Checking In

Part 2 of our Portland Home Tour is coming...probably when we don't live here anymore, but it is coming!

In the meantime I just wanted to check in and say "HI!" to blogland. When I said our theme for the year was going to be EXPLORE, I really had no idea how much I really meant it! We have had an entire summer of exploration. We have picked every kind of fruit that grows in Oregon, we have walked and hiked and found new parks, we have played in lakes and rivers and oceans, we have felt the sand between our toes on beaches and riverfronts, we have bought fresh caught salmon from the side of the road and cooked it whole (oh my yum!), we have spent hours and hours and hours in our cul de sac playing with the neighbor kids, sitting on our bench, and pushing Ellie in the swing hanging from our tree. We have played with friends at parks, had friends over for dinner, joined friends for dinner, missed naps and kept our kids up way too late, just to get in a little more friend time. I have been taking pictures of our family and other families nonstop, so the lack of visual stimulation here is only a result of too many sessions in the editing queue. A full year after our first adventure to downtown Portland, we finally got up the courage to venture down there with the kids again and checked out the world's largest independently owned bookstore...the kids were in heaven with books as far as the eye could see! We walked along the downtown riverfront and were reminded why we are totally ok with the fact that we only took the kids downtown twice the whole time we lived here (legalized and openly smoked marijuana, people who are homeless by choice, and the fresh smell of pee everywhere...really not our thang). And on the topic of pee, I have helped my children pee in the grass more times than I care to admit while playing on playgrounds with no bathrooms...seriously Portland...you need more bathrooms!!!

Yes, it has been a summer of exploration and I am happy to say that we have made the very most of every single day we have had here. Sadly, our time here is drawing to a close, and I am not sure I am ready to let it end. I have truly learned to love this place...even if it is only in the Summer and Fall. We have been so blessed with dear friends who we don't want to leave, fun adventures we would love to experience again, and fruits and veggies we just can't get enough of.

Our year in Portland will likely go down in our family's history as the hardest year of our life. It will be remembered as the year that nothing went the way we had planned and everything sort of just unraveled at the seams. But it will also be remembered as the year we learned about seizing the moment, heading out on adventure, trusting in Heavenly Father even when his plan seems pretty crappy, the power of sunshine, the joy of service and the sweetness of true and meaningful friendships. As I pack each box, I feel another tinge of sadness at the thought of leaving...and it makes me happy because it means that we have given this place a little bit of ourselves and it, in turn, has filled a space in our hearts.