Our Wanderings: Part Two

After Vancouver, Tom and I sadly left Washington. Actually, I need to rephrase that. I sadly left Washington. Tom was not so sad. Tom's job took us to Idaho Falls, Idaho. Tom felt like it was sort of coming home, since he was born in Idaho. I did not feel quite the same. Idaho did not make a good first impression on me. After a long (even longer since our Uhaul decided that it did not like going up mountains) drive to Idaho Falls we pulled into town and headed to our storage unit. (Just like in Vancouver we were going to take advantage of being able to live at Tom's work for a couple of months while we found a house and we needed a place to store our stuff.) I cried when I saw the town we were going to live in. Everything was so run down... and dirty... and brown... and old. I did not know what I had gotten myself into. I was exhausted from driving all night and I truly felt that we had made a HUGE mistake. Luckily, after some rest and a drive around the whole town, my opinion started to change.

We lived at Tom's retirement community there a little longer than we did in Vancouver since buying a house takes a little longer than renting an apartment. I remember one night, not too long after we moved there, they had to do two hour checks on all of the residents because the power was out and their pull cord system (that is where the resident can pull a cord if they need help because of a fall or what not) could not function. Late that night one of the night staff knocked on our door to do a two hour check. It took a lot (and I mean A LOT) of convincing from Tom to finally get across to her that we did not need two hour checks. She kept fighting and fighting with him explaining that she had to check every single apartment. Um, yeah... I think we are going to be okay. There was another incident where someone actually walked into our apartment without knocking. It just so happened that Tom was ironing his shirt in the living room with only his underwear on.

We got out of there as soon as we could and bought our second house in Ammon, ID.

This house was bigger than any place we had lived and we had to buy a lot of new furniture since we now had a living room AND a family room and only one couch. We painted every wall in the house (of course), but were pretty mellow this time. We only did bold colors in the master bedroom (where we did a very cool deep blue gray with everything else in the room white) and the "music room", aka "Tom's inspiration room" (where we did the same three shades of blue from our Poulsbo house wall, but in three thick stripes going horizontally along the wall). The rest of the house was mellow browns and greens.


Tom's parents came up and Tom, his dad and Jared built a deck out back.


As much as I missed my family and the northwest, I will always feel like we were supposed to move to Idaho. It is where we found a doctor who, after three and a half years of trying with other doctors, was able to help us have Logan. I absolutely loved finally being able to put together a nursery.


It was fun living somewhere that did not close down at the first sight of snow. Snow was just a part of life there. I did not enjoy shoveling our driveway though. I also did not enjoy the Spring where all the snow melts and everything turns brown and soggy.


One of the best things about living in Idaho was friends. A few friends from high school and their spouses lived near by. Oh, we had so much fun. We got together all the time... Sunday night dinners, "Lost" parties, Bang parties, Murder Mystery dinners... and lots more. I have missed that. Of all the places we have lived since then, we have never found such great friends as we had in Idaho. I wish that we could live near them again.

We spent about three years in Idaho. It is the longest that we have ever lived anywhere since we were married. We have so many great memories to take from our time there. Part of me did not want to leave, but after we had Logan there was something that was pulling us back to Washington and back to family.

So the packing began and back to Washington we went.

Enumclaw, WA is a beautiful place.

It is a small town right by Mt. Rainer and it is where we headed to next. Tom got a job in Enumclaw and we moved into an apartment while we searched for a house. It was only a 45 minute drive to see family.


The Chinook Park apartments were just a five minute walk from Tom's work and were the perfect location for us. Living in an apartment again, after having a house for so long, was very difficult. Especially since we now had a very large dog.


Jesse, the bull mastiff, did not fit well in a little apartment. Luckily, the breed is very lazy and does not need a lot of room to run around, but it was incredibly hard to not have a yard for her.


Enumclaw had so many parks! Logan and I loved exploring all of them.


Another downside of apartment living... trying to keep Logan from the baseboard heaters. We lived near family though, and we were having fun.

We were planning on buying a house in Enumclaw, but we were also planing on living in the town for more than seven months. Tom got a great offer from another company though, and we found ourselves moving again. I guess Enumclaw was not small town enough for us because we moved to an even smaller town... Birch Bay, WA.


We did not waste time in an apartment this time. We were sick of that life, and bought our third house right when we moved. The timing was insane and we ended up moving in the day before Christmas Eve just to leave and not come back for a week. Christmas is not the best time to move.


The view from our backyard.


Birch Bay was beautiful.


We lived very close to the bay and had a lot of fun exploring the area. It was tiny though. The only grocery store there was about as big as our bedroom. The closest major grocery store was twenty minutes away. It was a fun place to live in the summer, but come winter time and there was not much to do that you did not have to drive thirty minutes for.


We also loved living close enough to the Tulip Festival to be able to head down there in the spring. What a great opportunity to get some beautiful pictures.


Jesse enjoyed having a backyard again and both her and Logan took advantage of that whenever they could.


Birch Bay was a longer drive from family than Enumclaw was. It took a little less than three hours to get there. We went down to visit often though, and family came up to see us too. The above picture is when Jill and John came up to visit and we got to watch Jaxson and Sophie for a few hours.

We thought that we would live in Birch Bay for three to five years, but we only lasted there for one year. Unfortunately, selling a house after only owning it for one year is not the best thing to do. We decided to rent it out, and once again found ourselves being landlords.

That brings us to present day. We were very lucky to get the opportunity to come down to Portland and for Tom to be able to switch careers. It has changed our lives immensely.


And Tom is now able to play Wii at work.



We now live very close to three of my siblings. It has been a while since we have lived this close to family and I have missed it. I am so glad that Logan is able to be friends with his cousin Bridget. They have so much fun together and I think that having to share with her so often is helping him not be so spoiled... sometimes.

I do not have any pictures of the house we live in now. It is a rental. We are waiting to buy until we sell our house up in Birch Bay. Hopefully this coming year. We will see. Once we do buy, we hope to live there for a very, very long time. We hope to be done wandering for a while.