Farewell Maine, Hello Oregon

I have been a little remiss in my blog updates lately, so here is an update on the last three weeks of our lives...

On September 1st, Kelson, along with the rest of the crew of the Spruance, sailed away from Bath and down the Kennebec River to start the journey down the east coast, through the Panama Canal, and up to San Diego. Two days later, I also left Maine for good and flew home to stay with my parents in Oregon while Kelson is sailing around. We are, once again, living on opposite sides of the continent, which has pretty much been the story of our lives. It is even less fun now that we are married, so we are looking forward to being together again. Luckily, we get to talk or e-mail almost every day. In the last three weeks, Kelson has spent time in Newport, Rhode Island, Yorktown, Virginia, and Mayport, Florida. He arrived this weekend in Key West, where I will be joining him on Thursday for the ship's commissioning ceremony.  We are so excited!

This is the kind of amazing beauty I came home to. One Friday, my parents and I drove for an hour up a treacherous road to spend our afternoon relaxing by this beautiful creek. Maine was gorgeous, but I have missed the mountains. This is home.

I have never seen my dad more content than he was here in his water shoes, Hawaiian swim trunks, polo shirt, and panama hat fishing in the creek. What you can't see in the picture is that Arty, our chocolate lab, was also having the time of her life in the creek, which may have something to do with the fact that Dad had no luck with the fish.

Some families play board games for FHE. We play with power tools. My parents helped me build bedside tables for our new apartment in San Diego. Most of our furniture has been salvaged from yard sales and junk shops and refurbished. Stay tuned for some seriously fabulous before and after shots.  Post coming soon.

Last weekend, I went with my parents to the annual Jensen Distributing convention in Spokane. We have taken this trip to do buying for our hardware store as a family every year since before I was born. It was always one of our favorite events of the whole year. Believe it or not, hardware conventions can be pretty fun, especially if your grandparents and all of your cousins are along for the trip. I haven't been able to go since I graduated from high school, so I made sure I was home in time this year. We had a great weekend!

We stopped at a lot of thrift shops on the Spokane trip to look for treasures. This book was one of the funniest, most ridiculous things I have ever seen. It was a book of "nonracist, nonviolent, nonsexist, positive rhymes for all kinds of kids". Apparently all of our traditional nursery rhymes are inappropriate for children, so all of the rhymes in this book were rewritten. All of the king's men and women (rather than his horses) succeeded in putting humpty dumpty back together, Jack and Jill succeeded in bringing the water home, and the old lady (and old man) who lived in the shoe needed a lesson in birth control. It was so ridiculous I couldn't help but laugh.

Since we got back from Spokane, I have been very busy working on furniture. Yesterday, I went with my family to pick peaches at an orchard in Payette, and they were amazing! Mom and I are going to be preserving fruit this week. Yum!

Soon to come: furniture transformations & adventures in Key West!