Some photos from the moving in process.

I've uploaded a whole slew of photos to my flickrstream. You, of course, can see the entire batch of our moving pictures there.
In the meantime, however, here are a select few to flesh out the longer post below.



As you can see, we are all still smiling. :)

This is at our first break in The Dalles. Charlie's wearing the awesome Woodpecker Trucking cap his parents found for him. It matches the giant Penske truck (for the record, I wussed out and refused to drive that truck AT ALL; Charlie is the real champ for driving it across Oregon and into Idaho).



Thank goodness for the fact that Charlie and I are cohabitating. This picture proves my crazy plant-lady tendencies. My car was packed to the gills with plants, cleaning supplies, and the cat.

All I need now is a scary Ms. Havisham cake.



We ended up having quite a bit of furniture that needed assembling. Our new Ikea loveseat is included in the tally. It was far simpler to put together than the cube of materials and 30-page booklet may have implied. We were even able to put it together as our brains slowly melted into the new hot weather.



NICE, isn't it? This was our scary view for the first couple of days. It looks like a garage! I think it's safe to say that it doesn't look like this any longer. I've taken the first couple of photos of the "finished" rooms, and will be getting them up here before long.

Forgot to add...

Forgot to mention, the rest of the pictures from our trip are up... you can check them out at http://www.flickr.com/photos/arielarielariel/ if you're so inclined!

It's official!

I got a call this morning from the woman who was looking at our rental application for our #1 choice apartment--and she confirmed it, we're set to go with our favorite place! Yeehaw!

I can't say enough nice things about the apartment--nice part of town, beautiful place, full of character. I'm running out of steam as far as a long texty post goes, but I will share some of the pictures we took of the place below.

Basic stats: 2 bedroom, one bath. Ground floor apartment. Built-in's, hardwood floors, fireplace. Laundry on-site. Good enough for me!

Dining room.

Fireplace

Pocket doors.

View down the "hall" to the kitchen.

Kitchen

From the outside. Ours is the one on the ground floor.

So there you have it! Our new house! Hooray! I think it's going to be a really lovely place to live. We're both so very excited about it.

On the Road... to Boise

Good morning campers!

While most of you are hunkering down in the extreme weather in Portland tonight (lightning, heavy rain), Charlie and I (and Charlie's parents) are overnighting in Eastern Oregon. Baker City, to be specific. Thanks to wifi at the Best Western, I can share a few nice road photos with you.


The drive has been beautiful and relatively uneventful--sunny most of the way, though we ran into a few storm cells as we were heading into the hills east of Pendleton. We had a nice dinner at the Red Lion in Pendleton, and though the hotel itself was kind of a blast from the past style-wise (and age-wise with regard to most of its patrons!), the view out the restaurant's big picture windows left us looking mostly beyond the walls.

Tonight we're hoteling it up, watching cable and bouncing on the beds, but tomorrow will find us up early to make a rental-house-viewing appointment at 10:30 am in Boise. We had somewhat of a distressing realization as we were coming into Pendleton--we'd arranged a 10:3o am appointment, planning to leave Pendleton at 7:00-ish am. That appointment was on Boise time, however (Mountain Time), and we were on Oregon time (Pacific). We did some last-minute plan changing, though, and worked it out just fine--we've a 6:30 am breakfast date with Charlie's parents in the morning, and hopefully will be on the road to Boise at 7.

I haven't been south of La Grande since I was 15 or 16, and I really didn't remember how spectacular the valley containing Baker City is. We drove in right at sunset, and the sky was lighting up the snowy mountains that border the highway on both sides and turning the clouds pink and orange.

Anyhow, time for me to pay attention to Charlie now, but let me leave you with a few photos from the Emigrant Springs area viewpoint just outside Pendleton.