First Impressions

We woke up the next day in the hotel early in the morning, jet lagged but excited to meet our landlord and see our new house in person. We were pleasantly surprised that it looked even better than in the original photos. The view from the house is breathtaking... photos just don't do it any justice. The house is a cute old farm house with all its original charm, well kept, clean and cozy. It's probably around 900-1000 sq ft with two 10'x11' bedrooms, a 12'x29' open dining and living room, a 7'x13 cute country kitchen and a standard bathroom. The kicker is the 19'x 8' bonus room, we call it the sun room because of the 4 huge bay windows overlooking the river and mountains. It's got the best views in the house and we plan to make it our office/crafting room. Of course the cats are going to get their kitty palace in there too. There are 3 wall heaters in the house, one in the kitchen, living and sun rooms. We've only been using the one in the living room and it seems to keep the whole house (with the exception of maybe the bathroom) extremely warm, in fact, we've had to turn it off several times because it gets too warm! As of right now the house is sans furniture, but we made a trip into town to get all our essentials to last us until our moving van arrives to drop off our belongings. We will be painting tomorrow and will start to furnish the house as we find good deals that match our decor plan. Will take pics of the inside once we get it painted and at least somewhat furnished.


We've posted photos of our first three days in washington on flickr driving around mostly, a lot of the pics were taken from inside a moving car so the quality is questionable but you will get a general idea. click this link to take a look: click here

We made it!

 
 Firstly let me thank Ash's parents David and Glenda for everything and driving us the first half to the airport, and my mom Debbie for driving us the rest of the way and helping us through the airport to see us off. Y'all are the best!

  We flew into portland oregon the night of the 27th with two cats, 4 rolling suitcases, a backpack and a laptop bag. The flight length was about 8 hrs split into two legs with a layover in denver colorado. When we went through security in the tampa international airport they made us take both cats out of their carriers and carry them in our arms through the metal detector, which was a major pain in the butt since we were also dealing with our other carry on items too. Luckily the cat's sedatives had kicked in so they were pretty limp and didn't struggle. Aside from that though the first leg of the journey was smooth and easy. We met lots of interesting people while waiting in the airport in denver, including a social worker from Louisiana who we had a fun chat with about being southern and all about her job collecting child support from dead beat dads lol. She was a trip and a half, and certainly the definition of "strong southern woman." I gotta say if you want to meet lots of folks just take two pets into an airport, they are the ultimate conversation starter!
The second leg of the flight was turbulent, which always freaks me out. I was thankful that our plane tickets included free direct TV to keep my mind off thoughts of falling from the sky and crashing into the ground.
We landed, got our baggage seamlessly from the carousel, and boarded the shuttle to the rental car place. We got a free upgrade there from economy car to "luxury" which to them meant a Dodge Avenger. Sharp looking and so far proven reliable, but nothing special to drive. We got the kitties litter and food, checked into the hotel and promptly fell asleep.

Cats on a plane

Any of you who have had cats can attest to how much they hate being in carriers in cars. Today we took them both back to the vet to get their health certificates to take to the skies. As soon as I stuffed Remus in his bag he started to cry like he was dying. Blythe would have been fine but when she hears him it gets her all worked up too. So the whole way there we were being serenaded by cats singing their version of the death march. Lucky for us the vet is only 5 minutes away from our current house and even luckier he is an old friend of ash's so he only charged us for one cert. More important than the health cert though in my opinion is the other thing we got there.... KITTY VALIUM!!!! Yes, our fur children will be drugged out of their little kitty minds to dampen the stress for them as well as everyone else on the plane while cruising 3,000 feet above the ground.... we dont want a remake of "snakes on a plane" cat style (though that would be awfully amusing). We were told by the vet tech that this particular medication worked as somewhat of a hallucinogen... not to be surprised if they were "out of it" for a couple days.. meaning, don't wonder why they are looking around batting at nothing like schizophrenics. Hopefully they will just sleep through it all and wake up in their new home. We're going to buy or build them a palatial kitty palace set right up in front of the bay windows to make it up to them.

Will update you on how they actually got on in a couple of days.

~kris

The first view from our house

This is a photo our landlord took for us from the front yard looking down the road. we google mapped our address and looked around the whole house and yard using the street view function and i must say the view facing the river and mountains is completely unobstructed by anything but the occasional tree cluster. Fantastic!

And this is a picture of one of the many sunrises we are going to see from our house... go ahead, start drooling now, I know we have started to already.......

