Our First Few Months in the PNW

We made it to the Pacific Northwest with three little kids, 4 big suitcases, 2 carry-on suitcases, 3 backpacks and 2 shoulder bags, a diaper bag and 3 car seats....yes we were a sight to behold!!

But we survived the 6 hour flight from Atlanta and the kids did amazingly great!! Thank goodness to Amazon for purchasing each child their own seat. It made a world of difference for the girls even at 22 months to have their own personal space. Plus we were able to all sit by each other which never happens when you have two lap children...because of the oxygen mask restrictions.

It was incredibly hard to say goodbye to some amazing people down there in the south! All of Andrew's therapists....I still wish we had that great of a team established up here. Friends from the ward...And we headed up to North Carolina one last time just a few days before we flew out to see Stephen's Aunt PJ & Uncle Chuck. That was a hard goodbye. We've become such great friends after living next door in Texas and then just a short drive this last year when they moved to NC.

Saying goodbye to our wonderful home! Last picture before we drove out!

It's totally felt like a vacation here! I mean we're living out of suit cases and we have really no real commitments....yet...so on the weekends, we head out, go play and explore our new home!

So far, we've....

• Found the Pacific Ocean. (A first for all of our kids, and Stephen.) We went tide pooling and it was SO much Fun! We found tons of sea anemones, crabs and even a few hermit crabs! The kids had a blast and loved exploring the shore and splashing in the puddles. They'd get so excited about every little thing! My favorite was seeing the sea anemones shrink in and open up. We also found out how slippery wet sea weed really can be! 

Exploring the light house near by!

• Found some beautiful hikes!!!The PNW is very green and very beautiful, but in a very different way than in the south! One of our first little hikes we weren't very prepared and just wanted to get to a beach... We found a fun little trail to take us to the beach, but we never ended up making it to the actual beach... (It was a bout 1 1/2 miles long with a few steep areas) We were just enjoying the beautiful hike and stopped to eat our picnic lunch along the way. The girls were getting tired so after lunch we just hiked back out. It was a great day, with the end result not really what we were initially hoping for, but we found some breathtaking views along the way!! 

Yes we are FREEZING wearing pants, and jackets in August!! 

• Stephen was dying...yes literally dying to get over to the Olympic peninsula and see the rain forests. It's about a 2 1/2 hour drive from where we live, since you have to drive all the way around. One Saturday we decided to venture out and try it. So we packed up and headed out. It was incredibly beautiful. And we had the best time exploring. What we thought would be an easy Saturday hike with the kids to Marymere Falls ended up being an entire day adventure! Little legs that stop frequently to look at every rock, bird, squirrel and leaf. Plus we had a great time throwing rocks into the river and getting our toes wet. It was just a beautiful day!

          We almost made it to Forks, WA but it was in the opposite direction then we needed to go. We did however stop in the "big" city of Port Angeles for a little dinner at IHOP....which is a memorable experience in and of itself...

We just happened to find a darling little town named Snoqualmie, one Saturday while we were running errands. It was a cute little train town with train station and track that runs right through it, with a fun museum that the kids can climb in and out of a bunch of different train cars. So we went back one weekend and rode the train up to Snoqualmie Falls. It was a beautiful and scenic ride and the kids loved it. They were so hyper and I think Andrew's excitement rubbed off onto them. We had a great time!! 

We've found a bunch of parks too and loved that Seattle summers make parks doable in the summer! It was always too hot, muggy and you'd burn your legs on the hot slides and swings in Georgia and Texas...not to mention sweating buckets..just down right miserable it you didn't get to the park by 8am.

It's been a great way to start our new adventure out here, although we're ready to be settled and have all of our stuff again. Our bucket list here in Seattle keeps getting longer and longer! So many fun things to do out here!

First Day in Kindergarten

This kids was SO ready for school to start! Waiting that extra month seemed like FOREVER! For both him and myself! Although it was sure nice to have a break, with no therapy commitments, no doctors appointments, just living life! I've been super nervous as to how everything would look for him going into Kindergarten. He had a pretty ideal situation in Georgia as far as school looked and his IEP. So I was super nervous knowing that his new school wouldn't have what he needed. The first day the office opened, I was right there with files in hand....(they probably thought I was crazy) But once they understood the situation, they were super helpful. I had multiple meetings with the school before he even started. I've never been more grateful for my background in special ed, because a few of the things they were proposing seemed pretty ridiculous for Andrew. Plus tons of last minute stuff coming up... I think I had four conversations with the teacher about last minute things the day before he started.

