One Month Report (part the second)

On the 5th of June Josh started for Oregon.  Ken drove his car here while Josh and Connor played computer games in the back seat.  They also traveled with Tiger, who spent a lot of time whining about having to be in the car or walking over people’s faces at night.  The car experienced a broken alternator belt in Illinois,

but fortunately they were able to get back on the road within a few hours.  They took the extreme northern route so that they were able to visit Mt. Rushmore.

Rexburg,

and Twin Falls.

(Apparently Idaho was colder than Mt. Rushmore.)  They arrived here happy and tired on Sunday evening the 10th.

The next day we drove to the coast to be touristy with Ken & Connor.  We learned that the “haystacks” (huge rock formations jutting up out of the ocean) were caused by lava and we enjoyed looking for sea creatures around them.  We drove down the coast for a couple of hours enjoying the scenery and then went to the Tillamook cheese factory. 

It was great to see Ken & Connor and we were sad to put them on a plane the next day.

Tiger seemed pretty traumatized by the whole trip and spent the first week in Oregon sleeping in the 6 inches between the dryer and the wall. 

After about a week she calmed down a little and started being more sociable. 

The one place we won’t let her go is our bedroom since Russ is allergic to cats.  (Though he seems to be doing ok with her in the apartment.)  We kept the door closed for a few days until I decided that was making me feel claustrophobic and making the room smell musty, so we improvised a baby gate out of a cardboard box.

Tiger now spends her days sleeping on the dryer and hanging out in other interesting places.

Having never done this before (have a pet in the house) we are surprised to see how much we enjoy having Tiger inside.  We’re all a little sad that she’ll have to go back to being an outside cat when we buy a house, but Tiger has to live outside so that Cindy Lynn can come and visit.

We went and picked strawberries for the first time and my were they amazing. 

We love that we can drive 10 minutes and be into the country and able to pick berries.  We’ve now picked a few times and replenished the all important supply of strawberry freezer jam.  We picked raspberries today and are looking forward to the end of August when all of the wild blackberries along the roads ripen.

We walked one Saturday to the farmers market in downtown Hillsboro and appreciated again how close we are to everything here.  The farmers market was loads of fun, and it was a nice sunny day and the girls enjoyed the splash fountain nearby.

The next day on our walk I was amazed to see roses that were literally as big as my hand.  I’m loving the roses that grow everywhere.

I took an afternoon “off” and went into Portland to the Rose Festival Competition, held inside a local mall.  It was fun to see all of the beautiful roses in so many different categories, including categories I would never have thought of, like “miniature rose in a bowl”

and “rose and a stem in a frame.”

It was a fun afternoon and I’m looking forward to taking myself to the international rose test garden in Portland one day next week.

I’ve filled our balcony railing with flowers, a tomato plant and a zucchini.  I even bought a few gerber daisy plants though at the nursery they told me they won’t grow well here—I think I’ll have to find out that one the hard way.

The weather is definitely interesting here.  When people told me that summer didn’t begin until the 4th of July they weren’t kidding.  We had 2 nice 80 degree days last week and then it went back down to the 60’s for the next 6 days.  When we woke up Saturday morning it was raining and 50 degrees—freezing.  I had hot chocolate.  The kids leaned against the freezer for warmth.

I find it interesting that even when the weather is nice the sky isn’t generally clear blue—I describe it as a complicated sky, where there’s always something going on and things can change very quickly.

We’ve spent a fair amount of time at Goodwill trying to get all of the kids outfitted for their pioneer trek next week and looking for other treasures.  I know you’ll be shocked, but we did pass these (complete with built in shoe covers) up.

So there you have it—a really really long rundown of our first month in Oregon.  I talked to my NC neighbor tonight for a while on the phone.  She asked if we had made any friends and if we were finding anything to like here.  Not for the first time I was grateful for the social safety net of the church/ward—as hard as it is to adjust ourselves to a new place, it would be so much harder without a built in group of people who are happy to become our friends.  And I was glad to be able to tell her that as much as we miss NC, we’re finding lots to like about Oregon. 

PS.  I also survived my first haircut in Oregon—the first day was traumatic (when is it not??) but since then I’ve loved it.  I count that as a success since I’ve had my hair cut by the same person for almost the entire time we lived in North Carolina. I’ll try to get a picture at some point—it’s much shorter!