El Segundo, California

We have now been in living in southern California for over a month, and I feel like we are just now starting to get settled in. That's probably because we were homeless for a while and I finally was able to get a job, haha.

We flew into Los Angeles from our Europe trip just in time to go to one of Dustan's best friends weddings in Newport Beach. Congratulations PJ and Katie! We really enjoyed staying in a big house in Anaheim with a bunch of friends who were in town for the wedding. The wedding festivities with the bride and groom's family and friends included a beach walk, dinner at The Crab Cooker, sealing at the Newport Beach temple, and a fancy reception in Corona Del Mar. (Side note: the reception was amazing! So fancy though, that we kinda felt like we were crashing a party we weren't invited to, haha.)

After that fun weekend, it was time to start our summer in El Segundo! Dustan accepted an internship with The Aerospace Corporation, which is a federally funded research and development center. They provide technical analyses and assessments to the Air Force, other Department of Defense organizations, and more agencies supporting the nation's national security space enterprise. Dustan is specifically working on a few projects involving motor control, thermoelectric coolers, and reaction wheel (they're used to steer satellites in space) jitter characterization. He feels a bit overwhelmed with a lot to learn, but he's really liking it. Since we had only accepted the job a few weeks prior, we hadn't had a chance to find housing yet. The company set us up in a hotel for our first week to give us a chance to find some housing. It took a few days of searching while Dustan started his first week of work, but we were able to finally find a place to call home for the summer. We are now renting the master bedroom and bathroom and sharing the rest of the living space of a condo with a nice lady. Though we obviously would have preferred our own place, that was far out of our price range for a coastal, southern California city. We love where we live though! We are on main street and less than a mile away from the El Segundo Beach. Of course we have already been there many times.

Once we got all moved in, it was time for me to start job searching. We waited until we found a place because we would need to be able to work our jobs around our single car situation. After a couple weeks and many interviews with people that wanted employees long term, I finally was offered and accepted a position as a nanny for a couple fun, elementary age kids for the summer!

We are really enjoying our time here. We are seriously living in a vacation area. There is so much we want to do while we are here, and not enough time! Some of the things we have really enjoyed doing so far are going to the beach (duh), hanging with friends that live in the area/visiting the area, flying our trick kite, trying out new restaurants, and going mountain biking. But mostly all we do is go to the beach :)

We will be spending this upcoming weekend at Big Bear Lake, which should be a blast! The week after is 4th of July weekend. We have a lot to look forward to!