A Whole New World

Well, for those of you who've been waiting with baited breath to find out where we've moved, here's the big moment.  Duh duh duh DUH...  Bothell.  Wait, you say, that's where you lived before, isn't it?  Yes, indeed.  But instead of being Bothell-Almost-Mill-Creek, now we're in Bothell-Almost-Kirkland, which is a 30-minute difference to Adam's commute, and that, after all, was the point.  He can now bike home in 35 minutes.  It's a beautiful thing.  Here's a picture of our new house. 

Yep, it's pretty darn ugly.  We call it The Blue House.  It's blue on the outside, and the first time we came to see it, it was also blue on the inside: wall-to-wall blue carpet.  Luckily, no one was willing to rent it like that, so they installed some neutral grayish-beige stuff that's much more livable.  It's not too pretty, but it's got a big kitchen with new appliances, a big living room, a big dining room (the playroom), a big bonus room downstairs (the home for Anna's train set), a big office/hobby room, and 3 other good-sized bedrooms.  The backyard is overrun with towering pine trees, but our landlord gave us permission to rearrange the landscaping and do some pruning, so we have a little garden with some herbs, and we'll soon start some autumn vegetables.    Our new ward seems nice, and there's a good amount of kids Anna's age, which surprised me in an area this old (the local community is called Juanita).  There are some fun parks around, we're back in the King County Library System (we LOVE the library), and we can walk to the grocery store, so all considering, it's a good place.  We haven't decided whether we'll be here for a year or for two, but it's a comfy place to be for however long we're here.

Now let me take a moment here to pay homage to my parents.  We are ever grateful to them.  They came up the week before we moved and stayed until two days after we moved in.  They helped us pack, helped keep the girls happy, helped us move, helped us clean, and helped us start unpacking.  They could have come a few weeks earlier and just enjoyed a vacation, but instead they came to help.  I suppose we could have done it alone, but not without much more trauma and frustration, so thank you, Mom and Dad, for everything. 

The reason it's taken so long for me to post a new entry is because after we moved in during the second week of July, we didn't have Internet for 2 1/2 weeks.  We also didn't have TV (still don't, by the way), and we didn't know anyone in the ward or neighborhood.  It was a very long, very disconnected few weeks, and my friends at our old ward's playgroup saved my sanity.  But it did give us time to do some nesting and some encouragement to get out and discover what's in our area.  We finally got our Internet, and one week later, we left for a 10-day trip to Utah.  Now, ten days may sound like a long time, but cut two days off for driving, one Sunday, and that leaves seven days to do all of the following: take the girls swimming, ride the Frontrunner train to Temple Square, attend a full day of wedding festivities, go out to eat five times, drive to Lindon, attend a Wildtree tasting (www.wildtree.com -- Adam's stepsister is a rep.), drive to Payson for dinner, drive to Lehi for dinner, go to the Kangaroo Zoo (a bouncy house), go to the park, go to the mall, go to the Hostess/Wonder Outlet (yeah, don't ask), and take 1 or 2 naps every day.  This is the busiest Utah trip we've ever had, and it was great to do so much, but it felt like some of the "vacation" got left out of this vacation.  We've all come home exhausted and beat up.  Here's a few pictures from the trip, mostly taken at the last minute when we realized we once again hadn't taken any pictures.