Hello, 2014!

Oh yeah, I have a blog, ha ha!  Thanks must go to my dear friend Ralph for reminding me that not everyone is on Facebook and that some of my distant friends (and family) may rely on this for updates about our lives!  So, here goes.  We quietly welcomed in the new year this year, not that past years were very elaborate or exciting! We let the kids stay up to watch the New York Ball drop and then at our midnight we watched the fireworks display all over the Space Needle. Hands down, the Space Needle show wins, at least as far as watching it on TV goes!

The first time we set foot in Washington was mid-February last year so it's almost been one year.  We'll have been officially living here for one year on March 29th.  Since my last update, we drove to Arizona and back, and I flew with Zach to Kentucky.  Both trips had their trials, but were well worth it to see family and friends!

Autumn in Washington was beautiful.  There are enough deciduous trees here in the "lowlands" that we get to see the colors change still.  I heard it was a drier Fall season than the area has seen in awhile, and that worries me sometimes.  We need the rain here, to keep our ecology healthy.  Climate Change 101?

Speaking of Autumn, Evey started first grade this year at Lake Wilderness Elementary School.  She is doing very well, her reading skills have improved vastly since the start of the year.  They are learning about Australia this semester which should be fun!  Grandma has been to both Australia and New Zealand ... maybe one day I will go, too.

Our next big trip will happen in April when we all fly back to Illinois for two weeks for my brother and Melinda's wedding!  It will be great to see everyone living there and lots of family coming in from all over the country.  I'm sure it will also be a bit chaotic, wanting to spend time with so many different people over a relatively short period.

Ahh, dear Illinois ... of course nature decides to dump two and a half feet of wonderful snow the winter after I leave!  I am jealous of all that beautiful white fluffy stuff they got.  However, I am not jealous of the brutal cold that tagged along with it.  It has been in the low 40s here most of winter.  We did get a wee bit of snow a couple times.  The Friday before winter break we got "enough" snow that schools closed down!  Here are a couple images.  Granted the folks around here aren't used to a lot of snow, this still makes me giggle.

Another state comparison ... when there's no snow in Illinois in the winter, the land tends to be fairly drab and brown.  Here, it's still incredibly green.  Also, I can safely say I have seen more fog in the last few months than I have ever seen in my whole life!  I've been obsessed with exploring since we moved ... both on foot and vehicular.  Here are some recent hiking adventures we've gone on.

On one vehicular exploration trip I took the kids out near the northwestern edge of the Mt. Rainier National Park.  We didn't make it to the Park, but that didn't matter anyway because this entrance is closed during the winter.  I turned around when the wind and rain combined with the mountainous road began to make me feel uneasy.  My tire chains have not yet arrived so there's only so far up I can go in altitude.  Before reaching that point though, we had crossed a scarily narrow bridge over a deep chasm!  Good times!

Here's a parting image of Mt. Rainier from another hike we went on, in relation to our house and the mountain.  Maybe I'm weird, but I like to see stuff like this!