I haven’t written much lately because it feels like that we haven’t done much lately… but that isn’t true. We have done a lot. Maybe because we haven’t done anything cool or significant lately… but that isn’t true either. Looking through my phone I found a lot of cool pics so I can share those here. First I need to catch up on some of our important life events.
Last August after 2 years of looking, we found our dream home in Columbia City in South Seattle. It was still under construction but the builder said it should be done by the end of September…. 2021…. But many delays would happen. Building delays, Permit Delays, City delays and for the last 9 months, they have been telling us that it would be done in a month… and then next month comes… another month… But this spring it really looked like we be moving in soon so we told our current landlord we would leave when our lease ended on May 31st. Unfortunately… more delays…. We ended up needing to put our stuff into storage.
Adding to our stress of moving at the end of May was a family wedding that we committed to attend just North of San Francisco over Memorial Day weekend. We took a break from packing and flew down for a fantastic wedding in Bodega Bay. Here is a great pic of my wife and family all gussied up for the wedding. Missing from this is my brothers wife who had a medical issue the night before the wedding forcing her to spend some time in the hospital while we ended the wedding. This also added to our stress of the end of May… but here is the pic of us at the wedding.
We had a couple of nights to play around San Francisco and Bodega Bay so we drove up the coast and did some bird watching, went to some museums, and ate a lot of good food.
So we eventually came back to Seattle to finish packing and get everything moved to a storage unit. I did about 8 loads in my Durango and then we had a moving truck move everything else on May 31st. We fit everything into a 10 x 20 which we are really proud of. We have spent the last few years getting rid of all the stuff we have accumulated in 30 years together. It feels great to simplify our stuff to fit in a space like this. We only kept stuff that we really need. Although there is still an appetite to get rid of more….
Now we need to find somewhere to sleep until our house is done :>) Fortunately, we have the family beach cabin on Stretch Island so we have spent several days out there by ourselves. It is been fantastic. Lots of great sunsets, walks, and kayak rides. The animals have been very active because the sardines are running in the bay. We have seen a lot of sea lions which are usually rare to our side of the island as well as a whole bunch of seals. On one kayak around the island we saw about 12 sea lions and 40 seals. Also a lot of eagles and our local family of 4 otters…
My brother and sister in law offered up their timeshare condo in Suncadia in the mountains in Central Washington and that sounded like a great way for a change of scenery and still be near Seattle in case our house is ever complete. It is near Roslyn which is famous as the site of the TV series Northern Exposure. It is also a cool historic old coal town. So that is where we are now. The views from the lodge are incredible and I really didn’t expect it. We have been hiking and biking a lot including biking down to town for meals. Lots of fun and we expect to convince my brother to let us come back here regularly…
So now we are nearing our stay here. The builders say the end is near and closing might be this week. We can’t believe anything they say at this point. We are actually enjoying the freedom of being home free and are thinking about another road trip around Eastern Washington before we head back to some more time on Stretch Island. or maybe into a new house.