We have moved!

Last night was our first night in our new house. It was very exciting, and not a great night - we learned very quickly that we did not know how good it was with air conditioning and at least a fan in the room! The night was quite hot, and with all of the activity of the day, we were hot!

We will take some pictures of the house with furniture soon, it looks more like a house now - and we are very happy with the "personal touches" that we made.

Most of the day yesterday was moving, as was also the effort cleaning the house we were renting - making sure that it was all done so we did not have to go back again.

I am learning to be my own "handy man" - installing a toilet (yes - A TOILET) - which was removed when we had the flooring done (it took me 4 attempts before I got it right - at least I know all the things I need to do if I need to do it again!). I have installed a range (that is a oven/stove combination), moved the refrigerator in, hung some curtains, oh and a heap of other odd jobs. I am enjoying it actually.

The weekend will be spent mostly unpacking I expect. The weather has cooled a little, so at least it will not be so hot to work in. I think we will all deserve a rest after this though, we are all pretty tired of taking boxes up and down stairs, and unpacking in our rooms!

Look for the pictures soon.

Cynfor and Jessie are Back!

Breakfast in IKEA.

Stepping into our new house.

Happy to see the new house.

Check out the new hardwood floor.

1 YEAR!

It has been 1 Year since we left the Australian "shores" and headed over to Portland Oregon to begin our US Adventure. We have done many things, as you can see in the Blog Posts from previous months. We are about to move into our newly purchased house, which will happen in the next 3 weeks, and are feeling very much settled in our new surroundings.

The year has gone very quickly, with so many things happening all at once, and the adventure has really just begun. We have made new friends, and re-acquainted ourselves with some old ones. Who knows what the next year will bring, as the children move into their second year of US schooling.

We are not really celebrating much, saving our pennies to pay for some "new stuff" for the new house. We are making some changes to the original house, and will post pictures after the "remodel" has been complete, so you can all see the transformation, as we make the house our own!

Thank you to everyone who has written comments along the way, and sent us emails telling us what you are up to. We will continue to update the blog with more of what we are up to over the next year.

Our trip to Vancouver B.C. (Canada)

We headed out from home after work on Friday, starting toward Seattle, where we were going to stay the night with friends.

We headed out Saturday morning toward the Canadian border, and after a total trip time of around 6 hours (for both days), we reached Vancouver. It reminds us a lot of Hong Kong, many of the apartment buildings in the city are multi-story, and they are everywhere!

We have done a number of tourist things - although the weather has been a little cloudy on Sunday. Monday we hope to head over to Vancouver Island, and see more of Victoria.

Here are some pictures below of what we have been up to!

Lavender festival

Today Tara and myself headed across to Hood River, where they had a Lavender festival. The drive took just over one hour, through the Columbia River Gorge - which on a summers day is extremely scenic.

Below are some pictures we took when we were picking our Lavender, and then on the way back after we stopped in Cascade Locks.

Our first 4th of July (Independance day)

So, in the USA Independance Day is a significant celebration. We knew that it was full of fireworks, and a lot of the stores were closed - but we did not realize how many fireworks until late into the evening.

The day started normally enough, actually we headed to Washington Square (a large shopping centre here in Portland), where I had to try to return something at a store. We wandered around a little - noting that there were a lot less people in the shopping centre than normal. It probably had a lot to do with the weather being around 30C - many people had chosen to head out to the coast/beach, or similar.

After we finished there, we headed to Blockbuster to rent a DVD - TV during the summer here is quite bad - nothing much to watch except for trashy reality TV programs (I have no idea how many ways they can change "American Idol" - but there must be so many different versions of the same format of show it is silly.)

We watched the DVD after we got home, and waited until dark - as we had some fireworks of our own to let off. After watching the DVD we switched on and watched the New York fireworks, which are set to music - and were amazing to watch. Sydney at New Years and Chinese New Years in Hong Kong are small by comparison to what they let off in New York. There were three simultanious barges letting off fireworks to music. It was very spectatular - and well coreographed. ("I see trees of GREEN (BOOM Green fireworks), Red roses to (BOOM, the sky is filled with red)...)

Then - after that - the local fireworks started. We had heard little pops and whistles all night - but it got quite busy. Mind you it was around 10pm when the excitement started - as it is dark very late here in summer.

We headed out, and all we could hear were BANGs and WHISTLEs of fireworks going off. We let some off in the street also, but it was an amazing thing to be around. It was almost like every block of houses had around four or five people shooting up their packets of fireworks.

It was quite enjoyable, and sadly for us, something that Tara and I got to enjoy without the kids - who I am sure would have loved every minute of it.

Anyhow - that was our first 4th of July! (By the way - the photograph above is not one that I took!)

The house we are looking at buying...

So, now that we have been here almost a year, we are looking at purchasing a house. The last couple of months we have been thinking about it, and looking at houses. We have found one which we like a lot, and have put an offer in on - if all goes well, we should be set to move in around the end of August.

We thought we would share some pictures with you all.

One year has passed...

