And Now For Something Completely Different...

The time has come to end this blog adventure. Our road trip has landed us in our new adopted city, the house is found and rented, and the trailer has been stripped of all our belongings.

Our now empty trailer. We took the mattresses out to use as temporary beds until we get our furniture from SB.

There are still many months of processing what we have seen and recovering from the intensity of the road, but for now I just want to say thank you to all of my wonderful friends who have followed us on through our journey. It's been incredibly fun to share it all with you. I will leave you with a few pictures of the new house as a final curtain to this Great American Roadtrip Spectacular. You haven't really gone on a true adventure until you come back home, or whatever it was Dorthy Gale once said...

The porch is big enough to put a couch on, my favorite kind of porch. I will go shopping for some little lantern lights to put up as well. I'm contemplating using Holly Mackay's recycled can candle holder lanterns also.

Grown-up houses like this one have coat closets. This one is huge inside, it's practically a whole mudroom.

There are stairs going up, and more stairs going down. It seems like such a big house, and all of the stairs are INSIDE. Anyone who has been to our last house will know how special that is for us.

The living room is a good size and is augmented in it's openness by the dining room which seems to have nice light. I can't wait to have breakfast in there.

There are a lot of different rooms, but the downstairs has a nice open feel to it. You can see most of it from anywhere on that level. This is a shot of the front door from the kitchen.

The kitchen is pretty shiny. We aren't quite sure yet if we can handle all the fancy features, but we will try. Elijah got a little excited when he realized the oven is split into two. You can cook at two different temperatures at the same time.

An extra room behind the kitchen leads down to the backyard. It has these odd and interesting steps, but is big enough for doing yoga, painting, or having a small dance party. All of which I intend to do.

There is a covered patio complete with audacious light fixture, and behind that garage door is a wet bar.

The outside has a wood burning fire place. It may take us a little before we are comfortable enough with ourselves to actually light it, but there is a pile of kindling in the corner of the yard that is clearly meant for burning in this.

On stormy winter days we can snuggle and watch movies in the basement. The carpet is thick and the room is warm and solid feeling.

Upstairs are three bedrooms just right for the family. It's so much bigger than we are used to, and yet in many ways the perfect size for the five of us. I think as we move in and get our furniture and our books and things around us it will start to feel alive and very functional. There's an office/bedroom on the main floor just right for guests. and the rec room downstairs can house a whole family, it's the size of half our last house and bigger than the trailer we just spent two months in. We registered to vote today right after signing the lease, just barely making the deadline. We are officially Oregonians, and we are home.