My parents came and visited us this last week, and we are still in denial that they are gone! Jack keeps melting into tears on the floor and sobbing, "I miss Gromma! I miss Grompa!" (I hope he uses those pronunciations forever haha.) We had a wonderful time together. It feels heavier having them leave from Washington than it did having them leave from Wyoming, but we made the most of our time together, and our house feels even more like home now that they've been in it.
Ok, I'll cover their trip here in pictures. These first pictures are from a short hike near our home. We actually did this on their last day, but Jack taking a picture of his grandma and grandpa is so cute I had to make it the cover photo for this post.
And a little sleep update--things are going better. He doesn't nap on preschool days, so those days go really well for bedtime. But then he's so tired on non-preschool days that he does take a nap, and then he doesn't go to sleep until later at night. But we've finally got him sleeping through the night again! Partially by turning up our own white noise so we don't hear the more minor cries, and partly by my mom bribing him with a new fishing pole if he stays in his room every night until she comes to visit this week. Grandmas rule.
Our odd, transitional 3-month summer of dreams is officially behind us, with Jared starting work and Jack starting preschool tomorrow. It has certainly been a ride. Not what I expected, but still good. When I first heard that Jared couldn't start work until September, I was like, "Sweet, mandatory 3-month party." I imagined we'd quickly get unpacked into our house, I'd spend most weekdays working full time on getting our home design figured out while Jared got a taste of what it's like to be the primary stay-at-home parent, and also lots of exploring and PNW adventures mixed in there.
In the end, our first month was spent panicking and finding documents to be able to move into our house. The second month was spent bouncing around to reunions and such. The last month was a bit of a mishmash, but there was a cruise in there!! We're probably only halfway unpacked into our house, and as far as "interior design" goes, I was lucky if I got one full, solid work day each week to hash it out. I've saved a lot to my pinterest boards but haven't really made it to the next stage. There were several enormous unexpected costs associated with closing on our house that made it so we've been kind of limping along on our savings until Jared can start making a paycheck again. We're not starving or anything, but it's going to be quite a while until we've got a fully furnished home. We had a side account for getting our house set up that at least was enough to get our living room put together so we have one mostly done place to settle into.
I've discovered that buying new furniture is overrated--for me and my tastes at least. Well, unless you can afford the really nice stuff, I guess. The new pieces we bought for our living room were from Wayfair and Target, and they just don't have as much character as a lot of the stuff I thrifted in Wyoming. The quality's honestly not as good either, it's just newer. I told Jared that we can finish the main floor in new stuff since that's his preference (our downstairs is pretty small so that's not much of an undertaking), but when I design the upstairs I'm going to go back to my thrifting roots and have some fun. I think I truly prefer a good thrifted treasure to a new Target chair, especially with the price comparison factored in.
So we're not as put together in our house at this point as I imagined, and we didn't explore much outside of our little town of Granite Falls, but we have a nice home, and we got to see Alaska, so overall a really great summer! One of the best ones yet! It was so nice for Jared to catch an extended break from work after 7 years of really intense studying and working. We've loved having him around.
Bring on fall and a new routine! I don't know exactly how it's going to look yet, but I do hope that most days end with me in my favorite spot in the house--our master bath with a private sunset view. (You know, for some much needed relaxation before Jack wakes me up no less than SEVEN times during the night because he's "scared." Send help. And prayers that I can summon the strength to pull it together and sleep train him again. I've made several feeble attempts but always relapse when I realize he's genuinely scared. It's so much harder to sleep train once they've learned to talk, and once they're no longer trapped in a crib! Our next child will be cribbed indefinitely. And once they outgrow their crib, I'll just build them a bigger crib. This is a good life plan I think. I've tried "cribbing" his room by making it childproof and putting one of those doorknob locks on the inside. But he genuinely panics when I close the door and I always end up caving and leaving it cracked. I can tell when he's playing me, and he's not with this. He's actually scared. At least we've progressed to the point where he stays put while he's falling asleep. But all bets are off in the middle of the night. And that's my sleep woes novel for the week! If you have any ideas, leave them in the comments. Even if you're a stranger. I usually don't check the comments but this time I'll try and remember to.)
One of my favorite days of this trip was the day we spent cruising around Glacier Bay National Park. It was the best of both worlds--relaxing on board and exploring cool new places at the same time. Some park rangers boarded the ship and pointed things out and shared facts over the loudspeaker while we enjoyed these enormous glaciers from our balcony. It was a cloudy, drizzly day. The perfect moody backdrop for glacier watching.
^^This is the glacier where we spent the longest amount of time. I think it's called the Margerie glacier? It's such a neat experience to just sit in the presence of these enormous glaciers and take them in. We even got to hear the thunderous "crack" of a big piece of ice splitting off and crashing into the ocean. 
^^There were some yachts that were able to get real close to the glaciers, and we even saw some people on the beaches taking them in.
Glacier Bay is for sure one of the prettiest. most majestic places I've visited. These mountains were just beautiful.
Our second stop in Alaska was the small gold mining town of Skagway. We woke up early, as the sun was still rising, so we headed up to the top of the ship and watched the sun rise as we glided into the fjord where Skagway sits tucked into a valley.
