My Wanderings

I have been told, on occasion, that I am a creative person. My response is always that I am not actually very creative, I just know how to copy others ideas. Well, here I go again...

Lindsay's recent posts about the places she has been have inspired me. (I hope you don't mind me copying you Lindsay.) I was just going to write about the places Tom and I have lived, but started reminiscing back to the places I had lived before we got married. So, I guess I will start at the beginning...

I can't really tell you much about the places I lived when I was young. I know I was born in Hoodriver, OR where we lived in what family members call "the white house" when referring to it. I was two when we moved away, and therefore do not have any memories of that house.

Mesa, Arizona was the next stop for us. I do not have any memories of the first house we lived in. At least not any memories of when we were living in it. I remember visiting it later when my cousins lived there. It was tiny. I am not sure how we fit our whole family in that thing. I am not sure how long we lived there, but eventually we ended up at our house on Caballero Cir.

This is the house that I say I was raised in. I went through preschool, elementary school, and most of junior high there. Unfortunately, I do not have any good pictures of the front of the house to show you. (Update: Kari found me the above picutre.) I looked it up on Google Street View (I actually remembered the address on the first try) and got excited when I saw our cul-de-sac. I turned the camera around to face our house and what do I see? A great picture of the Arizona sun blocking out most of the view of the house. Gotta love the sun down there. Here are a few pictures I did find.


This sort of shows off the front of the house. This is a nativity set that my dad made and my mom painted. Yes, it was Christmas time. Ignore that fact that we are being blinded by the sun and that a couple of us are in short sleeves.


Our mailbox. No, that mask was not part of it. I am sure it was Byron's idea to stick it up there for a picture.


My favorite part about the house... our pool. A must in Arizona.


This picture was taken right before we moved. I think that is actually the new carpet that we put in before we left. The carpet before was a dark, ugly brown. Our house flooded because the hose on the washer broke and we had to get all new carpet. The little boy I am holding was the little brother of Sarah's best friend, Becky. Christopher, I believe. The thing I remember most about him is that he liked to bite. Ouch.


One of the great things about living in Arizona was family. Almost ever member of my Mom's family lives down there. I really enjoyed that atmosphere growing up. We did a lot of stuff together as an extended family. My cousins were my best friends. The picture above is of Jill, Byron and... Sarah???, on Grandmother and Granddad's trampoline.

Next stop was Olalla, WA. We moved the summer before 9th grade for me. I do not have any pictures of the outside of this house either. I guess I am not very prepared for this blog. I will have to see if I can scrounge up some more pictures later. We rented a house when we first moved to Washington. It was a large A-frame house in the middle of the woods. I loved it! What a change from living in the dessert of Arizona. One of the best things about this house was that I finally got my own room! Granted it did have bright red carpet, and wallpaper with strawberries all over it, but it was my own... and it had a window seat. At least I did not have to live in Sarah's room that had bright blue carpet and rainbows all over the wall.

Olalla was fun. There were not a lot of kids nearby, and so we spent a lot of time hanging out with each other when we first moved. We had so much fun roaming the woods and hacking our way through blackberry bushes. We had lots of scrapes to show for that adventure.

Ben and I playing on the computer up in the loft of the Olalla house. We were probably playing Myst.


One thing we loved to do was walk down to Al's. It was a little grocery store at the bottom of the hill we lived on. It also was right on the water. We would go down there all the time to goof off. I am not sure that it was the safest thing for us to do. The road down there was very, very narrow and had lots and lots of curves. On one side was a huge drop off into the water. This pictures is not of the beach there. The one at Al's had rocks, not sand. This was at the coast, but it reminded me of going down to Al's and the water.


Here Ben and Andy are pointing at their window through the bushes.


I am not sure how long we lived in the Olalla house. One year... two years??? After that, we moved to the house where my parents still live. It did not have as many bedrooms, but Kim and Joe moved out at that point and so I still got my own. Thank goodness. No pictures of the house again. (Mom... Dad... do you guys have any pictures of all these houses? I know there are some around somewhere.) I am not quite sure what to say about this house. It is the house we lived in during my high school years. The house I was living at when I met Tom. (I still remember the first time he came over. I had just had my wisdom teeth pulled and he brought me a card and a balloon.) It is the place where we had our first date. (Well, it was not really a date, but it was when we first really got to know each other. I had some friends over and at some point in the evening Tom and I ended up on the trampoline while everyone else was inside watching a movie. We just sat there and talked for what seemed like hours.) It is also the place where Tom proposed to me. (Tom was not planning on proposing there, but apparently something went wrong and he had to improvise.) Lots of memories at that house and I am sure many, many more to come. Again, no good pictures to show off the house, but here are a couple random ones I could find.

Our kitchen.


This picture does not show off the house at all. I believe that they are outside in our yard, but am not sure. The real reason I put this in here is because of Byron's hair. Really... what was he thinking?

This post has gotten long enough. I will have to continue later. Hopefully I will be able to update this with some better pictures soon.