Portland!

We're here!  Finally!  So this is the whole story.  I (Rob) spent all of the week after finals packing the house up.  Having this experience makes me realize that I never want to move again (a vain wish, I know).  Rachel still had her job that she was working so she could have insurance through August.  Tuesday, the 3rd, we packed everything into a tiny Uhaul.  This was a really stressful day.  We couldn't fit a ton of things and so we ended up giving them away :( to people we didn't even know.  The night before we left was really, really rotten.  Our bed was packed away, so we slept on the floor with no padding but a couple sleeping bags.  I was really sore, but I can only imagine what it was like for my seven month pregnant wife (she only got like 3 hours of sleep).  The drive went by pretty smoothly.  We had to drive separately because we have two cars, which wasn't very fun, but we listened to The DaVinci Code the whole way, which made it less bad.

Our apartment is great!  We have brand new carpet, two bathrooms and a walk-in closet.  The house smells slightly like smoke though.  Every time we walk in we smell it.  It's like the guys installing it were smoking while installing or something.  We air freshen a lot... it'll go away eventually, or we will, whichever comes first.  We had the elders quorum help us move in.  Our ward is really nice.  We've already been invited to dinner twice.  Both couples were really fun and nice.

There is one thing that I really wanted to mention though.  We got a call from the missionaries on Saturday night.  They asked if we could take them to transfer meetings on Monday; one of them was going home.  He told us that he had to drop off some things at some old investigators houses before the meeting.  We were okay with that, until it was too late.  We found out once we got to his investigator's house that we had driven a complete hour in the opposite direction of their transfer meeting.  It's like having someone ask you to take you to a meeting in Ellensburg from Yakima, with a quick stop in Prosser on the way.  Had we known this, we would not have done it, b/c we had to take our Pacifica (for the bike) which ate up more gas than we could afford at the time.  We stopped at two houses and waited for him to chat with his "old buddies" and drop off a bin, suitcase and bike.  When I went home from my mission, I spent the last transfer sending things home, giving them away, or just trashing them.  Why didn't the guy take care of all this before the day he was supposed to leave?  I don't know.  It took three hours in the car before we even got to the transfer meeting.  Then we had to wait for them to finish their meeting.  It basically took up our whole day.  The guy didn't even thank us, not that we were in a very serving attitude at that point.  So the point is, we wanted to help the missionaries, but it turns out that we just got used by the missionaries.

Fortunately, though we had to wait a long time, we were pretty close to Voodoo Doughnuts (As seen on Man vs. Food, Travel Channel).  They were all good, but I think we prefer the traditional flavors.  My favorite was the blueberry doughnut, Rachel's was some sort of cake doughnut.

We have been diligently unpacking and looking for things that we need for Baby's room.  There are a lot of things that we've had to accomplish.  Fortunately things have been working out for us.

 We had to register our Pacifica here in Oregon, so we went to the DMV.  We got new plates.  For some reason, they had trouble getting rid of this one.  We're the unlucky ones?  Eh, oh well.

 
Apparently, if we register our car here, we have to have Oregon state driver's licenses.  We were about to take the test, when I realized that I didn't want a picture with a beard.

I currently have a beard, by the way.  Doesn't everyone grow a beard when they leave BYU-I?  Here's a picture of me and my scruffiness.

Our plan was to grow it out until vacation next week.  This isn't permanent.  I don't even like having a beard, it's itchy and I look like a vagabond/scalawag.  In other words, I fit in just fine here in Portland.

So, we went and visited my school.  It's small but delightful!  I'm really excited to start.  I've already met a few people that go there.  One of them is in some of his later quarters and he works in the clinic a lot.  He said that in later quarters I can treat my wife, parents and siblings for free!

We met Rachel's OBGYN last week.  We're finally starting to feel like we're actually having a baby, instead of just focusing on the move and stuff.  We still aren't prepared at all for our baby.  We didn't buy anything for our baby before we moved, so now we're scrounging to find things that he needs before he comes.  We're looking for things on Craigslist every day and we signed up for child birth classes.  Hopefully we'll be able to prepare ourselves before he comes.

We're heading to Lake Palmer soon!  We're excited to see my family!