Anyways, we got it all figured out...it isn't as ideal as he had in Georgia, but so far he seems to be doing okay. The hard part is this is just temporary as we finish out our time in coroporate housing, so we may have to go through this all again. 

It also doesn't make it any easier to send him off on his first day of Kindergarten in a new school, with new teacher, when I'm sitting on an airplane. Yep. It just so happened that the first day of Kindergarten was the day Stephen and I left on a trip with my family that we'd been planning since February. My stomach was in knots worrying about this guy. It was so wonderful to be able to talk to him that evening. 

Good thing Aunt Erin snapped a few pictures for me and text them to me! 

We love this kid, but going into kindergarten is going to be a big jump for him! I'm excited as to what this year will bring!! Most days I still can't believe my little baby is a big kindergartener!! 

Seattle here we come!!

What a whirlwind the last few months have been!

When Stephen said he had a recruiter reach out to him last April and he wanted Stephen to interview with Amazon, both of us said sure, why not get some practice interviewing. Thinking nothing would really come of it. It won't hurt anything.  Well that ball just kept on rolling. We (or I should say Stephen) had passed interview after interview after interview. After he flew out for his final interview, the offer they gave us was not much different than Stephen's current role and we turned it down. He was tired of his commute in Atlanta, but we loved where we lived. Andrew was in an ideal situation with his therapy and school. 

Then in early June, Stephen received an offer for a new position at AT&T. It would be an awesome role. Shortly after that, Amazon came back with a totally new offer and a whole new position.  This one was a lot harder to brush off. Now we had a huge decision to make. I was about to fly to Utah and we would need to made a decision. 

Once we got back from Utah, everything happened so quickly! We quickly finished our big back yard renovation project and worked feverishly to get our house ready to sell. All the while Andrew started another intensive therapy program and we were gone everyday from noon-5pm with that commitment. This made it incredibly hard to get anything done. Many late nights repainting rooms, working in our yard, We squeezed in a quick house hunting trip, just Stephen and I one weekend and with all the stress, it was just what we needed. 

We randomly drove past this Seattle Icon....an artist's rendition of a troll under a bridge! 

Lake Union is so incredibly beautiful. It was fun to stay in a hotel right along the shoreline!

Our realtor gave us a good suggestion to ride the Gondola up Crystal Mountain and eat at the restaurant on top of the mountain. It was incredibly beautiful! 

And when we got to the top....we had a breathtaking view of Mt. Rainier!! 

This 14,000ft glacier-capped volcano was an incredible view for dinner!!

Then one night we took a ferry to Bainbridge Island and walked along the beach. It was so fun and we felt like we were back in our good old dating days....without kids...walking along the beach at sunset...holding hands....awe....

Our view of the night skyline heading back to the city on the ferry!

Before I knew it the movers showed up August 1st to pack and load our things. So I took the kids for the day to one of the places we've wanted to see here in Georgia! Stone Mountain! It was awesome and I wished we'd come sooner, because I would have loved to go back lots!  It's a state park, but a lot of stuff you can do. The kids and I had a ball "killing time". They have some amazing trails with all sorts of ability levels. Museums, and shops! The highlight was the train ride we went on around the mountain (especially this train loving kid) and of course the candy shop! We got dumped on by two huge storms, and I did have umbrella's in the car. That's when I realized that I somehow locked my keys in the car. Oh yeah, this happened because Andrew desperately had to go potty after the 45 minute car ride, so as I was rushing trying to get the kids out of the car and buckled in the stroller and bags and such I didn't realize I set my keys down instead of putting them in my bag. Thankfully, I have a wonderful husband who although it wasn't convenient and couldn't have been worse timing with everything going on at house drove out to rescue us that evening.

 Playing on the rocks and in the little stream to cool off...oh and we were already wet from the storms! So why not!

Watching the Stone Mountain train drive by was almost as much fun as riding it!

There it is in all her glory....Stone Mountain! A HUGE granite (what people out east call a...) mountain sitting among the thick green trees!

Here we are getting drenched on our train ride in one of the storms!

Not sure what these three thought after all that rain...but they loved the ride!!

A few days later, we hopped on a plane with a one way ticket to Seattle. 

