We have (sort of) arrived...

Well, here we are, in Astoria. Our move went well: our friends in Seattle, Caz and Kendall, took a little road trip to drive Seth and I and all of our stuff down here. After Tetrising everything into Kendall’s Civic, Seth and I smooshed ourselves into the back seat with everything for the 4 hour drive down, which luckily went off without a hitch. It was a fun little trip, and I feel really relieved to be here and to be on the way to figuring out what our lives will hold for the near future.

On that note, I’m really excited about our prospects here. The most likely option is Sarah’s friend Cecily, who lives on 14 acres with her family. She’s working to farm more and more of it, and to put together housing so that she can host volunteers (like the farms that Sarah stayed on while travelling). It sounds like we have a lot of the same interests, and like helping Cecily with some of her projects might be a great opportunity for Seth and I to explore food cultivation and progressive/sustainable building techniques before we commit to doing anything permanent for ourselves, while helping someone else out at the same time. So it looks like tomorrow or Tuesday we’ll go out and check it out for ourselves, talk to Cecily about the particulars of our living there, and decide whether it sounds like a good arrangement for everybody. It certainly sounds promising…

That’s about it at the moment; we’re mostly hanging out, meeting all of Sarah’s 8 million friends, and trying to steady our reeling minds and get used to what’s going on. More on where we’ll be living as soon as I figure it out!

Sarah Time!

The sister sent me a few pictures from her visit last week that I thought I would pass on. If you'll notice the handsome kerchief that she's donning, I made that! (You can even see a bit of the cabin, too.) We exchanged Christmas gifts while Sarah was here, a bit late but better than never. I'll wait to mention Seth's until I have a photo; it's really cool and I don't want to spoil the surprise. Sarah got me a book on edible gardening, and Seth a book on northwest mushroom hunting, and is going to put us up in a B&B for the weekend next time we come to visit her. Keeping us fed and sheltered, she is.

Sarah's gift is semi-convertible, cause I know she likes her stuff that way. I made her model it for me a few different ways.

Here's what it looks like without a lovely lady to show it off.

Not nearly so cool, but you can see the shape of it and the twist better.

She and I also snapped a shot of Rainier, which we got a good view of on the ferry crossing. Half the time it's just gray this direction, but we got lucky and got some nice weather, and some views, on the day she arrived.

...and that's why I moved here.

haha

Today I (comfortably) went out to the outhouse in a tank top. How's the weather back home?

Hello Family; Parents and Grandparents, Siblings and Pets...

I know it can feel pretty far with us all the way out here, so this is in the hopes of making all of those mountains and big flat states feel a little less expansive, to keep you up on our misadventures and the trivialities of life that only you guys will care about... Hope you all like.

Settling into our new place is going really well; we're both really enjoying the small space living. I don't have any pictures of it yet, but I will soon, as well as some video of various things (it takes much longer than expected to edit). We've been keeping busy putting our little house together, and having a couple of visits.

Sarah visited us last week for a few days, and then our friend Tyler from Maine came this week for a couple of days. With the place empty again, we're getting back onto some projects: we've been planning a veggie garden that we'll start planting in the next couple of weeks, Seth has been working on some furniture, and I've been working on a bunch of sewing projects (more on all of these soon).

In the meantime, here are some photos I pulled off the web of Vashon, so that you can get an idea what our world looks like these days.

The main street of town, usually has a few less motorcycles...

The Island from above.

Also, if you're interested, you can find an interactive map of the island here. There's a children's learning center called "Skyfish" that used to be in one of the buildings on our property. You can find it in the business directory under "education, private", and then click on it to see the location of our cabin!