Made it! Hanging out in North Bend for now, a cool house with a lake on one side and river on the other two. Too dark to take pictures, but we'll have some time tomorrow for that.

Nearly There. . .

First of all, thank you all for your uplifting comments and pep talks! That really did help! We love you all. And Paige and Bryce we should hang out for sure!

Ok so here is the update. We left the Paxman residence at approximately 6:30 am Mountain Standard Time. We drove north through Utah and Idaho with beautiful clear blue skies and dry roads. We were having a grand o'l time until we hit Oregon. This cursed state! Just 20 miles east of LaGrand we came to a complete halt for two hours, during which time the storm blew a snow drift one foot high in front of our car. Turns out there was an accident that clogged the freeway for two hours. Thanks to our friendly googler and siliac, Brad Singley, we had an informant on road closures and weather information. But have no fear, we were not dying of boredom thanks to the Harry Potter book on CD that my mom lent me for the drive.


Inspite of making it through Deadman Pass ALIVE we got through Pendleton Oregon by 6:30pm Pacific Standard Time, making a total of 13 hours in the car (and we are still about 6 hours away from our destination) only to find out that I-82 and the bridge over the Columbia river are closed, pending further notice.


After a nice dip in the indoor pool and hot tub, Jaron, Liv, and I are nicely snuggled into our beds, courtesy of the Holiday Inn Express. Who knew that for 90 dollars we could have such a dreamy situation. Quite frankly, it wouldn't have mattered if it was 300 dollars, we were ready to get out of that car.

Stay tuned tomorrow. Hopefully our next post will be news from the Emerald City!

Three Randomnimanies

1. Last Saturday I hung out with some of my dearest friends: Kelly Moon and baby Jude, and Natalie Permann and her baby Jayden. We missed you Elise! I was in a primary presidency with these girls in the 109th ward about a year ago. Every single one of us including Elise who was not able to join us because she lives in D.C., got pregnant during our primary presidency. We always joked that there was something in the water. Instead of actually getting things done at our meetings we mostly just talked about pregnancy and babies. It's amazing that we even pulled off a primary program! :) Here we are a year later with our babies. I will always love you girls!

2. Amidst all the boring packing and such, we had a burst of joyful activity when Jaron's new graduation present arrived. He was thoroughly touched to the point of tears. Maybe we can make a home out of Washington after all. . . :)

3. Tomorrow we leave for the wild wild north west. Everyone has been asking me if I am so excited to be moving to Seattle. To be honest, I'm really not at this point. I'm feeling quite sad. I'm sure it will be fine once I have some friends and get settled in, but at this point I'm leaving a lot of what I love and know. I will miss my mom dearly, my family, my friends, Utah Lake, hobble creek, my ward, free babysitting, the basement. I'm sure I'll get over all this sadness right?? I'm probably just feeling scared and a little emotional.

P.S. Lets look at the bright side of things, I don't think we will have to change our blog name, because from what I hear we will probably be living at the top of another hill, if not literally, always metaphorically! :)

Kiss it goodbye smalls!

What do ya say, Sayulita?

All right people (Jaron speaking here by the way), here's what we did in Mexico:

surfed a bit

body surfed tons

This one's for Sam (hold a hand over your heart and remember pounders!)

Found a cool secret beach that you had to crawl though a cave to get to

the red arrow marks the entrance to the cave, we saw 6 people in 8 hours on that beach

We took pictures of rocks with waves hitting them too.

Los arcos, not the best snorkleling of all time, but a lot better than anywhere in Utah

Hiked to a waterfall

This is it.

You could slid down part of it too.

White birds on green rocks were neat.

Rented 4 wheelers, and tore all over the place

Zipline tour of the canopy was a favorite

On the line above you could go 35 mph.

Here's Jess swinging through the trees

Were Back!

Note: Big Mexico post coming soon to a blogspot near you. . .
First laundry,
Then shopping,
Then Sleep
Then a post. I promise!

Brrrrr it's cold out here. . .

We had so many pictures that we liked from Brooke's christmas card photo shoot of our family. This was one of my favorites, just because of Olivia's facial expression as she is warming her hands. Pretty sure her thoughts were something to the effect of "What the heck are these people thinking? How can I escape? I'll just warm my hands for a minute longer and then crawl away."