After a much longer than expected escrow process, we finally closed on Friday!  We got the keys in the afternoon, and enjoyed just spending some time in what is now our house.  We also decided to have dinner there, so I prepped some food at our apartment and cooked our first meal in the new house.  It was kind of fun doing something that we know we’ll do countless more times in the future.  Of course, it will be a LOT easier once we have a refrigerator and all of our stuff moved in.

Then, this weekend, we took a few car loads of boxes over.  Mostly books and things that we don’t plan to use for the next couple of weeks.  Our bookcase here is beginning to look quite bare.  It almost makes me want to go used-book store shopping to fill it up!  We are also having quite a lot of fun visualizing how we want the house to look.  We keep changing our mind on which room will be Noah’s room and which one will be the office/library.  It’s funny how, even though they are just about the same size, there are just small enough differences to make the decision difficult.

Right now, we are just moving over about one carload per day.  We will be doing our official move the weekend after we get back from our vacation, so September 6 and 7.  If anyone is around to help, we’d gladly appreciate it.

Anyway, no pictures quite yet.  Hopefully, soon, though.  Stay posted!

because we have people like this guy!  Seriously, who wouldn’t want to vote for a guy whose name is “Goodspaceguy.”  And his congressional platform is incredible.  Let’s colonize space!  Before we kill each other or the next asteroid hits us.  Amazing.  He’s even got some cool YouTube videos uploaded here.  Good times.

The weekend after we went to Mt. Rainier was Seafair weekend.  Seafair, for you non-Seattleites, is Seattle’s Summer Celebration.  It hosts all sorts of interesting events including hydroplane races, marathons, and a Blue Angels show.  Because of this, the company Phil works for, Evri, decided to have their company picnic at an investor’s home on Mercer Island and watch the Blue Angels.  It was fantastic.  The food, company, and surroundings were great, and the show was excellent.  We were right on the water, and the Blue Angels were soaring right above our heads.

The next day, we went to Fremont (aka The Center of the Universe) to hang out with Dan, Brittany, and Loren. Dan came to visit us from Louisiana, and it was so much fun to be with him and his girlfriend, Brittany.

So, after we got to Fremont and made our necessary visit to Stickman Coffee, we had a fun time looking at all the goofy things they have in this little neighborhood including a huge statue of Lenin, a rocket, and dinosaurs. Noah conquered the dinosaurs, after we walked through the Sunday market.

That evening Dan and Brittany made us an incredible home-cooked Southern dinner.  It was amazing.  Unfortunately, they had to leave on Tuesday, but we had a great time with them overall.

In closing, here are a couple of pictures of Noah enjoying his uncles.

We’ve been so busy lately!  I haven’t even found the time to blog about all that we’ve been doing.  Here are some of the highlights from the last couple of weeks.

For Phil’s birthday weekend, we headed down to Mount Rainier since we hadn’t been there since we came to visit Washington in October of 2006.  Phil has really been wanting to go back, but pregnancy and new baby made it difficult.  However, Noah is now much more interested in what is going on around him, so we packed up and made a weekend of it.  First, we stayed overnight and his aunt and uncles home in Graham and had a nice birthday dinner with them.

Then, we made an early-ish morning to make it to Mt. Rainier.  Phil’s mom came too, so it was a lot of fun.  The snow was pretty far down, so we even got to do a little sledding.  Yes, we used black trash bags… they’re perfect!  You can stuff them into your pockets when you are done!

Noah had a great time as well. He really enjoyed playing in the snow and thought it was great to be be carried around on mommy and daddy’s back.

It was also really fun to see the differences in the mountain in the summertime versus the autumn from last trip. This is the same hill in July 2008 and October 2006:

Now, we’ll just have to go back in the winter and spring to complete our picture of the mountain.  Someday, we also would like to make it to the top, but I believe we’ll have many more years before that will be possible for our family!

Today, the trunk… Tomorrow, Mt. Rainier!  Noah’s climbing.  He began to pull up a couple of weeks ago, and it’s been no stopping him since.  Once he discovered he could pull up on objects, he was climbing them.  His favorite is the trunk, but he also pulls up on the couches, chairs, bed, and bookcase.  He also started cruising (walking by holding on to furniture) within a day or two of pulling up.

Since he began to cruise, we started to wonder if he was ever going to start crawling instead of just scooting on his tummy.  However, we had no need to worry.  He now prefers to crawl up on all fours all the time now.  No more tummy time!  He likes to follow mommy all around the house, and laughs with glee if he finds her in a different room.

Sunday was a very special day in Noah’s life.  He was baptised!  Phil and I were able to bring him before our church and dedicate him before the Lord.

Right after Phil and I became members of our church, Pastor Kelly took Noah and asked us these questions.

1. Do you acknowledge you child’s need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, and the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit?
2. Do you claim God’s covenant promises in his behalf, and do you look in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ for his salvation, as you do for your own?
3. Do you now unreservedly dedicate your child to God, and promise, in humble reliance upon divine grace, that you will endeavor to set before him a godly example, that you will pray with and for him, that you will teach him the doctrines of our holy religion, and that you will strive, by all the means of God’s appointment, to bring him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?

After we affirmed these statements, Noah was baptised.

This was a very different experience for Phil and I as we were not brought up in churches that practiced infant baptism, but after a lot of prayer and conversations with other believers, we decided that this would be the best thing for our son.  Infant baptism in the Presbyterian church is not one of regeneration (as it is in the Roman Catholic Church), but rather one where we look forward to the time that Noah will put his trust in Jesus Christ as his personal Savior and Lord.  He will still have to make that decision for himself, but it is our job as parents to pray for him that he may come to that saving knowledge.

We were blessed to have Phil’s mom, aunt, uncle, and grandma to be there, as well as my brother, Loren.  It was a very special time for all of us.

Since our lease on our Shoreline apartment ends in October, we’ve been looking at the real estate market for a while now. Mostly it was just research, keeping an eye on what kind of things were available at what prices, but last week we started actually visiting them in person. We were thinking for a while that we’d try to do the move in October right around when our current lease finished. But things don’t always work out like you think.

First we were taken around to a few places around North Seattle. Right before we left, we saw one listing in south Shoreline that looked interesting that had just been put on the market, but we were in a hurry and didn’t make note of it. The first few places we saw were all right, but nothing caught our eye. Then we scheduled a visit to the house that we’d just seen show up, and it was the nicest thing we’d seen at that price. A lot of work had just been put into it, and the sellers needed to get out in a hurry, so the price was great. We put in an offer on the very next day.

The next day we found out that ours was one of three offers. The market is currently pretty slow in this area, so having that level of activity within one week of putting a house up is virtually unheard of. We were given an opportunity to raise our offer, but it originally included an escalation clause that brought the offer to above the asking price, which was already cutting it pretty close financially for us. So we left our offer as it was and hoped for the best. The next day we found out our offer was accepted!

We’ll have photos on Flickr before too long. It has three bedrooms and a spacious yard with a great deck and patio, so there’ll be room for entertaining and for Noah to grow.

This will be an interesting few months for us since we do still have our lease. It will end up overlapping with our mortgage payments, so it’ll be a bit tight on money for a few months. But this is really an amazing opportunity for us, and having the overlap will make the moving process less hectic. The way the offer situation went made it very clear that we had done the right thing. Our offer was obviously neither too high nor too low. We’re really thankful for the way it worked out.

As a rule I don’t plan for anything further than a few years in the future, but this is shaping to be the first time since fifth grade that I would live in one place for longer than two years.