And We Are Back

So it has been almost four weeks and we have been busy busy busy! So busy in fact that Leah has not been to the pool in 3 weeks - but finally made it today!

Lets divide it up

1 - Family

Leah's Parents and ELANA were in town for two weeks. We went to Klamath Falls and then had a week in Portland - While in Portland we went out to dinner every night showing off our favorite locations, went to the zoo and saw the dinosaur exhibit, and generally hung out. Between the excitement we also got wedding planning underway.

Tamar visitied the next week. Much fun having her in town even for only 3 days. We hung out, did more wedding planning, saw Batman at Midnight - worst idea ever but much fun.... went bowling AND picked a wedding dress. Caitlin visited this last weekend for her friend Alice's wedding. Sisters four weekends in a row! So lucky - although we are looking forwards a weekends to ourselves

2 - Personal

While at Klamath Falls Leah received a job offer and by the time we got back was in a new position at the Portland Public Schools - moving from HR Intern to HR Staffing Specialist, officially on the books. It is a great move and Leah is loving the new responsibilities. It was great to have family in while receiving the news - we celebrated by buying purses.

Matthew just finished planning his trainings and is getting ready to go to AUSTRALIA - advice for what to do in Sydney in the winter is much appreciated.

Leah is moved in. It was starting to get frustrating for her for the last month or so living with her stuff in two places. We dropped a lot of stuff at Goodwill, have moved in a lot of boxes and in addition to the Bajokin and storage shed, we now have a corner bookshelf and a large ikea closet that we built ourselves. We will finally get the pictures unpacked once we get rid of the many boxes! We can't wait.

3 - Wedding

We have been so productive. The goal is to have as much as possible planned before we go back to school so that we only have to wory about work and school work.

We have currently worked on getting a date, narrowing down locations, designing a cake, looking at Ketubah (by Leah's mother) and Chupah designs (by Matthew's mother), invitations (by Tamar), Dress - Leah's is picked out and purchased and bridesmaids dresses are in the works and colors have preliminarily been chosen.

We are looking at going to Ohio soon to make even more descisions.

It is getting long so we will post more details about the plans and the move later.

Planning, Planning, more planning....

This last week comes in two parts.

New Furniture
Last weekend, after much searching we bought two new pieces of furniture - a corner bookcase and a file cabinet. We had been searching for these two items for quite some time as they will make the condo feel more like a home and also give even more storage. The only final piece we need to purchase is an extra closet - apparently we have a lot of stuff. Hopefully we can buy that this week and build and fill it on the week of the 14th and be moved in!!

Leah's Parents Visiting (and Elana!!)
This Thursday Matthew took a half day off work and Leah took a full day off. At 11 am we picked up her parents at the airport, rented a car and drove to Klamath Falls, OR for a July 4th vacation. Klamath Falls used to have waterfalls, however land was moved a while back and now there are no falls. It is about 5 hours away from Portland and we did the trip in a Chevy Impala - Matthew, Elana and Leah sat in the back seat.

This was Matthew's first Independence Day as an American Citzen. On the 4th we drove into California to visit the Lava Bed National Park. Great way to spend the 4th - at a national park. The lava tubes were amazing inside and a little scary as you go deeper. When we got back we listened to 1776 soundtrack and watched the different fireworks shows on TV!

We spent all Saturday enjoying the resort's facilities, exercise room, swimming pool, ping pong and volleyball. There is much more to come and we will have downloaded all the pictures by next week. Hopefully there will be some good ones to post.

During the vacation, on our drives and over some meals we have been able to get started on some wedding planning. There has been a lot of it but overall very productive. Leah's family will be here for the rest of the week. We, well Leah, is hoping to get a lot worked out before the end of August, before school starts-we will see how that goes.

Happy Independence Day!

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