It tickles me that I live in CA!

I live in California now and each day something out of the ordinary happens to remind me where I live now. Usually it has something to do with the weather, traffic, stores, or the environment. When it happens I always chuckle to myself and smile and say I live in California and I love it.

The other day we had a practice fire drill in my office. Once out of the building we had to wait on a patch of grass away from the building. While waiting people were complaining about...and I quote..."It is the hottest day of the Fall." Why is this funny? Because the words 'hot' and 'Fall' are not usually used in the same sentence that way. The temperature that day was 95 degrees. Around this time of year I am used to 65 degrees so this warmer weather is a reminder that I now live in California. Hardy Har Har!

Another reminder that I live here is that there are no Fall colors on the trees. Palm trees don't change color. I miss the fall colors a lot. It is one of my favorite times of the year to walk around the trees and hear the leaves crunch under my feet.

Atlanta GA-Six Flags

SO last weekend we flew to Atlanta, GA. It was my companies 10 year anniversary and I won a trip for myself and a guest (Lars) to the 10 year celebration in Atlanta, GA. We flew there on Friday and took a tour of my corporate office and then had dinner with the President, VP, CEO, and other big wigs from the company. It was awesome. Everyone was very nice and I could tell they enjoy the work that we do. I work for a super awesome company. During dinner they had games and I took home $200 in one of them. Saturday morning the celebration continued at Six Flags. We had a DTI lunch buffet and visited more with tons of fellow employees and managers. Then the rest of the day was spent playing. We rode bumper cars, ate nachos, caught two shows they had in the park, laughed at people getting wet on some of the rides, and then we rode the Superman ride. I was scared while we waited in line and right before we got on it, but then it was pure enjoyment, like I was flying. One worth waiting in line for.

Then we went to dinner with my bosses boss and some other great people. The rest of the evening was spent enjoying the hotel. Georgia is a very beautiful state, reminds me of Michigan a bit with all the trees. Sunday we had breakfast at the Waffle House, some of the best strawberry waffles and biscuits and gravy ever. And great service, we were called sweetheart and hun a lot.


Thank you DTI for a wonderful trip.

Our Exploration at The Beach!

Two weekends ago we decided to do some exploring. We are planning on exploring some new area each week so when we have visitors we will know the hot spots to see. So we decided to visit Venice Beach. We took a longer way to drive up there to see more things. We had a map but once we got to LA we purposely took different freeways to see more and to make our own way there. We ended up in Santa Monica coast and it was so beautiful. We drove up and then down the coast and admired the beauty of the sea and the homes next to it. Once at Venice we found a place to park for only $3 a day. Most of the other places were $8-12 a day. We walked to the beach. It was very windy, but warm. Once there we watched the surfers, boats, and birds. Then we walked along the coast where there are shops, food, and lots of entertainment in many different forms, musicians, street performers, people statues, and much more. It was a lot of fun and very entertaining to see all the performers try to capture our attention and get some money for their shows.




There were also lots of birds flying around. There presence was undoubtedly made know to me when they delivered a wet gift, poop! I believe there was only one bird guilty of this crime, but he got me on my shoulder, both arms, my stomach, and my nose. Luckily I was wearing a sweat shirt so all I had to do was pull it off, but it made me want to puke. My dear husband helped me clean off my face by getting napkins and wiping my nose for me. We neglected to take pictures of this experience. I laugh about it now, but at the time I was sick.




After this we made our way home and then found and In and Out for dinner. One of the best In and Outs I have been too, great service and good food. All in and all it was a great Saturday.

As you can see from my hair it was windy!

We are our own Lewis and Clark in California and I love it.

RECOVERED!

Hooray! We were able to recover the pics I lost on our memory card. We had to buy something to get it done, but it was worth it to me. If any of you need help recovering something we have the software for it! Here are some pics from Lars birthday. We will also post some pics of our farwell parties from UT on our picture website, http://picasaweb.google.com/lars.solunar

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to Lars!!

