Simpleton Pleasures

What a week! I feel like I've lived 7 lifetimes in 7 days. The main thing on our minds right now is housing for when we move to Utah. Because we're hoping to be done moving for a looong time and raise our kids in whatever home we end up in next, the stakes are higher than any of our previous house hunts. We have moved so many times in the last decade. We feel very done with moving.

We started out last weekend with two top forerunners in mind for a future home. Both new builds, both on the west side of the freeway. We were genuinely excited about both of them, and when we got the green light after prequalifying for financing, we knew I would need to fly down quickly to see both homes/locations in person to make a decision (one of the builders was offering to finish our basement for free if we signed by the end of the week). We really thought I would fly down, decide which location I liked better, and then sign a contract with that option. What actually ended up happening was I flew down, visited both locations, felt decently good about both of them, then during the course of the day observed and gathered more information that left me feeling less than good about both of them. Bad enough that I knew for sure one of the options was off the list, and maybe the other one too.

The first neighborhood had a spectacular view, but it also had non-family-friendly juju and I ran into someone building with them who told me, "RUN AWAY." The second neighborhood is lovely and we feel great about the builder, but we thought it was right next to a pretty river trail and it turns out it isn't (we'd be on the wrong side of the river). The closest trail is actually a 15-20 minute drive, and I'm a big daily-trail-walk girl so we decided to keep looking, and if we couldn't find anything closer to trails on the east side of the freeway in our price range, we'll proceed with the neighborhood by the river. So that's where we're at! There's a new option on the table that feels extremely promising, but we will have to wait a few more weeks for the information we need to make a final decision. It's a "hurry up and wait" situation for now. Regardless of what ends up happening, next month we'll start looking for a rental to move into for a few months while we wait for said future home to be built.

In the meantime, lots of pictures to share from the past weeks! Too tired to narrow them down, so admittedly this is going to be an excessive number of pictures.

^^Now that we know we will be moving soon, we are visiting as many places on our Washington Must-See list whenever we can. When summer's over it will be rain, rain, and more rain. This was a trip to the cute old towns of Bow and Edison, Washington. We got pastries and pizza and enjoyed the feeling of going back in time maybe a hundred years as we walked down the little town's streets.

^^We also paid a quick visit to the magical Whatcom Falls Park. It is maybe the most magical park I've ever visited.

^^More from Whatcom Falls Park. Sorry, i'm too tired to narrow down pictures so you're getting them all.

^^Whenever the temperatures are above 70 we convince Jared to join us for an adventure when he gets home from work. These last summer days won't keep!

^^An afternoon at our favorite nearby lake, Lake Roesieger.

^^A colder-than-anticipated visit to the ocean at Kayak Point.

^^Just everyday life.

^^This is my favorite home in Granite Falls. It has the cutest cottagey feel! Whoever owns it does a spectacular job with the window boxes and gardens.

^^My day in Utah. It was a whirlwind trip, flying in in the morning and then back home in the evening. This view from our first home option is everything. I honestly wish it would've felt right, but something was just off.

^^I loves these two little explorer buddies.

^^Rolling down the hill at Frank Mason Park.

^^An afternoon swimming and kayaking on Lake Roesiger, then roasting hot dogs and smores at home. A perfect summer evening.

^^Happy post-nap Alice and Lovey

House Hunting and Staycationing

We are getting closer on finding a house to move to in Utah (we got pre-approved for our financing over the weekend), but still nothing really exciting to share. So this feels like a great time to post the pictures from when Jared and I stayed at the Post Hotel in Leavenworth to celebrate our 10/11 year anniversary. (Technically it was our 11 year anniversary, but we went fancier on the hotel than we normally would because we didn't do anything for our big 10 year anniversary.)

^^We started our trip with the 2-3 hour drive up into the mountains to the Bavarian town of Leavenworth. When Jared went to check in at Post Hotel they gave him two glasses of their "signature welcome drink" for us to sip. It was some kind of ginger lemonade. Really tasty.

^^Every inch of the hotel was beautifully designed. Most of the walls appeared to be plaster.

^^Our room, with a balcony view of the river behind the hotel. I think Jared is getting ready to change into his swimming suit here, sorry😅

^^Our cute balcony. After this we immediately changed and spent the rest of the afternoon at the hotel's pool and spa rooms that they are most known for. No cameras allowed, so I'll grab some pictures from their website of their pool area so you can get an idea:

^^I won't share a picture of every single one of their "wellness rooms" that are included with the price of stay, but this one was our favorite. The chairs were made of solid marble and the room was filled with steam and the smell of fresh eucalyptus. Each chair had a handheld sprayer next to it so you could spray yourself down with cool water if you got too warm. There were also several wet and dry saunas with varying aromas, steam baths, cold plunges, scented showers, reflexology stepping stone pools, and Jared's favorite, an onyx "cooling room" infused with cool mist. The entire experience was giving "Harry Potter Prefects' Bathroom" in the best possible way. That's actually the whole reason I wanted to stay at this hotel in the first place😂 and it didn't disappoint.

