Our new house

We spent the last 10 days in Washington on our house hunting trip. We found the house we are going to rent on our first full day there, so we had 8 days to just cruise around, check out the area, and relax a little bit. Sorry I have the worst camera in the world, but here is the front of our house...

It is in the town of Birch Bay, which is a small little tourist town. Our house is 0.2 miles from the water, and along the main stretch of road along the bay there are a couple of restaurants and cafes, a candy shop, and bike and kayak rental places. Very cute. We just got a new market in town, although it's a little expensive. I think we will do most of our bulk shopping at Costco in Bellingham (about 15 minutes south) and there is also a little farmers market just down the road. Hopefully they will have good (and cheap) produce there. That way we won't have to get too much at the market in Birch Bay. We'll see how we do with small town living! Steven and I got to take a tour of his new station, which was fun to see. He's going from a several hundred man station to a 40 man station, so it was just a little different. :) His coworkers that we met all seem very nice.

We spent our last full day in Seattle, and I got to play tourist! We checked out Deception Pass...

Pike Place Market...

the Ballard Locks...

and of course, the Space Needle!

Steven really liked the areas we visited, enjoyed the coffee houses and microbrews, and we're both excited to finally be there and start living our normal lives again. September is a month of suitcases, boxes, and hotels. We're ready to stop living like gypsies!