Florida Life So Far

First and foremost, here is the pregnant belly side shot everyone has been asking me for. As you can see, I am starting to show a little bit now.

I am way behind on my blog posts with moving and Bryson and I starting new jobs so here is a recap of everything that has been going on since we moved to Florida. We made it to Melbourne on August 4 and Bryson's company Harris put us up in a beautiful hotel right on the beach. We had a beautiful view of the beach from our balcony. We started looking for a place to live right away and it was so stressful! The first 10 places or so that we looked at were tiny and most smelled like cigarette smoke. I was beginning to think we were just going to have to live in the hotel. But then on our second day of searching we found a few nice places. Then came the hard part, deciding which one to pick. We narrowed it down to two places and finally after a lot of changing our minds back and forth we went with a nice two bedroom loft place that was about 5-10 minutes from Bryson's work. I was so relieved when we signed all the papers! Once we had found a place to live we had a few days left at the hotel so we could relax. Here are some pictures from the hotel.

Our balcony and the hotel pool.

Taking a walk on the beach.

Here is Bryson on his first day of work. He was a little nervous but very excited.

So Bryson had this old pair of board shorts that he loved that was passed down to him from one of his brothers, who knows how old they were. I was always telling him he could buy a new pair if he wanted but he loved these shorts. Well here is what happened to them in the first week we lived in Florida! We had to add a new swim suit to the list of beach supplies we needed to buy!

While we were still in the hotel, we had a day at the beach with our friends, the Vorwallers, who we met at BYU. They are both from Melbourne and came back for Graduate school at the same time we moved out here. I was so glad that we knew someone in the area already! We went and had dinner at both of their parents homes and I even got hooked up with a job connection!

Maybe one day we will be as tan as the native Floridians. :)

Here are some pictures of our first lessons in body boarding! It was so much fun we definitely added body boards to our beach supply list as well.

Finally the time came to leave the hotel and move into our new place. The only problem was we still had no furniture! Or any of our stuff for that matter. The moving company was supposed to deliver our things that week but they got delayed in Utah so no furniture for us. Thankfully we had thought to bring our air mattress in case this happened so we at least had a bed to sleep on in our empty apartment.

Eventually our stuff made it to Florida, thank goodness! I was really starting to miss our kitchen table! I spent the first week or so unpacking and getting our apartment in order. Here are some pictures and a video tour of the new place. We really love it here so far.

Once we got all settled in, I contacted my friend's Mom about a part time job teaching ESL to foreign students that are going to attend University in the United States. I went and checked out the classes and it seemed like a great place to work. I started teaching afternoon classes on Sept 12 and am loving it so far. I teach basic sentence structure to a beginning class and Creative Writing to an intermediate class. It has been great so far. The students are from all over the world so it is interesting to see such a mix of cultures in one classroom. But it is perfect for me. I like teaching and it gives me something to do while Bryson is at work. And it doesn't hurt that I am getting paid to do it! The semesters are only 4 weeks each so it is really flexible about when I stop working, which is perfect! Because I am only teaching afternoon classes I get every Friday off which works great with Bryson's schedule. He gets every other Friday off so we get lots of long weekends. Here are some pictures of one of our weekend getaways at the beach.

Well that is about it for now. We are loving our new ward. Everyone was so welcoming. We have made lots of new friends. And the ward is putting us to work. Bryson got called to be the 2nd councilor in the Elders Quorum and I am teaching the 12-13 year old Sunday school class for now. This last weekend we drove some of our youth up to Orlando for a temple trip and I was able to bring some of our family names. It was wonderful.

I am hoping these pictures will make everyone want to come and visit us soon! Love you all!