Touring Downtown

These are some of the places I got to see today on my tour of downtown Los Angeles, and all by 8:00 a.m.! I have taken my new bus from Claremont a couple times this week. It's not bad as long as you have a book to read. And, bonus, this bus gives me a tour of downtown everyday. My old bus would come into downtown on the opposite end of the city and drop me off before I got too far. This bus takes me all over downtown before getting to my end of the city. My stop is the very last stop. At least on the way home I get first pick on all the seats and am guaranteed not to have to stand. (The pictures are: Union Station, The Disney Music Hall, City Hall, the main L.A. Public Library, Cathedral of Our Lady, L.A. Superior Courthouse, courtesy of the Internet)

Our House

We finally closed on our house on Friday! On Thursday night we were pretty sure we were going to close on Friday, and Robert and I were so excited we decided last minute we would go out to the house on Friday night and stay the night to get an early start on repairs the next day. I was suprised to see some workers out in our backyard when I got there Friday evening. Appearently our realtor is awesome and conviced the bank they needed to repair the pool shed since it was their fault it had gotten flooded. Now it's almost like new (better than it was before). Sweet! One less thing we will have to do.

I also met up with Robert's dad, Rick, at the house since he has so generously come out from Nevada to help us get things fixed up. He started fixing sprinklers before we had even gotten there. We have a lot of work to do now, but we are planning on moving in this Saturday! Yesterday we started on the repairs. I mostly spent the day cleaning the layers of dust and cobwebs from every window, ledge, and corner in the house. We also spent a long time at Home Depot, which is a place I have a feeling we will be visiting often. The Wheat boys, Rick, Robert, and Grandpa Chuck, spent a lot of time getting the pool in working order and we went for a swim after dinner.

We finally got around to painting around 8:00 p.m. I'm nervous about our paint colors. Everyhouse I have ever lived in so far has had white walls all around. Robert and I like some color, but I don't know how all our paint choices will all turn out. Eeek! Robert and I are so lucky to have gotten help from so many people, I don't know how we would have done it all ourselves. From all the ward help moving and the help yesterday and in the coming days with the house, it has left us very grateful for family and friends. Thank you everyone!

For more pictures than you ever wanted to see of our house visit our web album here.

Claremont House

Consider it our before pictures. A lot of these pictures were actually taken the very first time we visited the house. Hopefully our after pictures look better. =)

This is the Coolest Movie Theatre

Wendy, Lauren, and I had a girls night out movie night on Thursday. We saw Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It was fun, but the coolest part was the theatre. They recently redid the theatre at Westside Pavillion Mall and they have a few small theatre rooms with only couches! The theatre has about eight rows of leather couches. And when you buy your tickets you have to choose your seat so you don't have to go in early and wait forever if you want a good seat. What great progress in the world of movie theatres.

Sea World

I had family come visit us! Almost. My cousin Katrina and her husband Brett and their baby took a trip to San Diego last week and we went down one day to see them. It was my first time meeting little Ali. She was so cute and such a good little baby. The day we went was the day they had planned to go to Sea World, so I also went to Sea World for the first time. I liked the shows and the animals. I kept saying, "oh how cute!" The animals were just so cute waving at the crowd and spinning circles.

We Have A House!

Waiting

Yesterday was suppose to be the closing date on our house and today we were going to be out there making our Home Depot shopping list. Sadly, instead we will be spending our Saturday sitting back in Mar Vista wishing we could be making our Home Depot list. Our little hang up was a few broken windows. It wasn't even the full window that was broken, just a couple small sections of glass. But our bank wouldn't approve the loan until the other bank fixed the windows because it was a hazard. So then we had to wait a few days for WaMu (the bank that owns "our" house) to talk to everyone involved to approve fixing the windows. Working with a bank owned property can get frustrating because every decision has to go through many different people. So that hung us up just enough to push our closing past the weekend. Maybe Tuesday?

