Look! It's me again!

My last blog post was the first day of Spring, and now it's almost Autumn. During the last two seasons, our family has managed to achieve a major move to the Seattle area. We've hosted both sets of extended family here, set up our new house and garden, and survived numerous new viruses, including an incredibly nasty influenza that Papaya Daddy brought home as a present from a sick patient. (Since he was a health care provider, he got tested - turns out it was Influenza A but not the swine variety - somewhat disappointing - if we were all going to be that sick, I at least wanted to get swine flu out of the way!) The Portabella and the Papaya both had birthdays & the Portabella (often called Shmora-doni around here) started walking & talking.

In the midst of all this transition, I've been pretty overwhelmed, and I'm afraid this blog was one of the things that suffered (despite finally having a fast internet connection). Now that summer's over & the school year is beginning again, I'm hoping to get back on the ball (although I've decided not to promise)!

Over the threshold, into our new house:
Our old front yard, at midday during a duststorm a couple weeks before we left Arizona: Our new front yard:
Our old backyard (during the same duststorm):Our new backyard:
The Portabella! Our new life is heavily defined by lush greenness, distant mountains, and salt water.

And lots of laundry...

Life is good here, even though we don't feel completely settled yet. All for now! I'll post more pictures soon!