so far, seattle...

so far, seattle is pretty great. the other morning i got to look at a beautiful mountain range on my way to work. i don't expect to get tired of that view.

we were smart to move here on the dawn of spring, because we've actually had quite a few sunny days. the rain hasn't bothered me at all, but i already love the sun more as i see it less often. 

i've been honked at several times. boo. it's only annoying because i can't change the fact that the cars in front of me are turning very slowly, so honking at me is pointless. city problems i guess. 

on a related note, i officially got stuck in traffic yesterday. it was probably the first time in my life that i've ever actually been stuck in traffic since i'm a born and raised iowa girl and all. this wasn't horrible seattle traffic, this was just downtown renton traffic. but still, we weren't moving for a good ten minutes.

i noticed the other day that i have not seen a single walmart. anywhere. it's awesome. only target. i thought about doing a google map search to show you how scarce the walmarts are here, but then i decided that they are probably lurking out there somewhere and i'm choosing ignorance. i'm choosing to live in a world with no walmart. 

at bryan's parents house we have three city issued trash/recycling receptacles. one for trash, one for recycling and one for yard/food waste. the recycling and yard/food waste bins are literally TWICE as big as the trash bin and the trash only gets picked up once every two weeks. crazy hippies. [i secretly love this about seattle and want to be a crazy hippie]

so that's seattle so far!

random thoughts on a sunday

i really thought i would have tons of time on my hands...time to blog and craft in particular. but there are a few things that are keeping me quite busy:

1. we live with two other people now (bryan's parents) so, we automatically have people to hang out with when we're not busy.
2. because we had to leave iowa city so quickly, i've been working from seattle to pass all my veritas responsibilities to different people. i've been working on that quite a few evenings after i get home from work.
3. WE LIVE IN SEATTLE. this place is seriously so cool. and WE LIVE HERE. we have so many adventures to go on, so many things we can do. it's crazy. i love iowa with my whole heart, but it's really cool to live in such a sweet place. 

we've also been visiting churches which has been weird. i'm not used to being a visitor in a church. i feel horrible about attending a church one week and not coming back. during announcements, i mentally comb through our calendar to make sure i can make it to "salad night" for the women or the tuesday night prayer function. 

it's definitely a strange feeling. 

veritas launched their service in cedar rapids today. bryan and i prayed for them this morning, and i was brought to tears by how wonderfully God has blessed that church. it was SUCH A HUGE BLESSING to be apart of God's work in little 'ol iowa. that's what i've been praying for here. we want a family like we had at veritas (and cornerstone before that). we want to be apart of bringing God's glory to this area through a church we love and loves us. we'd love for you to join us in that prayer.

blog 'ya later. happy palm sunday! 

how to move across the country in 3 weeks

as many of you know, we had basically three weeks to move across the country. i found out that i got a job in the seattle area on thursday, february 7th and we went straight to texas that night to meet our newly born nephew (aka: the most adorable, dimpled, half-indian baby in the world!). we got back from texas on tuesday, february 12th and figured we needed to leave on tuesday, march 5th to get to seattle with enough time to rest before my first day of work on march 11th...

...anyway, three weeks. here's how we did it:

#1: we started packing immediately. as in, we rolled in from a 13 hour drive from texas and we started packing.

#2: we looked into the cost of moving expenses and found out that it is dang expensive to move your crap across the country. we decided instead to sell everything we own and try to fit everything we wanted to keep into 10 boxes to ship over to seattle.

#3: we started to sell everything we owned. literally every piece of furniture we had was free, thrifted or from ikea. aaaaaaand since my new office is literally in walking distance from the ikea in the seattle area, we figured we'd survive. if i really, really missed our wonderful dark gray couch, i could buy an identical one if i wanted. :)

#4: by the end of the second week, with a little over a week to move, we had pretty much sold everything between our indoor garage sale, giving things away, putting things on craigslist and bringing the rest to a consignment shop. woohoo!

#5: we started actually packing the boxes as this point, as space-efficiently as possible with lots of bubble wrap for the dishes and such. we ended up with 13 boxes including our giant tv and kitchenaid...so really only 11, i would say that we were pretty successful!

#6: the sunday before we left, our friend's ben and jamie came over and helped us fix our trailer. ben put in a new back door (and custom fit the door frame!) and jamie painted our bathroom while we finished packing and throwing everything away.

#7: after several people from craigslist looked at our santa fe and no one wanted to buy it, we decided to just take the things to seattle...it was a win because between the two cars we fit 8 boxes plus our kitchenaid and our giant tv (which we found out we couldn't ship anyway), as well as our suitcases, my wedding dress and all the other last minute stuff we packed away. it was a lose because we had to drive separately the whole way there and although we were ignorant to this fact, it was a miracle that car even made it to seattle (more on this later!)

#8: we had lots of going away parties. the bodin's hosted one for us in iowa city, the meyer's had one last friendship gathering for us and my parents hosted one for us in ames. we have such great people in our lives in iowa.

#9: on monday night, we found out there was a big storm coming into iowa city, so our actual exit was pretty anti-climactic. we hurried up to tidy the now empty mobile home, returned everything we borrowed and shoved the last few things into our cars. we left our pink flamingos in safe hands and left the city before the storm hit (good thing too, because they got over a foot of snow!)

whew! we did it! we get everything done in iowa city, now for the 28 hour road trip to seattle....

completely expected emotion.

WARNING: this post is not for the faint of heart...i cried pretty much the whole time i wrote this. 

at this particular moment, i'm feeling pretty sad about the friends we've left behind in iowa. seriously, can't you all move here please? like right now?

i had a moment today where i just needed to cry. and those of you who know me well know that i'm a community cryer. and i had a thought that only made me more sad: i have no one to cry with here! 

i better find some friends who i can dump on soon...(my apologies to my future friends in the seattle area) 

friends, if you doubted it for a second, I REALLY MISS YOU. 

i stayed very busy this week with my new job (as well as corresponding with everyone at Veritas to make sure everything is still running smoothly there...) but after the work week was over, i finally had time to think about our HUGE loss. man, we had it good in iowa. so many wonderful people, so many best of the best friends. i logged on to facebook to take my mind off of the sadness i'm finally feeling only to see the wonderful veritas community reaching out and helping each other (it was you, mikki, offering to help watch karlee's three kids while she's at the hospital with little garrison, just in case you're wondering). STOP IT, YOU WONDERFUL PEOPLE, YOU'RE MAKING CRY! 

i desperately miss our my little veritas staff family, and even more so my connection group family, and even more so my sweet, sweet little group of friends. not to mention my actual family...they are the best. 

yes, we really had it good.

still, we're really happy to be here, you should know that. God has really been so good to us, and we continue to see that in our lives, even in our short time here. so it's not all sad. 

okay. i'm feeling better now, looks like i just needed to cry with you, readers. there will definitely be more tears to come. 

BUT, until then, i have lots of other happy, fluffy and silly things i want to write about, so look forward to hearing from me soon!