Oh yeah, and Wednesday when Robert went out for our final walk through he found the pool overflowing! Someone had taken the thingamabob that regulates the water level and left the water on. Everything around the pool was flooded. Luckily most of it was concrete, except one section of now very muddy dirt and a storage closet that needed major work anyway.

Les Mis!

Robert and I went to the Hollywood Bowl last night to see Les Mis. in concert. It was so awesome! I knew the music and knew the story from the music and the movie, but since I had never seen the play I don't think I ever really appreciated the story. This wasn't the full play, just the music with actors playing out the scene with basic sets. I really loved the final scene because I had never really gotten what was going on in the final song. It really brought the whole story together for me.

Dreams

I have had a couple really vivid dreams in the past couple weeks that I just want to get down on writing before I forget. They were the kind that I kept thinking about all day the next day...Last night I dreamt that I was at a big conference with a lot of college students and professors. I was scheduled to give a presentation at the conference, along with most all the other students there. The first major disaster of the day was when I couldn’t find anything to wear. I had oddly planned on wearing a prom dress, but then decided last minute that it was too fancy and I should go for professional dress, not pretty princess dress. So I had to rummage around at the convention center for something to wear that would look okay. Then, I went and got in line for lunch and left my big rainstick somewhere along the line because I was too distracted with the food and people. I was in a panic because it was, evidently, a vital part of my presentation. A few minutes before I was set to present I was in a panic thinking about it, and then I woke up. Yeah!

Unfortunately, that excitement was short lived because I then remembered exactly why I was having this dream. I actually will be giving a presentation in a setting like this in the not too distant future. I found out last week that I am going to give a 15 minute presentation at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in November. My first reaction was, “I’m going to die!” I am not a great public speaker, but somehow I keep convincing myself that I should extend myself and try, so I applied with most of the other students who went to Guatemala with me in 2004. And we got accepted (as a group) to each give a 15 presentation. After Robert told me I wasn’t going to die, I thought, well, maybe it will be like giving a talk in church. I can handle that. I’ve had lots of practice with that in the past few years.

My second dream was last week. In the dream I had gotten out of school, high school, for the day and decided to walk home. I walked up a canyon road and was joined by a lot of my classmates. We all went to a mountain cabin that was overlooking a beautiful harbor. It started to rain, and a lot of the kids got nervous that we would be stuck there, so they left before it got too bad. I went to grab my shoes, but there were piles and piles of shoes everywhere and I couldn’t find mine. I finally realized that someone must have moved them. I silently seethed that someone would do something like that to me. One of few girls who was still at the cabin commented how calm I looked, and that if it was her in the same situation she would be really really mad. A little while later the same girl announced that she was ready to make her decision and award a prize to the person she thought deserved it. She gave it to me, because I had been so calm when someone had obviously played a joke on me by moving my shoes. The prize was $15,000. I was so happy and exclaimed, “Now I can pay for grad school!” Hmmm...dreams are fun, they make me think.

P.S. Found out today our escrow closing date is August 15!

Moving Day

Yesterday we moved out of our apartment, but not into our new house. We are still in escrow, but wanted to save some money on rent this month and avoid having a rent and a mortgage payment in the same month. Steve and Wendy have kindly let us stay with them for the next few weeks until we officially own a house and have made enough repairs to move in. It was an exhausting day! Luckily we had a lot of help from people in our ward, which we are very thankful for. It would have taken us forever if we did not have the help. We had to move out (and since we are on the second floor and pretty far from the street, it took a while) and then move all our stuff into a storage unit. The storage unit was pretty fun looking, it was three stories and was huge! It would have been awesome for playing night games. Anway, then we cleaned until 9:00 pm. We had orignally told our apartment manager that we would be ready sometime in the afternoon, then we told her five, then we just told her we had no idea. Luckily she was cool about it. Finally at 9:00 we got the last of our stuff out and over the Steve and Wendy's. We were so tired. Now we get to do it all again in three to four weeks.

P.S. Yesterday we were moving, last night I was too exhausted to do anything but sleep, and this morning I was preparing a Y.W. lesson. Now I can finally start Breaking Dawn!