This week Lydia went to the beach and ocean for the first time. She liked the water and the sand. She also liked all the people and birds and dogs and surfers and anything that moved. She is a happy little girl. Here are some photos of our day at the beach.
Sometimes after Monks has her morning food she goes down for a snooze. Sometimes she joins us and we have a family snooze. And apparently sometimes Jaynie sneaks out of bed and takes photos...
This is Lydia during a recent walk. She is dreaming of some major accomplishment. Look at this concentration here.
Just what is that accomplishment? Is it turning nine months old this week?
I think not. This was a major full on clenched fist pump.
Could it be that she was waiting for all of our belongings to be unpacked and all over the floor so that she could start...
Crawling! I think so.
And then she found out that there was a nine month checkup at the Doctor's office.
And here is Lydia hearing the good news that a nine month checkup does not require shots.
Doc says Lydia is, quote, "off the charts" in the weight category. Can't say we didn't see that one coming. She's a healthy one.
Have a great week.
There really is nothing like going to the DMV.
Here we go. First issue, parking. We need a parking permit to park on the street at our place for more than two hours.
The parking ticket guy is always out there. I see him. Driving around in his little enclosed tri-wheel-motor-vehicle-thingy with a pole to mark new cars with white chalk and a pad to write tickets to cars that arrived precisely 120 minutes ago. Every two hours I go outside to move our vehicle. And every two hours he is there. Or, more precisely, just about there. I look at him. He looks at me. And then I screech away in our high powered VW Tiguan. Screech away. He can't keep up. And after driving around the neighborhood for about half an hour I sometimes even find a new spot to park in. Then, two hours later, we resume this game. Tons of fun. I'm telling you. Tons. Of. Fun.
So. We needed a permit. How does one get one of these mysterious permits here in California? With a vehicle registered in California, of course. And how does one register a vehicle in California? First off, with a smog check! Yes! A 2015 model vehicle needs a smog check! Lucky for us, there is a smog check station on every corner here!
Excuse me. Could you please move your junky Bentley and get those Ferraris out of the garage to make room for our Tiguan?
Smog certified! But not before 0800. We arrived early, got the car hooked up to the California mainframe, but no. No smog reports allowed before 0800. Why? Good question!
Forgot a hair clip for Monks. This happens once in a while. The result: "He is sooooooo cute."
0800. Smog certified. We are off to the DMV. Over the bridge we go.
Fun facts...
California law: Register your vehicle within 10 days of moving here.
California law: Transfer your Driver License within 10 days of moving here. (Always thought it was a Driver's License by the way, but the paperwork says "Driver License" here.)
Soonest appointment to transfer these things in California within 10 days of moving here: 14 days.
To the "no appointment" lane for you!
Not too bad at the DMV actually. Temporary registration received. Driver License test set for 1340 and 1400. Off to get our parking pass with our temporary registration. Over the bridge we go.
Hoping it won't take too long...
And into the SFMTA we go.
Parking permit obtained! No soup for you tri-wheel-motor-vehicle-thingy driver man! A couple of "your boy is soooooo cute" encounters later and we are headed back to the DMV. Over the bridge we go.
Quick stop to buy new work shoes (old one's were filled with glass from our Target experience). A couple of "your boy is so cute" lines and a few minutes of Monk's checking herself out in the mirror and we are back on the road.
Back at the DMV we are all set to take our written test to get our California Driver Licenses. 36 questions. You have to get 32 out of 36 to pass. Computerized test. Jaynie and I are both in the room taking the test on different computers. Lydia is super excited and decides to be super loud. She is with Jaynie. The DMV lady kicks them out! I finish my test and go outside and stay with Lydia and Jaynie goes in to take her test again. Come to find out, Jaynie had 3 of the first 4 questions wrong. Instead she had to start over and made it through. Now, you might be thinking that there shouldn't be a problem taking a written Driver License test, but the questions they ask here are pretty ridiculous. Example: How many days do you have to notify the state of California that you have sold your vehicle? That's an important one right there. Anyway. We made it through. Here is Jaynie after passing her test.
And we are finished at the DMV. For now. We still have to bring in paperwork later on to get our permanent plates, but we have the parking permit and our licenses are on the way. One last time for the day. Over the bridge we go.
Thank you to those of you who were praying for us! It has been crazy since we drove out of Denver just over a month ago. We have a home!! More on this further down...
While traveling back from Kelowna Lydia tried on this awesome hat. That grin means she likes the hat, right?
Wrong! It means she is having a code blue.
Monks, as we call her (also known as Monkey, Miss Monks, and Lydia), had a total blowout in the Vancouver airport on our way back to SFO last week. Backup clothes were in the checked luggage. Here is the resulting travel wardrobe. Only the finest on United.
More on the move. Two VRBOs, two hotels, one trip to Kelowna, and four rental applications later we can finally say that we have a home. We signed our lease Friday morning and then went to Target to get an air mattress to sleep on for a bit while we wait for our stuff from Denver to be moved into our place.
While air mattress shopping inside Target the PA spoke these words: "Would the owner of a white Volkswagen please report to guest services." To guest services I went. "Your car was broken into." What? It's 12:45 in the afternoon. Parking lot full. People everywhere. We downgraded to a much smaller vehicle before we moved here so we would at least have a chance on the crazy streets of San Francisco and perhaps even (once in a while) find a parking spot within a four hour drive of the city. So far we have been successful with the driving and had been somewhat successful with the parking. Before we left Denver we also moved Jaynie from a desktop computer to a laptop so we wouldn't use up as much space in our smaller place. While sitting in a Target cart Monks found this all to be very funny as we unloaded our car full of luggage to remove the glass pieces from her carseat.
Nothing a little cardboard and tape can't fix.
Just like new.
So the car was broken into and the laptop and some other stuff was stolen. Which is fine. If we are here to serve we expect a lot worse than this. It was a new MacBook and it has this feature where you can send a message to it. So when our friend opens up his or her new computer, this message will appear: Jesus loves you and forgives you for stealing our computer. So do we. So do we. Which is true. And why we are here.
Anyway, good stuff overall. Jaynie found the place we are in and it's near a relatively new church plant that we plan on serving at. And that's pretty much it. Except, of course, for more photos.
