T-minus 2 days

The boxes are mostly packed, and we are mostly ready! On tuesday we get the 26 foot moving truck, and on Wednesday we unload in Mosier, Oregon! Here's what we've been up to the last couple weeks.

We visited Godmother Bekah at her stand at the Bellingham Farmer's market 

Julia was a fan of the wares

We bought a pillow, she got a needle felted mushroom!  

Auntie Gracie came to town

and we visited Auntie Caroline at her new job bartending/promoting Lazy Boy Brewery 

Julia got to work with the squeejee. 

We said bye bye to Daddy and left with Aunties Gracie and Caroline for a few days camping in Mt Hood Ntnl forest. 

Frog lake was beautiful. We met up with Auntie Anna, Grandmomma Dawn, Grandpoppa Jack and Uncle Olaf for two nights. 

divvying up Grace's latest pottery  

Uncle Olaf has proved his skills at cooking Ramen over the fire. 

we celebrated Anna's birthday with a campfire-cooked cake. Came out rather well, considering!

we took off on an easy two mile hike that turned out to be more like 6 miles, straight up!

Mt Jefferson

Julia loved the hiking stick concept 

and when she got tuckered out, we fashioned a sling and she napped en route. 

and voila, Mt Hood in all it's glory. 

Good thing I stuffed another water bottle and snacks into the pack at the last minute. It took us several hours to finish the hike. 

Julia got a ride down too.

and much swimming and general enjoyment were had by all. (except when I forgot to put Julia's nighttime diaper on and woke up to much general unhappiness in the middle of the night) 

enjoying the playground on the way home.

At the beach in Everette

 

me and Caroline

Anna brought Julia little ear-clippies. Adorable!

Grace MUST accompany us on all future car trips. She's worth her weight in gold. 

Julia helping Caroline put Bea through her tricks. 

and then we got to go out on a boat!

Captain Matt of the USS Mosier was kind enough to take us out for a spin.

and the first mate, Caroline. 

 

we popped off for a bit of relaxing at Jetty Island 

and enjoyed the evening light. 

Julia hauled a basket of berries we picked earlier at a u-pick field

A couple days later we went out to Samish Island for another day at the beach. This time we dug clams,  and caught crabs! 

Bo took himself for a walk, holding the leash in his mouth.  

Julia latched on to her cousin Sierra

Sierra and her dad, John (Dave's brother) 

Brother Bob and our first crab pot of the day. We had a good haul, getting 1 to 3  big ones out of each pot. Lots of little babies had to get tossed back.  

and then we cooked them up in boiling water and I learned how to shuck a crab.  

Julia was a big fan of the boat, but a little freaked out by the crabs. 

It was a lovely time, and thus ends my pictures. Now that we are not at the beach, we have time to sit around and wonder if all our stuff is going to fit in a 26 foot truck. 

a few summer snapshots

Our time in Mt Vernon is soon winding down. 10 more days till moving day! We're excited, but it will be a little sad not to have either set of grandparents near by to go visit at a moment's notice. Julia is pretty fond of all of them, as well as her many aunts and uncles. She's speaking in full sentences now, and has an impressive memory for details. She remembers who sat where in the car several days back and delights in reminding us. She likes drawing circles now, and will fill a page with many small circles representing any number of things. When she eats something she likes, she says "oh, dat tasts good!! I nike it!!" She loves digging in her little garden spot. She planted sunflower seeds, but digs them up daily, so I can't imagine they will do very well. We go on walks to see the cows that live down the road, and Julia wants to be "runnin" instead of riding in the stroller. We compromise on that point, since she gets distracted from "runnin" by any number of things along the road and my patience eventually wears thin. She goes to sleep by herself in her bed in the room next to ours, but eventually wakes up and comes to crawl in with us. Pretty soon I'll make more of an effort to get her to stay in her own bed, but for now, I'm pretty pleased that she starts the night there without tears. In our new house, Julia's room will be down the stairs from ours, so we'll just have to see how that works out at night.

Julia got some sort of bite or sting over one eye. It swelled nearly shut, but today is looking better. She didn't cry at all when it happened, so we're not sure what bit her. 

she's been busy mothering her many dolls. 

and playing with the toys at Grandma Gini's too. 

she gets very serious when drawing.  

Gini gave me a treasure trove of canning jars. Some of them were the old blue glass ones with glass lids. I'll use those for storing dry food instead of canning. Very cool!  We've been picking lots of berries and a few days ago I made some of them into freezer jam that turned out quite well if I do say so myself. 

One afternoon we left Julia with Grandma Gini and went to see Moonlight Kingdom, our first "date" in over a year! 

Julia's been very happy to have Daddy around full time. 

we spent a day hanging out at the beach with Auntie Caroline. Julia was very impressed with the trains, airplanes and boats that ran by on all sides

Julia and Grandpa Dave heading out to the mailbox

The longest month is right before moving day.

Here's a few images of the past weeks. We've spent time out on Samish Island with Grandma Gini, hung around Mt. Vernon, picked and froze lots of strawberries, raspberries and tayberries, and continued to pack and sort mountains of our things at Grandpa Dave's. My camera has randomly stopped working which has definitely impacted my photo-taking. I can use my i-pad to take photos, but the habit to grab it and take it with me isn't formed yet. It's a shame because there's been some pretty cute moments these past few weeks that I've missed capturing. 

In the house-buying world, we got the appraisal results, and they appraised it only $500 less than our buying price which makes us pretty happy. We didn't want to get a huge discrepancy in the appraisal and selling price and have to re-negotiate or whatever. Now we just have to wait for loan approval. I am so impatient for August to get here so we can finally get settled! 

Julia loves the sand out at the beach. We might get to go crabbing soon which I expect will be awesome!

she and Grandma Gini out on an adventure 

She got to be in the 4th of July parade, and was adorable. By the time the parade actually happened, she was mostly laying down, too tired to do much but raise her head every now and then to wave. But after the parade was over, she sat right down in a chair along the road and waited for more action. 

And a little snapshot of my first-ever attempt at making Norwegian Krumkaka, thin crispy cookies rolled up in a cone shape. It was surprisingly easy!