More October...and some November too

The end of October I flew to San Francisco for my cousin's wedding...and to see baby Kylie...ok, and the rest of my family too. We went to the Jelly Belly Factory which was awesome- I love a good factory tour! I also love free jelly belly beans. This photo cracks me up b/c my Uncle John took this photo and we didn't realize until after that he cut off my dad from the photo.

Another photo- this time, with everyone!

Lots of dim sim eating with extended family during my SF trip!

Another dim sum photo with my SF cousins!

Not to brag...but the Lee family name is kind of a big deal in Chinatown. My great-grandparents (and other family members) photo is displayed inside the Lee Family Association building in Chinatown.

My Uncle Henry used to be president of the Lee Family Association/credit union and let us have a quick tour around the building in Chinatown.

A shot of all the cousins and spouses that attended the wedding- we're a good looking group!

I got back just in time for Halloween. (Brian was still in Utah visiting his dad...he originally was going to hold down the fort at home while I was in SF but when we found out about his dad's diagnosis we farmed the kids out to friends so Brian could hurry and fly back and spend time with his dad. I was able to stop over for 1 night to say goodbye on my way back to Saudi.) In case you can't tell, Kaiya dressed up as pepper (Emily was salt).

Mina and Mei really wanted me to bring back different costumes from the US for their Halloween parade at school. Mei was Elsa...I asked her if she wanted my to bring back the wig too so her hair could be blond and she told me "no, that's gross." Mina was Wonder Woman.

Brian finally got back into town. In his jet lagged state he ran into a door and ended up with this massive bump. Welcome home!

The beginning of November was busy with all of the move preparations. Moving 5 min down the road is actually harder than an international move in my opinion. Brian had to start taking apart our office/desk space. I started gradually packing/moving boxes over to the new house.

We had to return our home back to the original standard. We hired workers to take out our extra lighting, repaint the walls, and remove the pavers in the backyard.

A couple days before our official moving day, Brian's dad passed away. It was in the middle of the night when we found out. I spent the next 4 hrs on the internet and phone working with KLM/Delta to try and book tickets to fly back to Utah. Prices were fluctuating like crazy- $500 per ticket...I hadn't ever experienced anything like it before...and I'd like to think I'm fairly experienced in the booking of plane tickets! I ended up on the phone with a couple of amazing KLM operators that bent over backwards exploring various flight plans trying to bring the cost down (flying through a bunch of different US cities)- in the end, the most direct flight ended up dropping in price by 400 per ticket and we hurried and booked our flights before the price jumped up again. What a crazy roller coaster. Knowing that we only had a couple days to move before flying out...our amazing friends in Saudi helped us rally, move, etc...they even fed us. On moving day, we had an amazing crew of workers move all of our heavy/bulky items. As soon as the move was complete, we did some last minute packing and headed for the airport that night to fly out.

Our empty house. It looks so bare now! We spent a good 2 years in this little house.

Moving is always a bittersweet experience. Even this one...being only 5 mins away. We are still getting settled into this new home. We are mostly unpacked but still working on organizing our things and trying to figure out where to hang the pictures, etc. What has been nice is that everyone loves the added space!