June 21 2014

Moving day!  What a long day that was.  We were up before the chickens, Boston time.  There was me and our little girl lugging 2 very large and heavy suit cases along with 2 carry on suit cases.  We went from the hotel, through the air walk, and to the check in counter.  Thank goodness we handed off the dog to a pet courier company.  If we had to carry a XL kennel with us I don't think we would have made it.  I was already losing my mind and we had been up for less than an hour.

The view is amazing.

Next was a 7 hour period of being at the airport and in an airplane and then navigating through another airport.  This particular plane had no tvs.  I have never been on a plane with no tvs.  I was a little worried that our eight year old was going to get restless as we did not get all of the movies downloaded to the kindle.  Hotel internet, so unreliable.  But the kindle battery life is amazing and she was able to play fruit ninja for most of the trip.  One cool thing about this flight was the pilot doubled as a tour guide.  We went over Niagra Falls, the Great Lakes, Yellow Stone National Park, Spokane (which is HUGE), and we got a birds eye view of the snow capped volcanos as we came into Washington.

My husband had beat us there by almost a day.  He met us at the gate and we left for our new camp.  The drive out to our house was just as pleasant as the first time.  Mount Rainer is huge!  Even from the airport it looks huge.  There is one spot on the 410 that is just picture perfect of the volcano.  Unfortunately, objects in camera are smaller than they appear in real life.

We made it!  Time to relax...ha!

Kickin' it in our backyard.

The Beginning Of The Story

Well, we'd spent a year in Boston and decided we didn't love it.  My husband got a new job that would take us all the way across the country to Washington state.  We started looking for places to live on CraigsList and Zillow and found a few beautiful homes but nothing that we just had to have.  Until we came across this headline on Craigslist "Rare log home: 3br 3000sqft - 20 acre land".  Rare indeed.  We fell in love with the place just from the pictures on Craigslist.  We called the number in the ad, had a few conversations, filled out a rental application, and booked a flight to go check it out. 

The drive from the airport to Buckley was pleasant.  The area reminded me a lot of Colorado.  The interstate and highways had plenty of room for everyone.  There were trees but they weren't so close to the road that you felt trapped.  It was so green and the temperature was just right.  The day was a little overcast but it burned off by the time we got to Buckley.  What a cute little town.  A place that I'd been looking forward to meeting since we booked our flight.  Main street was so patriotic with American flag banners hanging on the light posts.  We visited the coffee shop and there was buzz from the locals about the Log Show that was coming up.  

We contacted the property manager and made arrangements to meet her at the house.  As we were driving up to the property I started to get nervous.  The road was wide enough for one car then half way up the mountain it turned into a gravel road.  But once we reached the drive way I was taken a back by it's beauty.  Sure the grass was almost three feet tall, the flower beds had been taken over by weeds, and I'm sure the wildlife had made it's self quite comfortable near the house.  But I knew what it could be.  

We got out of the car and for the first time in a very long time we heard nothing.  Pure silence.  I walked around the yard, cautiously because of the wildlife part.  As I wandered around the huge porch I thought how heavenly it would be to sit on the porch in the morning and drink coffee.  I came around to the Northwest side of the house and saw the breath taking view.  All the way at the very edge on the horizon I saw the Seattle skyline.  Down below at the base of the mountain rested the tiny town of Buckley.  You could see for miles.  

This, we had to have.