Hotel Sweet Hotel?

Well even though the hotel we are in is very nice, and we are enjoying it, there is no feeling of being at all settled. Trying to get a routine together is so hard. We have no kitchen in our current hotel, so we're still trying to piece together what meals look like without eating out every time (so expensive!).

Alas, there is good news! We are probably moving to a new place soonish (2-3 weeks from now). Homewood Suites (thanks Jenna for the recommendation) has kitchens and is a really great combo of a nice hotel and a studio apartment. We're looking forward to that, and hoping it works out! Bonus: it's walking distance to Casey's classes!

Hope everyone is enjoying the pictures we put on facebook. If you haven't seen them yet we have Road Trip Pictures (not all posted yet, more to come) and we have Wedding Pictures!! Take a look!

Pictures Up!

I finally got some pictures up on Facebook; The ones from our moving and Hotel Hop 2010! I'm still working on getting the pictures together from the drive down! There is a lot of organizing to do on those still, I'll let you guys know just as soon as I get those up!

Link to pictures on Facebook!

Enjoy!

NorCal

Well sorry we haven't been able to write in a few days! We have been on a lot of adventures in places that don't have any cell/internet service!

We had a really awesome camp in the Redwood National Park, which was lovely. We camped at Golden Bluffs Beach, where the elk graze through camp ground, they were amazing and huge! I would definitely recommend that camp to anyone who is thinking of that kind of adventure. Before we headed out the next day we did a short hike into Fern Canyon. It was surreal. This is the same area where they filmed parts of Jurassic Park. The Canyon walls went about 30 feet straight up and were covered in, you guessed it, ferns. There were felled trees everywhere, and usually if you go late enough in the summer the river is dry enough to hike through, but since we went earlier, we literally hiked through the river! You had to balance on trees and rocks, and generally just walk right through the shallow parts. Really fun if you have waterproof shoes on! It was a blast!

We'll add some more soon....got to get on the road!

Well isn't this Coos-ey :)

Coos Bay! Casey and I had a really beautiful day driving through Portland and out to the Oregon coast. We met up with my Aunt Katha in Salem for a quick pit stop and showed her a few pics from the wedding on Facebook. We couldn't stay long and got back on the road, only to stop for a quick dinner in Eugene. The Steelhead Brewery and Restaurant was a lucky choice, with home brewed root beer and english ale for the birthday boy. We got back on the road after dinner and finally found our way off of I-5 and onto the roads toward the coast. Casey took the wheel (surprise, surprise) and I was left to man the entertainment. I never appreciate how smoothly the tunes keep coming until it's my turn to work the ipod. Thankfully, Casey has Genius on his ipod so I just picked one song I liked and it made me a whole playlist. Saved! I also found that it's really nice to read aloud while you drive. We found a really interesting article in a magazine and I read that to Casey while he drove for about an hour, it passes the time nicely and it keeps you really engaged. We drove past a lot of neat places, very green and full of trees. There are really neat dunes out near Coos Bay just to the north. It was so odd to see full grown pine trees growing right out of the sand dunes! Now that we're settled in for the night Casey has ripped into his birthday present (an Xbox that I tried to pretend that I would never let him buy), and is already hooked up and playing with it. Hopefully he'll sleep a little tonight, more adventures are ahead! :)

Wish us luck and say your prayers for the remainder of the drive!

To fair winds and following seas...

Sionara Seattle :(

Phase 1 "Make everyone sad" - complete. We're finishing packing the car now and we'll be off south in just a few minutes. It still hasn't hit yet that this isn't a vacation we'll be coming back from, but maybe along the way it will sink in. We're so excited for the next few days, we have a lot of exciting places to visit! Stay tuned for all the fun places we turn up. I'll post a bunch of pictures once I dig the cable out of the trunk! Stay classy, Seattle.

I like to Move it Move it!

It's moving day #1! WE HAVE SO MUCH CRAP! I suppose that's expected. The moving dudes literally pack everything. We had a few bottles of beer left on one of our shelves, yep, individually wrapped in paper in a box on the way to japan now. Also, all shoes, wrapped in paper. These guys mean business! In about 3 hours they have over half of our apartment packed and put in the truck. It's getting crazy!

We woke up early this morning and tried to finalize the packing for San Diego. We realized we have split our things into 3 piles.
1. Stuff going straight to Japan
2. Stuff being stored for 3 years while we're in Japan
3. Stuff we want to have with us in San Diego
3a. Stuff we will need on the drive down
3b. Stuff we won't need 'till we get there
The movers at least have control over the first 2....

Gotta go get the Christmas decorations out of storage before they end up in the 'stored for 3 years' pile!! Hope you like this pic of us getting in the movers' way!

Not Packing

Because we're moving with the military, we have movers who are coming (supposedly Thursday/Friday) and will pack up all of our stuff. It's really a nice perk, but it's been hard getting our house 'move-ready' without actually packing anything. I've been trying to purge unwanted clothes/books/things, because it adds to the weight, and since you have a limit, there's no reason to move around things you don't want. Since we just got married, we have a lot of gifts that were shipped to the house, which was nice because they're already nicely packed for the glassware and breakable things. The remaining things are hard though, because you have to rifle through everything and pare it down and/or get it in some kind of order, but then you just put it back, you don't get it box it up and stack it in the corner and call it done. So even though I feel like I've spent days cleaning and organizing, it still feels like the house is more disastrous then ever.

Also because we're moving with the military, we have SO MUCH PAPERWORK! It's been really stressful, because we live about 45 minutes away from the base, so every time there is something new that needs to be filled out it's quite a long haul, and since we're a one-car-family, it usually means I take the bus up to the base. It would have been a much smoother process if it was more transparent as to what people needed and when. There's been a lot of guesswork involved, and a lot of stress about "suddenly missing" forms. That's pushed back having our movers come out too. Advice to anyone moving with the military: it's better to ask too many questions than not enough, because you won't find out otherwise. Thankfully, we got connected with two great people at the PSD on base, which is where they coordinate transfers, and they helped us fill in all the blanks on missing paperwork and what to expect. So now we're on track to have all of our paper-ducks in a row.

Now, if I can only get the dishes done?

Welcome!

Hello! My husband, Casey, and I are about to do some major moving! We just had our beautiful wedding in North Carolina, and we are back in Seattle now preparing for the next adventure! We'll be driving down the West Coast on our way to San Diego for 3 months, then we'll be off to Sasebo, Japan! We're looking forward to sharing with our friends and family via this blog about all of our adventures over the next few months!