't even 1am before I heard a noise outside. Now we literally live in the woods. There is no Internet (haha right?) and no TV ( lol almost a joke), and we were warned that there are sometimes small animals. I woke up to what I thought was someone rummaging through our garbage. AJ gets out of bed and finds a family of raccoons sniffing through the garbage (which is nothing but cardboard HAHA). They finally wander off and we fall back asleep. Well not for long! Maybe and hour later, I am startled awake when I hear someone running across the roof! It's LOUD! and sounds like complete chaos! I sit right up and AJ grabs his air rifle and heads for the door. Well apparently the raccoons got in the ceiling/roof and were making a home in there. It took me forever to go back to bed, for fear one of them would fall through the ceiling!

So naturally the next morning we were so tired, for lack of sleep. But we pushed through! We went to Bed Bath & Beyond and back to Ikea and more errands. Spent the entire day being very productive! Our home was finally starting to look normal! We went to bed that night excited for a quite night of rest... you all know it's never like that. Right on que... 1am, we're woken up by the raccoon dance party upstairs. This time I wasn't so freaked out, but it was still a completely abnormal noise! Then later it sounded like they were coming in my window, and you know I snuggled right up next to AJ for protection! Boy oh boy, it's been a long 3 days! Let's all hope it calms down a bit in the next week or so. BUT in the meantime.. if ANYONE has ANY recommendations for how to get rid of them, let me know! I don't want to call an exterminator, if anything I just want to get rid of them myself.

Tomorrow, we have another long list of things to do! And by the end of the week, I hope it will look cute enough to show the world. Until then... you'll have to use your imagination!