Monday June 18th, 2007 - our 1st Year wedding anniversary. Cynfor and Jessie left on Sunday to stay the summer with their father in China, so that leaves Tara and myself here in the US with some time together. Obviously we miss the kids very much, but Monday was our wedding anniversary - and we had a lovely time alone together.

The pictures below are from the restaurant we had dinner. The Portland City Grill, which is located at the top of the US Bank tower. As you can see by the photographs, the view is spectacular. Even more so when the weather is quite clear.

After completing our fantastic dinner (left over cookies in the front of us)

A view out the window of some of Portland

Mount Hood in the distance

Mount St Helens in the distance

Big Balloon Festival

Last night we headed down to Tigard (a suburb of Portland), and enjoyed the Hot Air Balloon display. Cynfor and Jessie originally were not that keen on going with us, but after they got inside, and saw the balloons being inflated, they changed their minds.

As you can see by the pictures below, it is a pretty impressive site. In the first picture - the balloon that is in the main part of the picture is quite large and was designed to look like a truck. Sadly, because of the wind during the night, they had to let it down pretty quickly after it was inflated - because it was quite dangerous - but it looked very impressive anyway. (You can see it in another picture further on.)

The Portland Rose Festival - 100th Anniversary

The Portland Rose Festival is a little similar to Melbourne's Moomba. There is a parade, a carnival, and a lot of activities which happen mostly around the waterfront in downtown Portland.

This year was a special year as it was the 100th Year celebration for the festival. We did not go down to watch the parade as we had other things on, but we did see the floats on the day after along the street where they park them for people to look.

Below are a couple of pictures of us with the floats.

Jessie's big performance.

On June 9th, 2007, Jessie was part of a group of 15 students from their music school to perform in a recital. She was very excited, and was about the fourth person to play.

It was a great night, hearing all the different levels of capabilities from students who could sing, play drums, guitar or piano. She was lucky to have the opportunity to play on a lovely grand piano - and played very well.

Here are a couple of pictures from the night.

Aussie Day...

I was volunteered into presenting at the 2nd Grade "Aussie Day!" The idea was that I gave experiences of living in Australia. The photograph below is before the class was broken up to visit different "stations" which had all sorts of information about things in Australia. There was someone reading an Australian book - "Possum Magic," other things they did was made lamingtons, ate Kiwi fruit, and "Aussie bites", learned about the "cork hat", made paper boomerangs and many other activities.

In my station I spoke to them about the money we use in Australia, showed them - as well as talking about Aussie Rules football, meat pies and among other things.

In the afternoon there were more activities - they played "kanga ball" (a variation of cricket), saw someone throwing boomerangs and demonstrating the differences, sheep dogs and sheep herding, some Emu's, didgeridoo playing and other native Australian animals - including some small kangaroos, and sugar gliders.

The day was great - weather wise - both Tara and myself volunteered to help all day - which was fun, but quite hot in the sun!

Jessie's big performance...

So, tonight was a big night for Jessie, she was part of the Bethany Elementary School Talent Show. She played her flute - beautifully - and then sung with all the other children at the end. (Star Spangled Banner)

It was a good night, with many kids performing - at very different levels of ability - but fun was had by all!

A long weekend...

Monday was a public holiday in the United States for Memorial Day, although the weekend is to commemorate all those who have served for the US in the military, it is also an extended weekend. We were originally not sure what to do with the weekend, so on Saturday night we decided that we would head out for another "adventure."

We headed south east to a place around 4 hours out of Portland called Bend. It is a sizable place where many people have decided to retire to. It reminded me very much of a large country town like Bendigo or Ballarat near Melbourne. The population is around 75,000 people, but it is expanding. The weather was amazing, although it did not start off that well when we left on Saturday, by the time we reached Bend the sky was a beautiful blue, with very little cloud. It was a little cold in the evening, but that changed the next day.

The photographs below show a little bit of the trip, and some of the things we saw.

The mountain in the background is Mt Washington

This picture was taken on top of "Pilot Butte" a large Lava mound which overlooks Bend and the surrounding area.

This is in front of Mount Bachelor - another favorite destination for Skiers during winter.

How strange is this, here we are standing on a snow field in short sleeves, it was beautiful weather, but we were on SNOW!

Darren's visit to Boston

For work, Darren had to travel to Boston - which is on the East Coast of the United States above New York. He was there for three days, arriving on Monday night, and leaving Thursday night. Boston is a lovely City, and definitely a place that we will be visiting again as a family. Below are some pictures of the skyline, and some of the buildings. You may see - if you look hard enough - the Cheers bar in the bottom photograph.

The food and city in general reminded me of Melbourne. We ate Italian food for dinner one night, with coffee to follow and a desert of an Italian pastry - it was fantastic food. Pasta like we used to get in Melbourne, REAL Coffee!

A huge achievment...(for the car)

This news was actually a little while ago - about 2 weeks. The car we are loaning from our friends hit the big 150! (YES - 150,000 Miles)

I was excited, so I took some pictures to share!