E&E : On the cusp

We are on the cusp now. Newberg finished up the school year and I had my last day of work and the kids had their last days of daycare. The cool, rainy spring weather is finally fading into hot summer days and nights and we are counting down the days till our move and leaving this beautiful Oregon behind. It's definitely bittersweet for me. I am sooo excited to get our own house and yard and garage and to put down roots in what's hopefully more of a forever area but at the same time I will really miss the Pacific Northwest with its farmer's markets, and you-pick farms and foggy mornings and plethora of fun diverse and delicious Portland restaurants. I will miss the political climate that I fit into in a lot of ways here and our great ward. I will miss the kids' great daycare with its seasonal vegetarian menu. I will miss our friends. And in a way I feel like our family is just stepping off a cliff into the great unknown. Neither Eric nor I have jobs in Texas yet, we don't know where we will be living, and I know no one in Texas except Eric's family. Part of me wonders if we are just absolutely crazy for moving out there now without things already in place for us, but the other part of me feels like it's an important step for our family's growth. Like we would stagnant here. This area has been the perfect little nest for our baby family- going from students to professionals and welcoming our first two kids. Now our kids aren't even little babies anymore and we need to take the next step to keep growing as a family. It's scary but at the same time I know that the Lord will take care of us as long as we keep our covenants.

Anyway, in all of this preparing to move and everything, we are also still living a super full life! Since my last blog post we celebrated Emery's first birthday with a fun BBQ with friends, had a short but sweet visit from Uncle Eric, Eric and I went to a Carrie Underwood concert at the Moda Center (AMAZING!!!!!!!), celebrated Eric's birthday, spent a lot of time at parks and splash pads with friends and celebrated Katie's graduation and father's day! Here's some pictures of all this awesomeness that's been going down:

When Eric visited, Levi asked him to read him his goodnight book. It was soo cute!

Eric took Levi on the annual Father-Son campout and as usual they had a great time!

When Mom came to town the week before Emery's birthday she watched the kids while Eric and I went to the Carrie Underwood concert. It was Such. A. Great. Show. Seriously so good!!! She was opened by Runaway June and Maddie and Tae and they were all amazing. And Carrie is just such a great performer. I was in heaven loving every minute of it!

Family picture at Emery's birthday BBQ! Neither of our kids were really feeling like stopping playing and eating to take a picture but at least we got one!

My last day of work was all the equipment wrangling. This is only about a third of the equipment at one of my schools! I had to gather, clean and tag it all for summer. But I love that I am leaving everything hopefully well sequestered and safe and well-organized for the new PT coming in in the fall.

I sold my car!! It took less than a week and we got more for it than we had originally thought we would so that's a good thing. And it's definitely a relief that I don't have to worry about the clutch anymore!

They're replacing the siding on our apartment building which is incredibly noisy which makes naps nearly impossible for poor Emery. The other day they were banging on her walls loudly all day so she couldn't sleep and she was just sooo tired poort thing.

Eric's friend Derek comes over to play games sometimes and has notoriously stinky feet when he comes straight from work (he does sprinkler installation so he wears wet work boots all day). So as a joke I got him pineapple socks to wear at our house so he can take off his boots and stinky socks and bag them and wear the pineapple ones instead haha. Funniest part is that after I bought them we found out that he is actually allergic to pineapples!