Moving In

Moving into our new house has been amazing. It it so beautiful, and has that "new house" smell, and central air, and carpet. We love it. The hardwood hickory floor throughout the kitchen is gorgeous, even though I'm terrified to keep it up. (tips from fellow hardwood floor owners welcome here.) The laundry room is so big and the washer and dryer work so quickly! The master bedroom/bath is still something to get used to ... so much walking, just to brush my teeth, change my clothes, et. It's really wonderful to have our new home. We spent our first night here on July 30, right before our 4th anniversary. Here's our cosy front entry...
Our neighborhood is small and quiet, but seems very friendly so far. We're in a tiny subdivision with quite a few new builds and some empty lots around us. So, we assume most of our nearby neighbors are probably also new to the area. One funny thing, when we first moved in, I was very surprised to find that there is a new lot RIGHT next to us! None of the pictures ever showed that big barren spot of ground 5 ft from our house. One of the drawbacks to buying online. ha! Here it is, for those curious about the lay-of-the-land...

As for the actual details of "moving in" to our new house, I admit this has not been the streamlined process I imagined. My standard motto of "everything takes longer" applies perfectly to the house situation. Our air shipment was supposed to take up to ten days to arrive. It took nearly a month to come. Our sea shipment arrived last week, finally! (No dressers, cookie sheets, or books until it landed!) Buying furniture is tedious. We have a hard time making decisions, so we end up taking forever. I want things to match and have a good "flow" to the decor, but I really haven't got a good "vision" for what I'm after yet. So, little by little we're trying to get things we like, things that will go together, things that don't cost us a small fortune. This is difficult. Here's how the house looks right now...

The couch really is burnt orange. I love it. Brian loves it. The tricky part is finding things that go with burnt orange.

View from the back of the couch, below... As you will see, we are FAR from done on the decorating front. We still can't figure out what to put on that wall facing the couch. We don't want an entertainment center, but it's really hard to find something else that would work there. The small bookshelf is just temporary. hmm... Decorating suggestions welcome!!

And the dining room... the little hutch in the corner really is a dark lime green -- like the color of a lime peel. I love it. It was on a clearance sale and I was sooo excited to get it for our room. But now, am I tied to green for our kitchen? Problem: all our dishes from our wedding just four years ago are blue. hmm.

Our bed is a favorite. Costco pillow-top mattress set, same as we had in London. And we just discovered we bought the same bed that my brother Blaine and his wife Lisa have! They must have good taste, too.

Here's the comfy chair we bought for our bedroom. Great for reading and sprawling!
And here is Samantha in her bedroom, with her new IKEA furnishings. She is thrilled with her room, even though we've yet to decorate it.

And, the grand finale... that's right! It's a baby grand piano!!! I am sooooo very excited to have this lovely instrument in our home. I like to go look at it night before I go to bed.
I have always, always wanted a baby grand, and now we actually have one. It's gorgeous. Shiny black. Lovely tone quality. I try to play it every day that we are home. Brian plays it a lot too, and Samantha plays it with supervision. Mainly she just dances around the room while we play. The best part is that we got a great deal (we think?) at the piano sale from the university in town. Couldn't pass it up.

So, now we have a piano. And a piano room, since it takes up most of the little parlor room it's sitting in. Well, I guess we're moved in?

Oregon Coast Reunion Trip

The first week of August we spent with my family in a gorgeous five-bedroom house on the Oregon Coast (in Newport, to be exact). It was fabulous! We had such a great time just being together. The house was the perfect vacation house, with plenty of room for all the kids, and so close to a private beach.

We spent most of the time just visiting, playing games, watching movies, eating good food, seeing the sites, and playing on the beach. Good times that will speak for themselves in the pictures below...







I have to admit, it was COLD on this trip. We kept jacket on, sometimes even in the house, and almost always when we went out. Darnit. But the beach was beautiful, and the company was perfect.






Brian and I took a little day trip up to Astoria to meet with our Randilicious, and her friend Rebecca. It was great to see our dear Randi again, and her timely blog entry tells more of the fun details, if you have time for a side trip.

We went over the Astoria bridge into Washington. Very cool bridge. I took a video, but a picture will have to do for tonight...
My favorite beach -- Ecola State Park, near Cannon Beach. It really is one of my very favorite places in the entire world, and the pictures do not do it justice at all! I think it even ties with Walden Pond for favorites, I'm serious. I could write a whole separate blog about why I love it so much, but not today.


Some cute pictures of the cousins together. I tried to get single shots of each of them, but missed a few, I think...