There are few enough guests at the hotel that we could always find at least one room that didn't have anyone in it, so whenever we were in a room we had it all to ourselves. We basically spent the majority of our stay lounging/reading by the pool, hopping in the infinity pool overlooking the river, rotating through the various wellness rooms, rinsing and repeating.

^^There was also this designated "nap room" right next to the pool where we took the loveliest little nap. There was meditative music and I think the mattresses were water beds? Would have been weird in any other situation but was actually perfect in this setting. The pool area also had fruit-infused water available to drink at all times, and those are two things I want to incorporate into our future home one day: a fruit-infused water dispenser always at the ready, and a nap room (would probably have to double as a guest room). The other inspiration we took was our favorite lounging corner outside, tucked into a corner of the building and surrounded with lavender.

^^Breakfast and lunch were included in the price, but for dinner we ventured into Leavenworth for some German food. Afterward we took the hotel's cute bikes out for a little ride by the river.

^^Heading back to our hotel. You guys. Big-time Hogwarts vibes. Luxury Hogwarts Bavarian Spa vibes haha

^^In the evening we checked out one of the hotel's games (Boggle) and played a few rounds on their balcony.

^^A cute Bavarian horn dude playing every hour on the balcony of one of the neighboring hotels. Leavenworth itself is a little on the cheesy touristy side, and it's really just one or two streets of Bavarian buildings, but the setting is gorgeous and it's worth a visit.

^^The hotel also offered complimentary mini golf at this cute real-grass mini golf course.

^^Felt like our honeymoon in Lauterbrunnen behind this mini golf waterfall.

^^Our view when we woke up in the morning.

^^Our breakfast on the balcony. It was SO good and felt like our hotel breakfasts in Europe on our honeymoon. They had incredible entrees and an incredible breakfast buffet. I got an omelette and some really incredible breads and yogurts. The quality tasted closer to European than American.

And that was our little stay at the Post Hotel! We had only two regrets from our trip:

1. Not staying for a second night. We just booked one night because it's a pretty expensive hotel and we wanted to be sure it would be worth it, but in hindsight, since we were celebrating our 10-year anniversary, we definitely should've splurged for the second night. It just didn't feel like enough time to do everything we wanted to and also have time to sleep in and just lounge around. Since check-in was at 3:00 in the afternoon and check out was at 11:00 the next morning (and then we ate lunch there before leaving), we really wanted to use every minute enjoying the pool and wellness area. Which we did, but left wanting just a liiiittle more. Three nights wouldn't have been necessary, but two would be perfect. We've sworn we'll come back one day for a proper two-night stay.

2. Not throwing our inflatable paddle board in the trunk to have some extra fun after we were kicked out of the hotel. We were out of the hotel by a little after noon on our second day of our trip, but instead of enjoying the rest of our anniversary trip, we didn't really have a plan in place for anything to do so we just kind of meandered our way back to Jared's parents home to grab the kids. I was a little bitter that we didn't take advantage of the rare, much-needed time away together playing at a lake or something. We tried a hike but it was over 100 degrees and so a water activity was the only thing that sounded fun, but we were tired and didn't have any of our water stuff. Next time I'd have our paddle board on standby to play at Lake Wenatchee on our way home. Small complaints though--we really had the best time! 5 out of 5 stars, would absolutely recommend Post Hotel for a very fancy, splurge-worthy occasion.

Post Hotel

We made it home from Utah--with a job offer! And we've accepted it. We are feeling equal parts excited, overwhelmed, grateful, and heartbroken that our months in Washington are now numbered. It's wild how you can want something so deeply and for so long, but when it finally happens one of the top feelings that surfaces is sadness. I think I would feel less emo if we had more time. Jared's start date for his new job at a clinic in West Jordan will be December 1. This means we have less than 4 months to find housing in Utah, get our home ready to sell here, sell it, and pack everything up to move. I have a feeling there won't be much leisure time left for exploring and saying goodbye to Washington in the midst of all that. The housing search is proving to be even more complicated than we thought it would be. Houses in Utah are much more expensive than we thought, traffic/commute times are much worse than we thought, and as I detailed in my last post, Jared and I have differing priorities when it comes to choosing a house/location. Luckily, we made good progress on that front over the weekend. There are a few new areas/options for us to look into this week that we both feel excited about. Hopefully more news next week on that front.

We're also coming to terms with the fact that everyday life in Utah might look different than the slow, rural lifestyle we've gotten used to and really enjoyed over the past 6 years. In sum, life feels simultaneously exciting and heavy right now. We're going to take it a day at a time. Here are a few pictures from our last week: