packing, moving, unpacking, traveling, waiting, canning....

Its been another crazy month at the Sather home. We changed our original plan, which was to move all the stuff labor day weekend, to moving all the stuff the last week in July. This was good because this way Dave could help me with it all, but in August, he'd be pretty tied up with work. This was bad because it gave us 7 days to pack the remaining 75% of the house. So we did, and moved on schedule, but it was crazy crazy crazy. We moved all the stuff up to Dave's Dad's house, the same place we moved it all from last August. He was and is really great about letting us stash various quantities of stuff for various lengths of time at his place, which I've been doing for pretty much exactly as long as I've known him. This is necessary, as we've lined up a furnished condo to rent until May. I'm not one to lust for condos, but this had a lot of perks: low (winter) rent, close proximity to everything, and enough time for us to figure out where we really want to be long-term before we haul everything out to the island. It's not available until the end of August though, so Dave is hopping from campsite to campsite this month and Julia and I are hanging out in a 98% empty house until the end of August. Here's the pictures from about mid July on:

Hanging out with Chris and Mia, easily in Julia's top 10 favorite people category. 

Julia making "soup" with beans, flowers, rocks, crayons, salt, butter and I can't remember what all else. She's been big into making concoctions in her play kitchen. We had some big arguments over possession of the unripe blueberries for awhile. 

the first box. and the only picture I took of the moving process. 

Occasionally rocking out as a princess. 

definitely rocking out as a princess-farmer

I started my summer canning extravaganza with cherries! cherry jam, experimenting with stevia as a sweetener to make low sugar versions, some no-sugar versions and some regular chock full o sugar versions.

though she doesn't seem too excited here, Julia's become good buddies with Jacob, the son of our friend Susan. 

Lots of hanging out with her friend Aurora. Here we were picking blueberries, but had to pause to admire the chickens. 

and admire the horse swing. 

my friend Michelle had her second baby and we've been enjoying the maternity leave, playing in the pool, walking and whatever it is that moms do. 

Julia and Louie are good buddies too. Louie is excellent at sharing, due to his upbringing sharing a nanny with another little guy, so he and Julia get along famously. 

we had to send off a photo reply to someone welcoming dave "aboard the good ship lopez". A pirate hat and makeshift boat and Julia brought her baby along for the attack.  

Our last week before the move was chock full of empty-the-freezer parties. We cooked and bbqed like crazy and invited one and all to feast. It was a pretty grand time. 

Here's the house emptied, the truck loaded behind me and Dave closing the chapter of life known as Mosier. 

We rocked loading and unloading the truck, thanks to friends and my brother joe, my sister caroline and her boyfriend Matt. We were a day ahead of schedule on both the loading and unloading end. That gave us a little extra time to have fun with Grandma Gini. 

then we had to say a big goodbye to Daddy and hop on the Amtrak back to Mosier. 

Julia was all about the train. and the bag of treats I had stashed away. 

she did fall asleep with open eyes and totally creeped me out for an hour!

sleeping in the station. no wandering the streets of portland for us.  

I was in a hurry to get back because the fruit was ripe! A friend gave us a huge pile of apricots and figs, and the upick peach place up the road was open for business. 

fig jam! 

Rosemary-peach jam!!!

canned peaches and peach salsa!

lots of canned peaches!

apricot salsa, apricot bbq sauce and apricot butter!!!! I canned frantically for days, and tried to keep ahead of the fruit flies and ants with moderate success. Julia watched a lot of cartoons. It was good to be exhausted at the end of the day though, and I keep humbled by the thought that any farmwife back in the day was doing this daily all summer long plus plus plus.  

I've had a few days off from canning while I wait for the tomatoes to ripen in enough quantity to make salsa and tomato sauce and for the cucumbers to grow for pickles. Julia and I have been swimming, playing with friends, cleaning the house,  and taking care of all the endless little projects to really tie up all the loose ends here. I got to try stand up paddleboarding one beautiful morning and I think it's totally a sport for me! No adrenaline needed! I'm sorting the remaining piles of junk in the house and trying to eyeball the remaining objects for how well they will all fit in my car come the end of august. We have no furniture, save a borrowed card table and folding chairs and a borrowed kids table. Julia has her mattress and I have an air mattress. We have enough kitchen stuff to can food, a pantry shelf full of random store canned goods and still have a freezer full of food to consume. I've been baking some bread to trade and sell at a farmstand. Julia has been handling the changes, but not without effects on her behavior. She was pretty unglued to come back to a house with very few toys left, and though she seemed to understand where they all were and why, it's hard to try to make her understand a move that is spread out over a month's time. She asks where Daddy is a lot and we talk about how he is working and getting our new house ready and soon we will go there and be all together. that's usually followed with the suggestion that she's ready and we should go right now. So getting her to understand the whole picture has been a struggle, and she definitely tantrums much easier these days. I'm pretty short tempered too, but working on embracing the time here and not letting the stress of moving be too hard on us. easier said than done somedays. 

goodbye to Oregon, hello to Washington!

Well, if you haven't heard, we have big news! We are moving to Lopez Island, Washington in 6 weeks for Dave's new job as co-principal at Lopez Island School, a k-12 school of about 230 kids. Before I get into that story, here's some pictures of the past month or so. 