What a fun trip, BIG thanks to my great parents for planning it and making it happen! Brian pointed out, our time in London was bookended by two trips to the Oregon Coast with my family. Our last time being there was in 2004, just weeks before we moved to the UK.

New Car

So, I spent my birthday week at my parents' house with Samantha and Spencer. And Brian spent a few days camping and hiking with his brothers. When we got back together, we decided it was time to really get serious about buying a car.

We were staying at Brian's parents' house those first couple weeks, borrowing their car or truck for our errands. This was not easy on them, I'm sure, though they were more than willing to help us out -- we're soooo very grateful. So, for several days in a row it seemed like our pattern was:

-- look on craigs list at cars and furniture stuff
-- call on the stuff and sometimes go see it (and rarely buy anything we saw)
-- take the kids and go to car dealers
-- test drive cars
-- come home and talk about all the cars and furniture
-- look on craigslist again, sleep on it.

It was so hard to decide what we wanted and needed. We vascilated between a smaller sedan and something with a bit more room. We finally decided on a Toyota Sienna minivan. It's gold. It's roomy. It gets good gas mileage. It has an automatic sliding door. We've already put 3000+ miles on it. It's durable. It's a Toyota. We really like it. Even me. But I still call it a car, not a van or minivan or anything like unto it, just fyi.

Here's the lovely gold mobile, for posterity's sake...
And here's Samantha (note the green goggles -- oh-so-pretty!) and Brian (note the lawyer's poker face) at the dealership, signing the papers for the deal...

We bought it just in time to test drive it on a week-long trip to the Oregon Coast. It past the test with flying colors. It was a GREAT asset to the trip, just for how comfy we were the whole time. Pictures of our happy Oregon time are coming up next. Stay tuned!

Bishop Reunion

As soon as we got home from London, we launched right into a three-day family reunion with Brian's dad's side of the family. It was so much fun to meet aunts, uncles and cousins, and just spend time catching up with everyone. Kudos to Brian's parents for hosting it at their house, and especially to Brian's mom for all the delicious food!

We did a lot of fun things for the reunion that turned out to be a nice introduction to the Treasure Valley area for me. A few of the highlights...

Brian's dad arranged for us to go on a tour of the sugar factory where he used to work. It's where they process sugar beets into beautiful white and tasty brown sugar. We got to see the whole process. One nifty factoid -- did you know most brands of sugar are processed in the same factory, and are exactly the SAME product? I watched them filling lovely white sugar granules into Albertsons bags. Then they turned the machine off for a minute and switched to Western Family bags. No joke. Also, most sugar in our Western United States comes from beets, unless is says specifically that it is cane sugar (C&H is cane, fyi). Interesting stuff.

Here's Brian's Dad in the office where he used to work as a chemist, testing to make sure the sugar is processed properly (that's my very oversimplified description of a complex process).

We also got to see the famous Snake River Stampede Rodeo one night.

That was... an experience. I remember pretending to like rodeos when I was in high school. I even participated in the Little Buckaroo Rodeo as a youngster -- I'm totally serious; I milked a goat, tied a ribbon on a goat, caught a chicken, and even once tried mutton busting, I think. I have the belt buckles to prove it (in a drawer somewhere at my parents' house, of course).

Nowadays, I think rodeoing is just plain CRAZY! I cringed to watch these people deliberately kicking a horse -- or worse, a bull -- to make it buck them sooooo high in the air, over and over until they fell off. Why? Why in the WORLD do people do this?!

The real kicker for me was when the announcer came on the loud speaker in a chipper voice and said, "Just for all those of you who may be wondering, the rider from last night's rodeo who left on the stretcher [insert cowboy name here] did in fact break his neck." That was said between announcements that kettle corn is still being sold in the corner of the arena, etc.!!?! Nuts, I tell you!

Samantha was really tired and didn't get into it at all. Spencer fell asleep on Aunt Alysa.

We also went picnicking to a fun little town called Melba. It was tiny, and way out there -- gave me a good "lay of the land." The kids loved the swings, the adults loved the food and conversation.

Then we all went swimming at a fun hotsprings nearby. Spencer had his first real swim in a pool, he loved it. So did Sammie, of course.

The reunion ended on my birthday, so I skipped out a little early to head South and spend a few hours with my family on my special day. Brian surprised me before I left, with a delicious chocolate/caremel cake, and a gift certificate for a massage and pedicure at a day spa the next day! It was the perfect birthday treat. My mom watched my kids while I spent the day after my birthday treating myself to shopping and the day spa. Boy do I feel spoiled.