Oh, Visalia.

Well, we have been here for 2 weeks.

We have lived in the rural, the urban, and now the suburban. While this is considered to be an "underserved community" (which allows Brandon to get a government loan repayment), it seems to be anything but. Most of the locations are in the middle of nowhere. Yes, there is the smell of cow nearby. But really, we don't have to drive more than 2 hours in any direction to get the mountains, beach, etc. And there is one street that has every place I can imagine. Except Cafe Rio and IKEA. But if you aren't sure where something can be, check Mooney street.

We have a view of the mountains! They're right over the school busses and solar panels by the middle school. It is great from the bedroom window.

Cora loves having her own room. We had to get a bin to store her stuffed animals, because otherwise she sits there and cries at night "Baby sad! Baby sad!" But she is doing ok.

Brandon works TWO MILES away. So now when I drive him to work it takes 20 minutes out of my day. He wants to get a bike soon to bike to work some days. But when he gets to the car at the end of the day Cora goes nuts. She misses him! Every time we come back to our apartment she runs to our room yelling "Dad! Dad!"

My favorite thing so far are the awesome people! People are SO nice. We've had many neighbors come out and introduce themselves to us, and offer to help us with anything we need. And the ward is so nice! Cora is doing ok with nursery. She has stayed the whole time for two weeks in a row! And there are SO many young moms around here for us to see. In the 2 weeks we've been here we have been to 2 library story times (which are more interesting to Cora than the Florida ones), 1 park playdate, 1 Cafe Rio run, 1 Musicmakers playgroup, and 2 dinners. We have seriously been overwhelmed with the kindness that has been shown.

Cora loves babies so much, so when we had the chance to hold our friend's baby I thought she would be thrilled. This is what happened.

Stinker.

Anyway, we love it here. We're planning to stay here at least 5 years. But if the schools are good and we don't have any reason to leave, I don't see why we need to go anywhere else.

Long Beach Roadtrip!

First weekend of February I got to have my first roadtrip with Megan and Ashlee to Long Beach. Megan had an item on her bucket list to cross off- "Run a half marathon". She wasn't sure if she was going to sign up, but thanks to our enabling encouragement she signed up. So Ashlee and I signed up for the 5k to be there with her.

So the half marathons that I have done have had hundreds or thousands of people running it. When we showed up, there were about 15 half AND full marathon runners total. I felt bad that she didn't have a lot of crowd support, but it made me more glad that we were there!

 

 Meanwhile I got these cute pictures. Cora loved trying to use a chopstick.

 We went to downtown Disney for dinner later that day. This was as close as we got to Disneyland (and saved ourselves a couple hundred dollars in the process!)

 The 2 hour wait was worth going to Rainforest Cafe. Unfortunately my morning sickness kicked in so I didn't get to enjoy my dinner as much as I wanted to, but it was still a fun place to be.

 If you were wondering why I snapped this license plate, spell it backward!

 We went to sacrament meeting on the way back up to Oakley, while this was happening. I'm so glad Cora is getting better at staying in nursery.

 I bought Cora her fourth Minnie mouse doll out of guilt, but with dad around, Cora didn't even miss me that much! But she does love her Minnie.

It was such a fun girl's trip! We will need to do it again! Next time San Diego??