July in California

 Our first day unpacking Daddy decided to wrap Andrea up as he unwrapped our entertainment center. Super cute.

 The girls are so cute. They are at the age now where they can play together. I love it. They were both halfway underneath Andrea's bed playing and laughing.

 So, supposedly San Jose has beautiful weather so no one has air conditioners, well this summer it was really hot. In fact, the same temperatures as Utah, but we have no AC. Needless to say it was insanely hot in our house and unpacking all day in that heat didn't make it any better. So, we bought a kiddie pool to try and cool off. Mom and the girls all got in the pool every day! :-)  Andrea loves putting on her own sunscreen. She learned this from her cousin Leah when they put sunscreen on together in Utah.

 Cooling off in our kiddie pool!

 Mom never gets to play the piano anymore, but I love the fact that my girls like to play the piano.

One of the days that Steve took the Bar Exam Mom made home-made pizza.  Andrea decided to share some of the dough with Rachel.  Mom was so busy getting dinner ready that she didn't realize Rachel and her walker were completely caked in dough.  Super cute, but took hours to clean up.

We had our friend Brad Lowe come and stay with us while Steve and Brad took the Bar Exam.  It was a lot of fun to have our first visitor in our new home. Hopefully the boys did well. We will find out in November.

 we tried to take some 6-month pictures of Rachel in front of the oleander bush in our front yard.

Oleander blossoms are toxic.  Don't let your kids eat them.  Rachel didn't seem to care though.  Fortunately she was fine.

 Beautiful Rachel Marie at 6 months!

 Rachel LOVES the sand.  This was our first family trip to the beach.  After 2 hours of driving and another what seemed like 2 hours searching for a parking spot, we finally made it to the water over in Santa Cruz.

 Andrea would not touch the water....or the sand....made for an interesting day at the beach.

 Rachel LOVES taking baths! She lays back on her back and kicks her feet as fast as she can and splashes everywhere.

Andrea needed a little incentive to start learning how to make good choices, so we decided to start earning money for a Barbie Bike. She painted and decorated her own money jar and earned one quarter every time she did something good such as be nice to Rachel, be obedient, clean up, be helpful, etc.  She could also lose coins if she made bad choices.  It was awesome. She really did work very hard to earn that bike and it was a good way to teach her about choice and accountability.  She earned that bike and bought it with her own money in just less than two months.  She took her coins to the bank and traded them in for dollar bills, then we went to the store and she paid for it herself. Good job Andrea. Now we need a new incentive..... :-)

July was a good, exciting, and very tough month.  We absolutely love our new house! It has a beautiful interior, absolutely wonderful neighbors, and it's perfect what we need right now. It was so exciting to start out on this new adventure and learn all about a new place in the country. However, our house was really hot and Steve went to work right away, so I was unpacking in the heat and trying to accomplish something each day while taking care of two beautiful, but busy little girls. The first week I got everything mostly put away or at least in the room where I wanted it to be, the second week I worked on the garage and yard, the third week I worked on decorating. We took 3 trips to IKEA and a bunch of trips to carpet stores, but we finally found some rugs, curtains, and curtain rods for our home.  Now it feels like a home.  I only got a little home sick and towards the end of the month, but overall, I think we are doing pretty good.