Our Wanderings

My wanderings turned into our wanderings. Tom and I finally figured out how to date and not break up. Really, it was all about timing. The timing was finally right, for both of us, and we got married on May 26, 2001.

Before we got married Tom was living in a little apartment up in Everett, WA. It was a dump of a place, in a neighborhood that was questionable, but it had the best windows. It was a corner apartment and on two walls were these huge, tall windows taking up a good part of the wall. I loved them. I would have moved in there, but Tom was horrified of the thought. He was not willing to let me live there. So we moved to Lynnwood, where Tom was working at the time.

Amberwood Village Apartments were our first home together. They were your typical run-down apartments. A perfect home for newlyweds.


Tom in our kitchen.


Our lovely living room. You cannot really miss our big screen TV. Tom got that from work for about $50. That thing was great for video games.

We only lived in this apartment for six months. It got tiring after a while. Our neighbors were not the most considerate. One night, actually morning, at about 12:00 AM the tenants above us were moving in. An annoying time to move in? Yes. Did hearing them walk up and down, and up and down, and up and down the stairs get tiring? Yes. Was it really necessary for them to let their empty hand truck fall and bang loudly on every single concrete step on the way down? No. Was it necessary at that point for Tom to get out of bed and yell at them? Most definitely. Was the situation even more obnoxious because of the fact that I had to get up at 4:30 AM for work? Incredibly so.

For our next stop we decided to head back over to the other side of the water.

Kingston, WA was perfect for us.


We found a little condo for rent close to the water in Kingston. It was perfect because Tom, still working in Lynnwood, could walk down to the ferry dock every day for his commute and catch a bus on the other side.


It was still run down, but it was so much better than the apartment in Lynnwood.

We lived there for six months until we decided to buy our first house.

Poulsbo, WA became our next home. I loved living in Poulsbo. We lived about a 10 minute walk from downtown. If we ever move back to the Peninsula, Pouslbo is where I would want to live. (Well, maybe Gig Harbor would be okay too.)

It is fun to look back at our different houses and see how our style has changed. We were pretty bold in our Poulsbo house. It was our first house, and therefore our first time to decorate and paint however we wanted to. We took advantage of that.

Our dining room. I can't believe how messy our table is and that I actually took a picture of it that messy.


We were very proud of this wall in our living room.

We were planning on living in Pouslbo for a while. Well, a few months or so after we bought our house Tom got a job offer in Vancouver, WA that we could not pass up. It was too soon to sell our house, so we ended up renting it out for a couple years before selling it. We ended up finding renters sooner that we thought and had to move into Tom's parents house for a couple weeks before heading down to Vancouver. At the time, Tom was managing retirement communities and one of the perks, if you look at it that way, was being able to live in the community for a month while you looked for housing. That was interesting. We put most of our stuff in storage and lived with very little furniture for that time. We did not move in our couch or table. We sat on the floor to eat or watch TV. Our TV sat on the floor too. Crazy kids. At least we brought our bed.

We knew, or hoped, that we were not going to be in Vancouver for very long so we just rented an apartment close to Tom's work. It took him about 10 minutes to walk. Not a bad commute.

Carriage House was our next stop.


This is the only picture I can find of either of us in these apartments. It is not the best picture. Madeline and I are both chewing our cereal. Sarah was visiting with Madeline and Jaden.

The apartments were nice. We just lived there for 10 months, so nothing really to share. Except... there was a time when the police practically forced themselves into our apartment. When we got home that night there was a funny smell in our stairwell. It smelled like someone was having a little too much fun, if you know what I mean. The police showed up an hour or so later and knocked on our door. They asked if they could come in as they were walking in and forcing Tom to backup to give them room. They soon realized that our apartment was not where the smell was coming from and were very nice after that. They left to check out the other apartments and we went to bed. That was the extent of our excitement at Carriage House. We did love living in Vancouver though. I worked in Portland and we found out what a fun city it is. Also, you gotta love living that close to no sales tax.

I think this post is long enough. I also think that we move too much. I will have to finish with another post later.