I don't know if it's a good thing or not that everything happened so fast. We officially signed the offer July 8th and we flew into Seattle August 4th. In my head and in my heart we had planned to settle down in Georgia. Which made it was so incredibly hard to leave.  This huge change for our family came from nowhere. All this change has hit me a lot this time around, especially emotionally.  And now we are dragging three kids along with us on this crazy adventure. I never would have thought when I married Stephen 9 years ago that he'd take me on such a wild ride around the country. 

Right now we are in temporary corporate housing, just a little apartment with all that we could fit into a few suitcases. It's feels mostly like a vacation, the weekends we go and play and we don't have any of our things.  We are just waiting for our house to sell so we can move forward out here. Trying to have a lot of faith as to what will happen with our family and where we will end up. 

We've been able to explore some fun places and soak up an extra month of summer we didn't think we would get. 

The awesome part about Seattle is there's so much to do out here. You have the ocean right here and tons of lakes. Then you also have the mountains, tons of hiking trails and waterfalls. It's absolutely beautiful and green (in a very different way than the green down south). 

It's just hard when I hear Andrew pray in his prayers that his school here will be closed down so that he can go to his old school Whiltlow Elementary. And then just out of the blue while he is playing he'll tell me how much he misses Georgia and our old home. It just about breaks my heart and makes me want to jump on a plane and head back. 

I know things will work out how they are supposed to, they always have. I've grown tremendously each time we've moved and each time I've fallen in love with where we are at. I know we've needed to be in certain places, meet certain people, and be where the Lord has needed us for different times in our life. Partly for Andrew's medical care and partly for our family to rub shoulders with some amazing people. He has a much greater plan than I could have ever imagined and I'm sure our move to Seattle will be no different. 

Just A Little Project...

Last year we had an idea of completely redoing our back yard. What we thought would be a big project...became a huge project.

Everything in Georgia is so hilly and it was incredibly hard to find a home with a useable flat backyard. With Andrew's walking ability we needed something flat so he could run around and play. So we decided to make our own. We started last November ripping stuff out, transplanting plants and bringing in dirt. Then we had an awfully rainy winter and couldn't get back out there until almost April since then we've been putting in every extra minute into our yard.

Here's the before pictures...

Our good friend Jason, came down from Tennessee to help us with the tractor and bring our first few loads of dirt into the back yard.

We even convinced Stephen's dad and brother to help us do some digging while they were down visiting for Christmas! It wasn't rainy that day, but it was sure muddy. We spent most of the winter months covering and uncovering the pile of dirt with plastic to "keep it dry" and "let it dry out". It started to become quite the joke.

Once Spring rolled around, things started happening again. We hired some people to come help build the retaining wall. Then we had an another pile on our driveway...this time it was gravel. The girls seemed to love it. After they had taken what they needed for the wall, we still had a bunch left over. One afternoon I was chatting on the phone with a friend and came upon this picture. Toys dropped and shoes left precisely at the doorstep and the door wide open. For who knows how long....

Then I came upon these pictures! Thankfully they hadn't gone too far. This became one huge playground for these two. They loved filling buckets and cups full of rocks...just scooping and pouring them between containers. Then throwing them into the grass. 

Then once again another lovely pile appeared. Our poor neighbors...one pile finally disappeared and then the next weekend another pile would be delivered.

This time around we let the kids go at it and just play till their little hearts were content. We spent a whole Friday afternoon and an entire Saturday shoveling and hauling dirt into the back yard.  And they had a ball.

Wheelbarrow rides with dad! 

(I think I have a similar picture with me and my little brother Matt.) 

I never thought that Georgia had such red dirt. I'd only seen that color of dirt in Southern Utah. But yes. It is VERY red and completely clay. And I might add, it stains like no other. It is the absolute worst. We've thrown out a bunch of socks and a few shoes. After a day of playing in the dirt, our kids seriously looked like Oompa Loompas with that red dirt covering them from head to toe. I still can picture the bath water after...we had to switch it out three times and they still had a reddish hue to them.

After we got to this point, we had just accepted an offer to work for Amazon and knew we'd be needing to sell our home. Nothing like a dead line to get a project done...right? So we threw together the rest of the back yard pretty dang fast.

We only had about 3-4 weeks total by the time we signed the offer and flew out on an airplane. Wish we could have stayed longer to enjoy the fruits of our labor, but such is life. Everything was so crazy and so fast that I didn't remember to snap a few pictures of the final product. But I stole a few from our listing so here you go!