We live on top of a cinder cone volcano here in Happy Valley
Oregon! You can go ahead and Google that; just know that we are situated on top
of Mount Scott and there are several staircases within our neighborhood instead
of sidewalks. It’s really kind of neat, and since we walk to school each
morning to drop Kellan off, we get quite the work out each day. I guess my idea
that I would move here, it would rain all of the time, I would eat more than my
fair share to stuff my depression and get really fat, may not be the case after
all. I have forced recreation every day J
Today marks the second day of school for Kellan and Ella and
so far they are doing pretty well. The class sizes are huge out here. Kellan
has 34 students in his class and Ella’s class has 29 kindergartners. God bless
those teachers! School days are much shorter than where we went in Loveland,
8:30 to 2:45 each day and Ella only attends in the afternoon from 11:30 to
2:45. Today is the first day of riding the bus home for Kellan and riding the bus
to and from school for Ella (with mom and Elias of course). I couldn’t allow my
baby girl to just waltz onto a bus for the first time, so I had to join her and
then walk up the 105 steps to our neighborhood with our two year old on my
back…for the second time today. (again, forced recreation)
The hardest part of this move has been fielding the
questions from three heart broken kiddos. “Mom, when are we going home? When do
I get to see Kajsa again? When are we going to Axel’s house? Is that Bridger’s
car? I’m going to LuLu’s today after we get Kellan right Mom? When do I get to
see Grandma? Where’s Daddy’s Best Buy? Where’s my old house? When do we get to
live in our house again?” These questions come at me all day long, and this
list was just from this morning! Elias sees cars driving by that look like our
friends cars and he gets so excited. It just breaks my heart. We’ve had a lot
of conversations about courage and faith lately and I’ve done my fair share of
telling bible stories that exemplify courage and faith. They look forward to
that each night. We’ve also had family game night every night rather than just
once a week back home. So we are bonding and growing closer each day. There are
so many praises and things to be thankful for in the midst of the changes and
the unknowns that are before us. We
definitely miss our “home” and our church and our families and our friends and
the comfort of all that we knew in Colorado and it makes being here so much
harder knowing that we don’t have those comforts. But, we also know that we are
here for a reason and that We Pettit’s bless others the best we can and so
that’s what we are looking forward too.
Today at the breakfast table, we talked about the goal of
the day and today’s goal is to find some way to bless at least one person we
don’t know. It’s so much easier for the kids to meet the goals we set because
they are surrounded by people each day at school. The kicker is I have to meet
or beat the goals we set each day as well. Yesterday’s goal was to meet two new
people. I failed miserably. I had two opportunities to achieve my goal and both
times I crashed. I think I have stage fright! The first time, I tried chatting
it up with another mom at school, we talked about how cute her youngest was and
how busy life with little ones is, but I just couldn’t bring myself to say “by
the way, we just moved here and my name is Deena.” So Kellan and Ella both beat
me on day one!
Less meaningful stuff, but things I’ve noticed here in Happy
Valley:
You should plan on wearing at least two outfits
per day here. The weather has been around 49-52 degrees in the morning until
about 10am and then it shifts to 65-70 and by 3pm it’s well over 70 degrees
outside. I usually wear a sweater and boots to school in the morning and the
kids are bundled up as if it’s going to snow and when I leave at 2:45 to pick
them up at the bus stop, I’m donning shorts and flip-flops!
The Target here is huge and poorly laid out.
This is such a discomfort for me as I look forward to my time at Target. I love
roaming the isles, looking for clearance items that I don’t need, sipping my
drink and sharing popcorn with the kids. I could barely find my way out of the
store once I got in, which produced a little bit of a panic attack and the
organization in there is completely unexplainable. There are more than two
places in there for each category; i.e. two areas for bath organization, two
areas for toys….some serious consolidation needs to occur.
Most of the folks on our street stay home but I
have yet to meet any of them. I wonder if I could muster up the courage to
knock on a few doors tomorrow.
Our next-door neighbors keep their windows open
at night and have no issue with the neighborhood hearing them while they
participate in marital affairs.
Mount Hood is AMAZING! It just shows up out of
nowhere each afternoon, looming over our city. In Colorado we had the
foothills, it gave your eye something to follow as you looked up at the
mountains, here, the Mountain is thousands of feet above anything around it, no
foothills, so it looks giant!
You can’t find anything without Siri. The trees
are so thick that unless you have a smart phone, you will get lost, or pass
right by your destination because everything is in the middle of a forest here.
Moss grows on everything. I thought our driveway
was dirty, so I hosed out the cracks, but no, it was not dirt, it was moss and
the worst thing I could have done was give it more water.
The beach is only an hour and a half away, and
we decided we will visit it every chance we get. People were riding their bikes
on the sand, flying kites, playing volleyball, building sand castles and
enjoying fresh caught seafood when we went. It’s a super happy place to be and
the drive is spectacular.
Everyone here has an Oregon license plate. I’ve
noticed this on various trips out shopping and meandering about town. It must
mean no one leaves and no one new comes. We stick out like a sore thumb with
our Colorado plates!
You
don’t get to pump your own gas here; there are attendants at every station. It
makes gas prices higher, but I actually like staying in my car knowing in a
month or so, it’s going to be freezing cold with all of the rain and clouds;
I’d rather someone else handle the manning of the pump!
There you have it, a wrap up of
our first week as Oregonians! Prayers for courage and faith are appreciated J
Love to you all.
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