Made with 100% real unicorn tears

Selling a house is a pain. Add three indoor cats (it's your own fault) and it's a huge pain. It also provided the added benefit of getting to move all of our furniture a couple of times.

Furniture out (to the kitchen, the garage, the back porch, the neighbor's garage--we owe him big) carpet in.

old carpet

making the most of space

sans carpet

Recycled shoe underlay...I can't get away from this brand

Some of the furniture got to come back in for some fantastic staging done by my Mom.

Risa observes the staging

Adult looking house...eh?

Those are real apples. I made them into sauce after.

House for sale, cats (not) included

We also practiced taking the cats out in their new backseat nest. The cats were less than enthused by all of the above.

Pocket was not into the backseat

At all.

But the house is sold. Closing complete. Chapter ended.

And, we still got to take ourselves out on some adventures in Oregon prior to roaring across the states.

This included a couple of sunset dinners, which sound way better than they ended up being...it's windy in the high desert, so after the sun sets it becomes difficult for some people (read: me) to not freeze...yes, even in the summer.

Dining at the only downtown rooftop with dinner

Sun protection + pinot gris

The other was worth the chairlift ride--spectacular view, but thank goodness dinner was inside--far too windy.

Sisters and Brokentop from Bachelor

South Sister from moraine lake

We also adventured apart for a weekend--I saw more of the lakes, and Joe, along with some of our closest friends took to the river.

Lava tube inside later lava flow

Two canoes and four dudes:

Setting out on the Willamette (dammit!)

Setting off, take two

Following that we headed east, where we had planned to hike--hotel--backpack--home and instead hiked-- "hoteled"--got "thunderstormed"--and hot spring bathed instead. Not exactly what we had desired for our outgoing trips, but we saw some beautiful scenery, enjoyed having the hot springs basically to ourselves and generally just relaxing. I'd call it the calm before the storm, but it was already literally storming, so the metaphor loses.

Valley in the Steens

Incoming storm over the Alvord.

It was cold at the summit

Excellent cell reception at the summit...ah nature

We had a lot of time to chat about the move and life, the universe and everything, while also cracking up making jokes about unicorn tears and other silly things, like this cricket. We also started a tally in the dust on the dashboard, but have since forgotten what we were marking...