We had a string of birthday parties to attend, convincing Julia that they happen every other day or so. Thankfully, she handled the idea that someone else gets to open the presents fairly gracefully. 

a visit to a lavender farm

Cherries came into season, and I made cherry jam. Ramone's universal pectin is the most wonderful invention ever. it uses calcium as the trigger for gelling, not sugar, so you can make sugar free jam, low sugar jam, honey jam, stevia jam, you name it. 

The mosier farmer's market started up for the summer, and Julia loves the pool of water that is set up for universal enjoyment. I've started baking bread to barter, with some good successes.  

another birthday!

We packed up for a trip to washington over the 4th of July holiday. Julia was very happy to see her grandparents again. 

another notch taller on the pantry wall

The beach cabin on Sammish Island was where we got to spend the 4th, and it couldn't have been lovelier weather. 

We caught baby crabs in the water, much to Julia's joy. 

We took a few hours to visit Julia's godmother, Bekah and they (and we) had a good time together for a quick afternoon. 

sunset at sammish island

Julia bonded with her cousins, here she's getting her nails painted by cousin Kaitlyn. a happening that left a deep impression on her!

and Cousin Josh let her hold a sparkler

Sammish Island has a lovely little parade, and Dave and his brothers have made it a tradition to come up with a float. 

They were the Dads Against Daughters Dating, pushing a wheelbarrow with a "body" in it, and roughing up their captured offender, a (very good natured) cousin Josh.  

Julia and Kaitlyn were the "daughters" and followed all princessed up from head to toe, wrapped in caution tape. The crowd loved it!

That night there was some fantastic fireworks. I tried to wake Julia to see some, but she was sooo tired she wouldn't even open her eyes for me. 

After the 4th, I left Julia with her dad, and took off with my friend Erin back to Hood River on a trip for young adult cancer survivors sponsored by First Descents and the John Wayne Cancer Foundation. We got to stay at a lodge not 10 miles from my house! 

The trip was pretty amazing in a lot of ways. Trading stories and experiences with others in my demographic was pretty priceless. I signed up for some online support groups for ovarian cancer, but found that the majority of the conversation was not relevant to my experience, as I had such an unusual encounter with cancer. (young, caught early, didn't need chemo or radiation so far, ect.) Having my friend Erin also going through a cancer diagnosis within 6 months of me was fortunate for both of us as we could talk to each other, but having a room full of 19-39 year olds with equally amazing stories and experiences was unparallelled. 

and then, of course, there was the adventure part of the trip! Whitewater rafting the first day on the white salmon river and whitewater kayaking the second day on the klickitat river!  

Whitewater rafting was fun! we got soaked, but didn't fall in. The scenery was beautiful, the guides were excellent and I had a great time. We ended the day with the option to jump off a bridge into the water. After much internal debate I did it, but hated every second of it. I can confidently state that I will never ever go bungee diving or skydiving. 

our night at the lodge was full of good food and conversation, both casual and facilitated.  

and the second day was kayaking! I was super excited for this day, as I love to be in control of my own craft! We got all wetsuited up and got some instruction in proper river travel.  

We used sit-on-top kayaks, pretty easy to maneuver, and easy to get back on if you fall off, which we did, many times! In the series below, I am attempting to "surf" a rapid, by paddling up against the current and paddling to maintain position. You can see me fall in, and just imagine that scene repeated 6 or 7 times. it was super fun! 

going down the rapids themselves was thrilling, but I was never really scared, which was great, as I'm not too into sports involving adrenaline. 

all too soon, the trip was over, and Erin and I were zipping back north. I rolled in around 1 am, and was up again at 5, so that we could drive over to catch the 6 am ferry in Anacordis to Lopez Island. Dave's interview was to last from 7 am to 7 pm, and Julia and I had the day to check out the island and see if it was something up our alley. 

Julia was a huge fan of the ferry. 

moderately impressed by the beaches 

and thrilled with our picnic 

as well as thrilled with the preschool, the library, 

and the lake in the center of the island. We had a great day, but I tried not to fall in love, lest we not get the position. 

Back at the grandparents, Julia hung out with her cousin Sierra. We picked blackberries, marionberries, blueberries and raspberries to freeze. 

some cuddles with grandma Gini

some adventures in the forest behind Grandpa Dave's house 

and some long hours spent playing with Grandpa Dave's little deck fountain. Dave and I waited on pins and needles for 7 excruciating days, until they called with the job offer!!!! We are so excited to go, but also so very sad to say farewell to the good friends we have made this year. We are pretty thankful that the house purchase process was so delayed all this past year. It allowed us to pull out of the process about a month ago, when we decided that even if we were going to stay in mosier, that paying cancer bills had impacted our finances so severely, we were no longer in a good position to be purchasing. It was a terribly hard decision for me to agree to, as I really love this house and spent a whole year getting things set up just so and working hard on the garden. I do hope someone with a green thumb can move in right away after we move out so that the garden won't die from lack of watering. We've found a friend who will take the chickens and coop, so they will have a good home, but I'm so sad to see them go, especially little Silkie, who Julia and I are quite attached to.  Dave and I are working out a plan for him to head up to lopez in a few days to arrange housing and to start working, and for Julia and I to follow in the end of August. That will give me time to pack, to harvest and process some of the garden bounty, to visit my folks, and attend my cousin's wedding. I'm already knee deep in boxes and its only going to get worse!