To celebrate Lars' birthday I took a few hours off of work and came home early. Lars wasn't expecting me so it was a nice surprise. Then we went out to eat at Chevy's. The food and service was awesome. They sang happy birthday to Lars and made him wear a silly hat. I took pictures, but we had a problem with our memory card on our camera. We are working on restoring the pics. I am really bummed about that because we have pics from his birthday but also from my work in SLC from my last day. SO I am hoping we will be able to recover them. After dinner we walked to a game store near the restaurant and bought him the new Star Wars video game. He is very much enjoying it. Hooray Lars is older and we got to celebrate it. :)

My Job

So many of you may not know what I do. I will try to explain. I work for a company, Document Technologies, and we provide document services for Law Firms and Corporations. In short we are like a FedEx Kinkos within the law firm, but we do provide more services besides copying and scanning, we also provide supply and hospitality management and much more depending on the needs of the client. Since working for this company I have learned a lot about this business and how a law firm is ran. There is a lot that makes the office world go round.

I was promoted and transfered to CA to help open and manage a new site in the law firm. We will be respondsible for all reception, hospitality, supplies, and copy services. We open (start providing our services full time) on Monday the 29th. I started work immediately after moving here to start preparing for our companies install. Basically I had to get everything prepared and set up with installing new copy machines and transfering information from the old service provider to us through the firms vendors. I also needed to hire and train a new staff. It is a long process and we have to make sure the client remains happy through it all. SO I have been working long hours getting everything ready, then this last Friday, the old provider moved there stuff out and we moved in. We call it an "Hands On Weekend". Everyone in our crew helps get things cleaned up and installed and then trained. This starts Friday night and gets finished up Saturday afternoon. We do take a break and let everyone go home Friday night and then we just begin where we left off on Saturday. Once this is done we are ready to work and provide awesome service. Then we get into a good rythm and I cut my hours back to 40 a week, or at least that is the idea. So it has been busy getting ready, but things will settle down now that we are set up. The market here is growing for my company so I might help open more sites when we get them.

My theme song of the week..."She works hard for the money, so you better treat right!"

We Made It!

We are in California now! The trip down here was fun and we made it safely. The only close call we had was on a freeway in CA. Another truck hauling a back how shoved lost the shovel piece. The piece went flying off and almost hit a van following the truck. It was a 6 lane freeway and traffic was light enough and we were far enough back so we were able to slow down and dodge it. Now body was hurt thankfully. 

We left on Friday at noon. We spent the first part of Friday with my parents in Cedar Hills, then we got on the rode. We drove a 22ft truck and towed our car. It was fun, I have never been in a big truck for a long period at once. I felt like a truck driver travel the country. I kept singing songs like "On the Road Again" and "God Bless America" through out the trip. These songs made me feel like trucking I guess.  We got to St George in the afternoon and spent the night with Lars parents. It will be Lars birthday on the 30th so his Mom got him a cake to start off the celebration. 
Saturday we got up early to hit the rode. We left about 7:30 am and got to Anaheim at 2:00 pm. We did stop for a break every now and then. We leave in a beautiful world. God created many things to look at. Once here we filled out some paper work for the apartment and then started unloading the truck. We only had ourselves and two other people from our new ward helping us move. It took about 3 and 1/2 hours to unload. We downsized from a townhouse to a one bedroom. I thought we did good to get rid of some things, but it was apparent we didn't get rid of enough. We did get a small storage unit so that helped. The rest of the weekend was spent unpacking and getting settled in. I had to start work right away and have been working long hours (I will explain further in a future blog) so we still have some lingering boxes, but they will be gone by the end of conference weekend. :)
Our pictures of our trip and the apartment after we unloaded the truck are at the following site, http://picasaweb.google.com/lars.solunar/TripToAnaheim?authkey=sGOHHTxWVWM#