Visits and milestones

Paula and Kellie came up for a few days! We had a lot of fun taking them around to enjoy our new area. We didn't actually see much of Vancouver (mostly we stayed in the college area, since transportation was a little bit of an issue), but the point was that we all got to see each other. They were very helpful in getting us food; they brought tons of groceries from Eugene with the money we'd left them, and lots more when they got up here, plus they took us out to eat a lot. We saw the sights and walked around quite a bit. We took them to our favourite areas near by and even marched them down to the clothing optional beach. The weather is perfect on the beach every day we go and the water is warm enough to swim in. I've never swam in an ocean (too cold in Oregon) so that was pretty fun. The kids were born to be at the beach, they had a great time. I have a lot of pictures to upload, but haven't yet, so hopefully those will be up soon. (Maybe after I complete this post.)

Freya has been really in to drawing lately; it's all she ever wants to do. Her and Odin draw together in their room a lot, it's really cute. She's started walking up to me, blinking cutely, and then saying "Daddy, can I? Please?" whenever she wants something. The first time she did it I almost died, and I looked over at Alyssa and told her I'd need to start saving up now for a pony and a car if I wanted to stay ahead of the game.

Odin has always been really kinetic, so with all the free time and play space, he's taken to riding his bike, going to the park a lot, and endlessly building structures with his toys. He's also started to learn how to write a few letters (just "A" and "B" so far), and I think he can read a few words he knows.

We're looking in to how we can make trips to Eugene and Portland for visits. We've found out that we can rent a car for just about the same price as the train, or maybe a little more, but the benefit is that we can leave at our convenience and the trip would be much shorter, plus we'd have a car to drive around whenever we visit.

We'll probably get an internet connection in the house soon, right after we work out all the details. It will have limited bandwidth, but we can still communicate at least.

I'll work on getting those photos uploaded. If you still don't have the link, here it is: http://picasaweb.google.com/spunkytofu