Finally Here.

The trip is finally over and I'm mostly settled into my new home. The number of things we were able to see over the course of just a few days is kind of ridiculous. The Grand Canyon was amazing, the Hoover Dam was cool, dinner in Las Vegas was great, LA was awesome, and San Francisco....SF is my favorite city now. In the past year, I've visited NYC, Philadelphia, DC, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Flagstaff, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Tampa, and a few years ago I went to Chicago. I've now visited many of this country's biggest and/or famous cities and I have to say that San Francisco is the most unique, coolest, laid back city I've ever been in. I still can't believe that I'm here and that this is now my home.

Now, let me talk about Benicia, the town in which I actually live. Ever seen "The Truman Show"? It's a lot like that town. It's gorgeous and has a really awesome historic downtown area. It's right next to the Bay and surrounded by mountains. I just can't even believe that this is real life right now. The house I'm living in is beautiful, open, bright, comfy and Adele is just fantastic. She has a great demeanor and spirit and smile. She has an awesome sense of humor and is just so sweet. I know that after meeting her my parents feel quite a bit more at ease about the situation. Did I mention they gave me their car? They gave me their car...I named her Fiona. Anyway, I met the kids yesterday and they are just precious. Isa, the four year old, is a self-proclaimed princess and is just a ham. So cute. Tony, the nine year old, is a little quieter and kind of keeps to himself, but he's very sweet. I'm excited about getting to know them :)

I'm already pretty settled in, but I am so exhausted. Sleeping in this morning was just amazing...even more amazing was getting up and not immediately getting ready and packed to go somewhere else. I can just lay around all day today AND tomorrow. I'm starting the job officially on Thursday, so I have these two days to recuperate from the week-long car ride and different-hotel-bed-every-night lag. It's going to take me a while to learn the area and get into the groove of things, but I love this area. I've honestly got the best of all worlds here: small town living, big city entertainment, my favorite baseball team, the hills of Napa Valley, a (slightly smaller) Six Flags park right down the interstate, mountains, water, beach not too far away, state park in my town, just everything. I'll never have a shortage of things to do, that's for sure.

Now that I'm here, I feel so certain that this was the right decision. I was meant to come here and live a life different from what I was doing. This is my life now and I can't wait to get it all started :)