Sunny Side Down

Our move is happening in the present. This is hard to grasp as Kris and I have spent most of our time together fantasizing about the future. . .namely moving and all the glorious things that follow. I haven't really attached an emotion to the objective until recently when things have started to "fall in line." I am now so excited, the anticipation gives me heartburn and acid reflux. Every time I finalize something else that has to do with our move I throw up in my mouth a little bit. It's been hard, to say the least, to embark on this adventure with little more than 250 cubic feet of possessions and no line on the other end to pull us ashore should we start to sink. I have been doing positive affirmations for every little thing from finding a reputable mover to my landlord emailing me back in a timely manner. That last one is proven to be the hardest. Apparently, people in Oregon/Washington have a blase approach to business. I call and say things like "I have money and I want you to take it." They reply with "Yeah. . .you will need to fill out a form for that. . .we will call you." Then I curse and hang up. Then there is the thing with cats in flight. I get the feeling the 10 hour flight is going to be made harder by all the hair Remus will be losing from the stress and the scared, cracked pitch meows coming from Blythe. I love them dearly,but I sincerely hope for their sake and ours that the vet can drug their little kitty brains out until we arrive in Portland. There are so many parts to this move that my logical brain wants to explode with all the possibilities for fatal mistakes to be made. Still, I lay in bed at night and dream of rivers and mountains. I dream of all the things we will do and see together and of all the good things that will happen to us because of this decision. As we know, life is not written in ink. It's more like Dry Erase marker. . .the old ones. . .you know the kind that don't come off just when you spray them with water you kind-of have to apply elbow grease. We have been scrubbing and scraping for this so long that all we have are nubs on our fingers but we are finally getting a clean slate. I am so excited for us. I am so excited to be having this adventure and to know I am doing it with someone I love and support so much. I hope they love her art out there. I hope they love it so much when people drive by they just want to throw money at us. I can't wait until we make friends and they make fun of us for never using the "g" at the end of a word like "workin." I know we have all these grandiose plans that seem a little zealous. I understand that when God closes a door, he sometimes also seals the windows shut, but we will not be contained. All I have to say is what lies in front of us is imminent, what lies ahead of us is a mystery, and what lies behind us is irrelevant.


~Ash

Preface

Ok, it's been in the works now for much longer than I can even remember, countless hurdles and struggles to get us here, but here we are at last, in the home stretch of our move out west. Plans have changed several times but I think we managed to come up with the best possible scenario for us at the moment.

We just said goodbye to all of our earthly possessions, all 250 cubic feet/1500 lbs worth of them picked, up by a small fl based moving company by the name of Sky moving and storage. So far the experience with them had been good, their office staff was really nice to work with, gave us a really reasonable estimate over the phone and scheduled the pick up within two days of my calling her. The pick up crew, while late by an hour after the scheduled window, made sure to notify us at the last hour mark that they were still on their way. The guys were all really courteous, the main one was a little bit of a slick talker but we did all of our research ahead of time and were able to ask all the right questions to make sure we didn't get taken for a ride. The final price for the move was 300 more than the phone estimate but to be fair, we did end up having slightly more belongings than we'd originally estimated and they had to add in the fuel charge which seemed reasonable to me based on the distance they are going. We filled out and signed tons of paperwork and now have lots of documentation on had to make sure the company who's actually delivering our items sticks to the plan. We did so much research before choosing a company, and let me tell you, I had no idea how many movers out there were scammers. We tried our best to pick a company that seemed realistic and didn't break the budget. Stay tuned to find out the condition of our belongings upon delivery.


Our plane is scheduled to land at the pdx airport wednsday, oct 27th at 12am. and we will probably be renting a hotel the first night so we can meet our new landlord to sign our lease the next day. We will be renting a car from the airport to get us around for a week, and during that time our first line of business will be buying a new vehicle. After that comes furnishing the new place then is all fun and exploration from there.

You may be wondering where we ended up choosing for our new home town..... We had our sights set on the portland oregon area, and we found a place within an hour drive, but on the washington side of the border. In fact, its right on the columbia river. the only thing between us and the water is a little two lane road. the view from the house is mountains and river... and kiteboarders too! apparently our new home town of stevenson wa is the home of the best beginner kiteboarding in the usa. Our house is a cute little two bedroom on a hill with a killer sunroom with huge windows that overlook the columbia gorge. there is a nice yard with raised beds that we will be using to grow our veggies. within a short bike/walk distance (right down the road) is a sweet little shopping district with a stellar looking coffee shop, some restraunts, a bank, gas station, and grocery store. stevenson has everything we could ask for in a cute little town, with the exception of a movie theater but there is one in a close by town called hood river oregon. there are 96 restaurants within a 25 mile radius of our new house so our taste buds won't get bored any time soon. There are quite a few organic farms in the area too and I hope to get set up with a csa co-op so we can get more veggie varieties than we would be able to grow. there are also quite a few mycology clubs in the area that host wild mushroom picking forays so we can have a year round supply of fresh morels, porcini, lobster mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, truffles, chicken of the woods, shaggy mane, honey mushroom, puffballs, matsutake, chanterelles, and more. for me, thats heaven in a hand basket.

A major draw for us to this adorable little town is its proximity to portland, but more so than that is its proximity to tons of beautiful natural surroundings and outdoor recreation. Stevenson washington is located in skamania county, a place rich with natural beauty. Dog mountain is 15 minutes away with some of the best rated hiking trails in southern washington. There are several rivers close by with amazing whitewater rafting opportunities. Lets not forget too the kayaking, kite boarding, paddle boarding, and wind sailing practically in our front yard! When we tire of water sport, we can just drive down to mount hood for year round skiing, rock climbing and cave hiking, drive up to mount st helens to hike up an active volcano, or drive right over to the coast for some whale watching or tide pool exploration.

Here are some links you can check out to get a little sneak peek of our new environment:

http://www.skamania.org/
http://www.flickriver.com/places/weVCjOOYA5m3kz_UwQ/
http://www.bahmacoffee.com/
http://adamschneider.net/photos/2007-05-dm/



We are beyond ecstatic to start our new life together in arguably one of the most beautiful places in the USA, if not the world. We want to share our adventures with everyone back in FL so we will be heavily documenting our experiences in text, video, and photos and posting them here! Keep your eyes peeled for blurbs from both ash and I as we really want to document each of our individual experiences in addition to our combined ones.

~kris