Absolutely Clear

Aside from morning fog and clouds, we've had two absolutely clear days now. We've been able to see the high mountains to the north and east. I'll add pictures as soon as I have a little time to pick out the good ones and work on them a bit. It's been getting chilly because it's so clear. This morning the outside temperature was definitely mid-30's, though I didn't see any frost.

As the flowering season comes to a close, our landlady set out the potted plants off the walkway onto the grass. As if on cue a whole family (mother, two 1+ year old fawns, and two less than year old fawns) came strolling onto the lawn in order to nibble away at the flowers and leaves. These deer have no fear of people. They come up to the walkway in front of our doors, and only back away a couple of feet when we open the door and step outside.

Yesterday, the movers on this side of the ocean delivered our household goods. They came in a 40-feet container about 2/3 to 3/4 full. When they started I was really wondering where all of that would fit. The boxes and large items kept coming off and in, and the apartment continued to fill up. We had most of the boxes stacked floor to ceiling in our bedroom. Some of the other odd items went into the kids' bedroom. Most of the furniture went into the living room and kitchen. And our washer and dryer went into the storage cubicle (no hookups here).

The whole delivery took about four hours. At the end there was barely any floor space available to move about. Before heading to our week of prayer meeting, we moved a few things around in the living room to provide a bit more living space. Our coffee table is now sitting vertically against a wall. This saved about 16-20 sq. ft. of floor space.

Once we returned from the church we spent another session of rearranging some of the boxes and items to provide some floor space for sleeping. Shelley is on the couch; Amy is on a borrowed twin bed; Elise and I are still in sleeping bags placed in narrow pathways between the boxes.

Our cats are just loving this new arrangement. There are so many little nooks and crannies, and high places to explore! Unfortunately that means that they are making little kitty noises at odd hours of the night, waking us up. We also have an automatic litter box called the Litter Robot. It's great in that it makes the whole process of cleaning the litter almost effortless. The bad thing is that when the cats use it, it makes noise. And with our heads fairly close to the bathroom which contains the Litter Robot, when the cats decide to use it, it woke us up.

Until our house sells and we have more room, many of the things that we don't need immediately will be going into one of the unused rooms at the church for temporary storage. Other things that we moved that we don't need ever (so why did we move them in the first place, you ask? Good question!) will be going to the dump or to the Salvation Army store.

Speaking of our house, we got some good news on the Portland area housing market from Ken Crawford (AK Conference President), who was recently in the area, and from our broker. It looks like the market is starting to wake up from its stagnation with pending sales rising and inventory falling. Price appretiation is still in the double digits, so hopefully that will prompt buyers sitting on the sidelines to enter.