we moved!

Sometimes I can barely believe it actually happened, other times, our new house feels so familiar that it seems like ages ago we loaded our stuff into a big truck (with movers help and a huge dose of MIL power) and trucked it from North Portland to the farthest Southeastern corner of Beaverton you can get to.

But we are here. We've upgraded in square footage and in lot size. We have one more bedroom, one more full bath. The house is older, built in 1963, and has enough projects to keep us busy for a long time. But it is so much fun to dream. A lot of our conversations these days start with, "Someday, not right away, but someday, I'd like to do x, y and z."

Elliott's transition into a new house has been good, bad, okay. It really depends on how he is feeling at the moment. It is getting better, definitely, but it's not yet great consistently. He still talks about the old house and when he gets upset, mad or is beyond himself exhausted, he always wants "the old house." We hear things like, "I don't want the new house. I want the old house. Let's go to the old house." It is getting better, we're hearing that less and less during meltdowns, but he still refers to this house as "my new house." I guess someday it'll just fade into "my house" and that's when I know he really feels at home.

He also asks to go to the "old library" pretty regularly. The Beaverton City Library has a pretty amazing selection of books and Elliott seems to really like the puzzles and such that they have for the kids, but he still asks for the old library. He recently decided that a "smash ball" smashed up the old library, so we'll see if he keeps asking for it.

We have been loving the extra space. One huge benefit of the new house's space is the family room in the basement. We have a livingroom on the main level and a daylight family room downstairs. That means Bear has two couches to sleep on and she basically moves from one to the other all day. She likes to bark at people and dogs walking by upstairs and she monitors squirrel and the next door neighbor dog activity while downstairs.

Ditte has been pretty brazen since moving. We aren't sure exactly what the reason for this is, but think it has to do with a few things. Our house is three levels, so Ditte has the upstairs to herself, and Bear has the lower two levels. Ditte is okay to come down when she wants, but we try to keep the upstairs as her level only. We think that since there is the family room downstairs and Bear spends time down there, Ditte feels safer exploring the lower levels. Also, we're pretty sure Ditte has figured out that Bear is getting older, doesn't hear as well as before and might be less scary than before. We've actually seen Ditte stand her ground and growl at Bear from the stairs and refuse to move even though Bear was barking and barking at her. It has been pretty interesting to watch the two of them hash out their territory, at the least.

The yard is pretty exciting here. We have a .19 acre lot. Our old house had a .06 acre lot. So we have a little more than tripled our lot. So for us, that's pretty darn exciting. This year I wouldn't expect to see a ton of gardening from us, we've decided to see what is already here and make decisions on what to keep, what to get rid of and what should go where. Nate has his eye on a couple of trees that he's not sure are placed well (too close to the house and to the gutters), I am looking forward to seeing what sprouts and what all these bushes and such look like once they leaf out.

The kitchen is interesting.... the stove is, I think, original to the house. The counters are avocado green and the cupboards are dark wood. I really like the layout of the kitchen, but outlets are seriously shorted. We have 2 outlets in the kitchen work areas. One of which is behind the stove and the other is at the end of the counter, so it's not great for the real workspace. I have to use extension cords right now to use the mixer and food processor and such. Kinda a pain, but we're figuring out what the "must haves" are for a future kitchen re-do.

So I'm going to post some pics now, but will update the photos in a future post so folks can see what it looks like now. These are pics from my phone that I've taken over time since we moved at the end of January. Hope you enjoy!

The livingroom. It looks different now, we've put the run in the family room and the mantle has different stuff on it, but you get the general idea.

The outside of the house. It looks small from the front, but the back of the house is two levels, with the main (what you can see here) is the middle level.

The backyard. Behind where I was standing to take this pic, the yard bends around the corner of the house. We're on a corner lot, so we get a lot of side yard too. Notice the big covered porch. We're excited about that.

Family room! We've divided it into two areas, one is the tv viewing area, the other side is the play/creative space. Elliott and I do art projects in that space and we've since unpacked his playmat where he plays with his cars and little people toys. This family room has been an amazing space for us.

A nice view of the house from a different angle. I took this recently while walking Bear. Nate and Elliott were outside washing the car and Bear and I were returning home and I decided to snap this picture. You can get an idea of how big the trees are in our neighborhood and of our corner lot.

Bear monitoring the neighborhood. She spends a lot of time like this and lets us know every single time a person walks in front of, across the street from and kitty corner from our house.

And, lastly, I can't have a post without posting something of Elliott. here he is painting in our creative space. We are in the process of painting a bunch of pre-cut out robots for decorating his bedroom, but as you can see, Elliott turns any painting project into full body/full contact art. I basically have to always allot for a bath after any art project.

Thanks all for looking... I hope that by "promoting" our blog on our change of address cards that more family will check out our blog and that'll motivate me to update here more often. Especially for those not of facebook, it would be a great way for you all to keep in touch with what is happening in our little family.