Oregonians . . . my new favorite word.

If you can't tell, we finally got our Internet up and going this weekend, exactly one month since our arrival in Oregon. We're really enjoying ourselves up here. It was a stressful move, but what move isn't? Nothing got damaged and our apartment is livable. The girls are slowly adjusting. Emory is just fine with change and is an adaptable little thing, but Tessa, on the other hand, is a creature of familiarity. This last week, she finally stopped asking when we are going home. The weather is, for the most part, lovely. Generally, upper 70's to mid 80's as a high and it cools down nicely at night, but we had a wicked heat wave a couple weeks ago, when it got up to 100+ degrees and was 90 most of the week. We quickly hopped in the car and took the hour long trip to the coast where is was a cool 55 degrees! When we got down on the beach, Cory said, "I can see why Bella's lips were blue after the cliff diving incident!" It was chilly, but we had a great time in the sand. The crazy thing was that 51 miles away in Corvallis it was 103! We've done a lot of adventuring, exploring the AMAZING farmer's markets, walking along to River Front, going to different parks, and getting to know some of the fun families in our Ward. We're lucky to have another PGY 1 family in our apartment building. They have 3 kids and my girls are already in love with them!The girls and I especially love Avery Park. It is HUGE, 75 acres and has a couple different playgrounds, an old train to play in, a beautiful rose garden and the "dinosaur bones" as we call them. As I studied them they look more like waves. When you drive through it, it feels like you are going for a drive up the canyon in Utah. Emory and I have this funny thing that we say to each other, whenever we're close to the woods: "Watch out for vampires."
Last but not least, in this smaller apartment, the girls seem to be a little less tolerant of each other. A lot more squabbling, and a TON more whining. But this particular day they were having fun together, so I snapped a picture and went back to the bathroom to finish getting ready. No less than 30 seconds later, Tessa comes stumbling in, bawling and with blood pouring out of her nose. I never did figure out how it happened, but Emory assures me it was definitely NOT her foot that made Tessa's nose bleed.