(I think my big camera was packed away after we loaded the car and left Bear Lake, so these are all iPhone photos.) We had to hurry up to Sequim to turn over our old house since the last people we were owner financing had moved out in June. Usually we like to take three or four days to do the 20 hour drive from Bear Lake to Northwestern Washington, but we did it in one and a half-- we left at 4pm on Wednesday and got to Sequim on Thursday. We stayed at our friends' house about an hour past Boise and only stopped at rest stops besides to let the kids get out and run. We usually have a fun time hiking and camping and exploring history along the drive, but since we didn't bring any camping gear this year, maybe it's good we were forced to travel fast.
We did take one detour this year, however, to see my cousin and her baby. They'd been living in Moses Lake for about six months, which is near Othello where my parents grew up and where I was born.
There's the infamous Othello water tower. Sadly, we didn't have time to stop by in attraction filled Othello...
And again, I managed to leave someone's house without taking any photos. I missed taking photos of cousin Brynda's cute house and amazing view over Moses Lake, complete with her own boat access! Her daughter Brooklyn is about the cutest baby I've ever seen in my whole life. Seriously.
The kids had a fun time playing with little Brooklyn and making some Lego people.
We finally pulled into Sequim at about 10 pm. Our sweet friend Amy had gone over to our house and cleaned up a bit and set up beds for us on the floor. We owe her big time.
We got up the next morning to quite the mess, but it could have been worse. We did have to mow an acre of three month's worth of grass (up to our chest), catch some wild cats that had moved into the basement, and scrub until our hands were raw. My old garden and hundreds of strawberry plants and most of the orchard and blueberries had been taken over and literally destroyed by weeds. They also had strangely cut down an old beautiful tree that was the centerpiece of the yard and my kids' favorite climbing spot. But the worst part was the paint jobs they had done:
What the heck!?
Anyway, we worked like CRAZY for two straight and full days. The kids took care of priming and repainting the walls and removing rubbish. Elsie entertained Po. Jonah mowed and mowed and mowed. We all put in our fair share of hard labor...as in, 18 hours each day all of us. Oh, and six hours on Saturday. We had some sweet friends feed us and some other friends take the little girls for play dates. We were so grateful.
We did take two hours to run errands and go see two friends who couldn't come by the house to see us (we really wanted to see our friends, but we had to say, "If you want to see us, come to our house because we can't stop working"). The photo above is from a visit to our friends' new house... and we also got to see their new snake!! Elsie's not afraid of any creepy crawlies.
On Saturday morning, Jonah took the last of the loads to the dump and we signed papers and got a deposit from the new owners! We hope they are going to be the long term owners of the place, but if not, we'll go back and do it again, I guess. We should probably just sell it outright to someone, but it is so nice to be making the income through the interest we can charge by carrying the loan ourselves. Hmmmm....
Anyway, we were glad to pack up again and head up north for one final stop... In any case, our backs needed a break.
No comments:
Post a Comment