Lindsey and I have been married four years today. She’s an incredible woman and I’m so happy we’re together. To celebrate the occasion we had Ashleigh look after Avery for a couple hours last night while we went out to dinner.
First we had Ashleigh get a picture.

Avery wasn’t into smiling for the camera last night despite our best efforts.

Ashleigh + Avery.

Lindsey and I are usually awakened by a hungry, 4 1/2 month old alarm clock, a.k.a. Avery. Today was a little different. Somewhere around 7:00 AM there was a roar from a machine outside our bedroom window. It sounded a bit like one of those wood chippers they use to clean up debris after a windstorm. When I went to the window to see who could possibly be running a chipper before the first diaper change of the day, I realized the noise was coming from a slightly different piece of equipment. It looked similar to an excavator, only it had a set of claws where the bucket would normally be, and a huge spinning saw blade. One by one it was grabbing trees, cutting them off at the base, and flinging them off to the sides.
When we moved into our neighborhood we knew the trees behind our house wouldn’t be there indefinitely. Looks like it won’t be long before there are houses where our forest once was.
Tree eater.


Lindsey watches the carnage as Avery smiles for the camera.

The sea of downed trees.

This afternoon there were all sorts of homeless birds flying around just above the downed trees. It was sad. 🙁

Yesterday we made a day trip up to Bellingham to meet with the old and new tenants at our rental house. It was a busy afternoon full of cleaning, touch up painting, and sorting out assorted problems that came up. By about 7:30 we finished up at the rental and it was time to visit two of our favorite eating spots, Wingdome and Mallard Ice Cream. After that we headed over to Ray and Betty’s house so they could meet Avery. And finally we stopped by Jen and Ollie’s to catch up with them for a few minutes.
So why did we move away from such a beautiful place?

Ray + Betty saying “Hi” to Avery.

Checking out Ray’s beard.

For those of you who don’t know Ray, he’s an incredibly cool older guy with the spirit of someone a quarter his age. He’s also the man responsible for creating the 76 Ball, among many other familar American icons.