Pods Are Packed

The Pods are here and ready to be packed. We had to fit all the packing into Saturday and Sunday morning, so we can make our going away party and still have the Pods ready for pickup on Monday. Saturday and Sunday were exceptionally hot for September. Both days over 100 degrees. Not ideal to be packing. Unfortunately the Pods faced the afternoon sun and were made of metal. Basically just big ovens.

 

Pod #1 was packed Saturday. Filled with the bed, boxes and the TV's. The TV's were wrapped in blue foam and loaded Sunday. We'll miss you TV's, be safe. 

 

Jet, trying to help by climbing inside the dresser 

 

Pod #1 almost finished. Ready to go for Pod #2 

Pod #2, all packed. Packing the Pods went smoother than anticipated. Hopefully our stuff is all still in one piece once we get it to Portland. We will be arriving Sunday afternoon and the Pods will show up Monday. 

 

Pickles says it's time for a nap. I agree.

Moving Pods Are Here

The time has come. Our moving pods arrived today. We will be packing this weekend and shipping them out Monday.

 

 

We're Engaged!!!

We have been together for quite some time now and finally decided to make it a bit more official. I met with Mirav's mom and dad for lunch  to get their blessing and then her mom and I went ring shopping. The ring shopping was a rather daunting escapade in itself. Thank you Jill for helping, you were a life saver! We shopped for the ring Saturday, picked it out Monday, picked it up Tuesday and Wednesday we were on a place to Portland. We were house hunting and I was hoping to find a place to live Thursday or Friday so I could pop the question on Saturday. We found the apartment on Friday, so everything was falling into place.

Saturday morning we went to the local farmers market at Portland State University. It was huge! So many people. There was fresh local fruits and vegetables, bread, cheese and flowers. We picked up some stuff to have a little picnic in the park. 

 

We could not pass up these strawberries. They were amazing. Once we had our produce, bread and cheese, we made our way over to Washington park where they have a world renowned rose garden and japanese garden. We opted for the rose garden to have our little picnic lunch. 

We found a bench in the middle of the garden and started eating. I snapped this photo right before I popped the question. I wanted her to remember how happy she looked before she threw her life away with me. I had been carrying the ring around in my backpack for three days in a huge ring box. I was so happy to stop hiding it from her. Mirav can describe it better than I can. Needless to say, I got down on one knee and asked and she said yes. It's official!

We found a passerby to snap a picture of us right afterward. You can see a little bit of the garden in the background.

We spent some time walking around in the rose garden enjoying our new engagement, calling each other fiance for the first time. It was a perfect day.

 

Portland House Hunting

On Sept 2nd the adventurous duo embarked on a house hunting trip to the great pacific northwest. The first step toward our move to Portland. We were in search of a well maintained house in a great neighborhood. We had heard that the rental market in Portland was rough, but we had no idea. We set about on craigslist in the weeks before our trip trying to find prospects. We managed to book quite a few appointments for our first day.

We found some great houses like this one. This was actually a brand new house and the owner was moving to Seattle to be with his wife who got a new job up there. He said is was a great neighborhood, but Mirav did not agree. 

 

We had seen three houses already when we arrived at this one. The house had been inhabited by college students and was filled to the brim with garbage, which was spilling into the front yard. We went in for a quick look just in case. We were in and out so fast it gave us time to grab some lunch.

 

This house was actually quite promising, probably the best we saw all day. But it was very expensive. We weren't ready to settle just yet, so we pressed on. We saw three more houses after this one and stopped to peak into a couple. In all, we spent 8 hours seeing nine houses, and did not like any of them. It was a depressing day. 

 

Thursday was rough. But Friday morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed, petted a cat and regrouped. We were determined to find something. We had seen, what felt like every house in the entire Portland area. We had two more houses lined up for Friday morning, but we decided to see an apartment to supplement. 

 

We saw this house first, which reminded me of my Grandma Joanne's house. Except it was covered in spiders. Portland, we discovered, has giant spiders. Again, not perfect. So from there, we headed over to the apartmennt

 

 

The apartment turned out to be great. It's a brand new building in a great neighborhood. This is a picture of the kitchen, the whole kitchen. The two cabinets on the far left are the fridge and freezer. Right next to that is the dishwasher. 

 

After much deliberation over some thai food. We went back and signed a lease. We got a 1 bedroom 1 bath apartment. I know, it's very small. But we got one with a patio so the dogs can go out and run around. More pictures to come after we move in. The apartment complex has a website with more pictures and descriptions livethe20.com