Our Summer Break

Originally, we thought that we would be able to find an apartment within the first week of being in Arizona. Well, that didn't happen, but we already planned our summer vacation trip to California, so we took a break from apartment/job hunting.

We spent two weeks at home in California and it was awesome! At first I thought that time would go slowly because we didn't have a major event (Christmas, graduation, etc.) but the time flew by! We were able to spend the mornings/days hanging out together and then spent the afternoons and evenings with the kids after school. We spent time playing tennis, watching shows, going to the beach, reading.

One Saturday my parents' ward had the men's softball game. We went to watch my Dad and the boys play. They are awesome!

Trey the Slugger

Dad's still got it!

Trey's double play

Dad's homerun! 

It was a high scoring game!

The game got pretty heated and some strong words were thrown around, but it made it for an exciting afternoon! I have missed seeing the boys play baseball since I moved away and they've grown up. It was really fun being able to see Trey and Dad play together in that game!

We also spent a day at the LA Zoo. Mom, Alyssa, Nate and I stole away for an afternoon and saw lots of cool animals. I hadn't been there in a long time, so it was a fun adventure! 

I love flamingos!

Alyssa loved this giant lizard statue 

The zebras were some of my favorites, but they just stood in the shade! 

The cute little orangutan made a show for us 

Mom and baby giraffe

The tiger was lazy in the heat

All of the elephants were painted to depict different countries

We ran all over the park to see the elephants! They are mom's favorites 

They liked to dance for us when some spectators played music from their phones. It was awesome! 

It was so fun being home, but the whole time we were in this weird limbo. We were staying with our friends, neither of us had found a job, we didn't have an apartment, and school didn't start for another two months.

I had been searching for a job since March, since ASU became an option for law school. I hadn't made any headway, there were no leads or even promising applications. Public health just isn't a booming field in Phoenix. I was getting really frustrated and a little panicked because I didn't have a plan. We had made it to the last step of our plan and now we were just flying by the seat of our pants! 

Anyways, no public health jobs. Non-public health jobs sounded fun, but my experience was not "adequate" for other positions. No one wanted me! I did not want an office administrator job. I didn't want to be a secretary. I started applying for physical therapy technician positions because I had experience in that from my internship. Within a few days, I got a request for an interview. Because I was still in California, we decided to do an interview over Facetime. Not too much later I had a job offer with Dynamic Rehab! I was so excited!! 

We headed back to Arizona after two weeks and the next week I started my new job!