Home Sweet Home

Welcome to our Home...(Room)...

This is our bathroom...and if Marcus looks close he will find himself somewhere in that picture! We keep all our bathroom stuff on the back of the bathroom door, in a shoe holder. That is my mother's great idea...the maintenance guy laughed at it.
















This is our front door and bathroom door...or our coat rack. And that handy vacuum is from Debbie...it compacts very well, Thanks Debbie! Notice the hardwood floors :)





















Here is the oven-less kitchen, with our dinner table :) We have a really nice refrigerator and plenty of storage space. However, we also lack a dishwasher and I was only able to bring about four of everything...so I am always doing dishes! That is okay though...I would rather do dishes than Iron any day, I am glad Seth's doesn't have to iron his scrubs! Mom, I am glad we packed extra dishes, cups, and silverware, because they only supplied two plates, two cups, two forks, and one nasty plastic cup...good thinking! I have got my P90x calender on the fridge...so far so good, I am doing the 90 day plan!


















You will notice our desk that holds the computer and printer...but the lap desk on the bed gets the most use. The red chair is nice and comfortable and it a good reading chair...the lamp on that side lights up. Seth doesn't have a reading lamp, still working on that issue. My "Indy" blanket it always there just in case I start missing my puppy...(My family got me a blanket for Christmas with a picture of my puppy...that way if I start missing her too much I can still cuddle up with her. What a great gift!)















Here is our closet and our TV that doesn't have the red, yellow, white hook up things so we can plug in the Xbox to watch DVD's...oh well we have been watching the Olympics anyway! This is where we have been doing the P90x workouts...but we have to jump lightly or the people underneath us get upset. Surprisingly, all our clothes fit...with room for spare ( I am sure I will fix that problem eventually).

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

This is Seth's before his first day of work, isn't he cute! I have such a sweet husband, he let me take this picture without even thinking about protesting....he is just the perfect man for me!

Marcus, my brother, has sent me the procedure on how to post a comment. I have many people wanting to learn how, and he figured it out for me! Thanks buddy!

Marcus says you need to:

1.) you click on the 0 comments under a picture or clip.
2.) write your comment.
3.) choose an ID account under comment.
4.) click on preview then login to gmail, facebook, or any other messaging account
5.) then click post comment and wa-la its posted.


That's how you post a comment.

So Far So Good!

Seth has been working 3-11pm shifts and it has been getting easier for him as each day passes. The first day was pretty hard on him, because all the charting is on paper and not electronic ( as he is used to). As Seth would admit he is not the fastest writer or reader so the paper charting is going to be a challenge for him, however he is still ready for any challenge. It is nice in California because nurses are only allowed to have five patients at the most, very different than what he is used to. He said the people he is working with are very nice, and very supportive of him. Today, he is working on a different floor so we will see how today goes...I hope they are really supportive of him as well.

This is how we have had to adapt to our living conditions so far:
1) Toilet is the garbage disposal :)
2) Natural light is important because the maintenance guy says he can't fix three of our lamp lights...still working on this
3) We have to watch DVD's on the laptop, because our Xbox doesn't hook up to our TV :(
4) We are wearing dirty clothes, because it cost way too much to do laundry out here...we just say we are going green and not wasting as much water :)
5) Learning to bake in a crock pot, due to our lack of oven

I went grocery shopping and had to only buy what I could carry back with me, because I can walk to the grocery store. It is nice being so close to so many shopping stores, also there is a police station right next to our hotel so that makes me feel better as well.

We are loving it, I think we are going to venture into the city on Seth's next day off.

Grand Canyon

We just stood in awe of HOW GREAT OUR GOD is!

The RAVEN !

So we pulled up to Newspaper Rock in the Petrified Forest, this is a rock where natives carved symbols in this specific rock area. However, a Raven blocked me in! Seth left the window down on my side and I thought that huge bird was going to fly in the car! Seth scared it off, but it came back and blocked me in again! Seth had fun with my mild freak out!

Fun Fact: Even though Raven's color of feather isn't efficient for the desert, they cope by panting. We learned this from our 20 minute video at the visitor's center.

We just want to say thank you to Ed, Debbie, Sarah, Aaron, Baby, Slade, and Miranda for the AWESOME snack pack! We just loved the audiobook, "The Last Juror", we both go hooked! We were so excited to get back into the car to drive, because we wanted to know what was going to happen next! I am hoping that Seth realizes how cool books can be! Love you all!

Catch a Few Sneek Peeks from Our Journey!

Hey Sister, this is a shout out to you! Thanks for getting us a great Roadtrip cd ready for us...it kept Seth going...as you will see! Marcus, Seth and I both kept saying "Wow" "This is a good one" "That is what I am talking about" as we listened through your CD...Thanks you two we love you both so much!

VEGAS AND PETRIFIED FOREST

Here we are in Las Vegas, with New York New York Hotel behind me. We had just got done walking the Vegas strip, Seth bought me a shirt from the Coca-Cola store there. He saw and said "Brooke, I am buying this for you!" For all who know I love my Coke, and Seth thought this shirt was very appropriate for me and this little roadtrip we were on...plus he thought I looked hot in it...:) This picture is of a falled ancient log that is a bridge, but instead of a wooden bridge it is now a rock bridge due to the wood being petrified. This is where many people would stop to take a picture in the older days due to the Old Route 66 that went straight through this park. Now it is supported with beams and concrete so it won't fall.
This picture shows how long these trees used to be....this is really crazy because currently you wouldn't find ANY trees in that area. The desert can't support trees very well so the climate had to be much more tropical at that time.
This was the painted desert bad lands...Seth thought this was huge, but this was before he saw the Grand Canyon...then his eyes were opened to what huge really was!
This is my poor little civic, she is packed to the max! If you look at the back tire it is weighed down so much, that you can hardly see the top part of the tire. She made it though, all the way to California without any problems!

This is Seth's Version of our Trip!

Brooke and I arrived here in Union City, CA yesterday at about 5pm. We have been touring the southwest for the past five days and taking a mini-vacation working our way out here. First, we stayed at my best friend's place in Oklahoma City, he is an athletic trainer for the OU gymnastics team. We next traveled on I-40 to the town of Gallup, New Mexico, right on the Arizona line. We stayed in a Microtel, it was decent for the price. Wednesday morning we went thought the Petrified Forest National Park. It was bigger than expected, 28 miles total. It consisted of two parts, the painted desert/badlands and the area that contained the petrified trees. The petrified trees really looked like fallen logs that were now rotting, I halfway expected to be able to pick-up a small chunk that had fallen off and crumble it between my hands, that was not the case, it was solid and heavy. We were both starving after the exiting the park so we drove to the next town and ate some BBQ worth mentioning. Bubba's BBQ in Joseph City. Later that day I was able to experience something I will undoubtedly never forget or likely match, I saw the Grand Canyon. I would guess that you have been there, but if you have not simply know that nothing else measures up. We stayed in a Holiday Inn just outside of the national park and hit up the hot tub before retiring for the night. The next morning was continental breakfast followed by further exploration of different lookouts/views of the Grand Canyon. After seeing such an amazing natural marvel it only made sense to next visit the heralded Las Vegas for an unforgetable manmade marvel. I booked a room in the MGM Grand. We arrived after dark and were not prepared for the lights, traffic, and shear amount of work that went into making Las Vegas a vacationer's hot spot. Our favorite of the gody casino/hotels was the New York New York. It was a massive building comprised of many of NYC's famous skyscrapers(Statue of Liberty,Empire state bulding, christler bulidng and about 5 others) connected into a huge megacomplex of hotel rooms. Our room and complex was impressive too but it just isn't the newest, biggest, or most eye catching. After upacking getting someting to eat, and walking the strip, we did not have much time for gambling. That is ok because we also did not set aside any money for it either and we do not want to become acustomed to its loss. In the morning we headed out into the desert again to another national park, Death Valley. Entering the park we were surrounded by mountains, a said Daylight Pass 4000+ eevation, as e continued we deceded forever. I was suprised by the beauty of a place with death in the title. The valley had a white crusty look and on both sides large peaks with snow caps enclosed the Badwater Basin; the western hemisphere's lowest point. Everything is literaly uphill from there! We left the park and headed to Bakersfield, but stayed in Barstow. CA at the Super 8. The last stretch was to the Extended Stay America of Union City, which will be our temporary quarters while on assignment. We miss you and love you! -Seth

P.S. Big thanks to Andrea Schlager for helping me figure out how to copy and paste into the post box, without her this post would never have been posted...thanks girl!!!

This is Seth's version of our trip...I hope you can read it!

We are getting all settled in now!

WE ARE ON OUR WAY!!!

We were able to stay with Josh Agee on our first night, and I was able to beat Josh in Mancala ( Like Always...haha). We went to the Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon today...it was Seth's first time to see the Grand Canyon, he kept saying "it is HUGE". We are having a great time, and have really enjoyed just roadtriping it out here...we don't know really what we are doing from one day to another, it is just fun! We have been listening to "The Last Juror" and we are both sucked into it and have really been enjoying our driving time! We already miss all our family and love them very much!