Finally!

So I have been saying that I will start a blog for MONTHS and had plenty of reasons to put it off...

• I wanted to start it once were in Seattle (uhhh that happened in October)
• I said I would start it when we got a new camera (check - Christmas)
• I decided to start it after the New Year (its now May)
• I needed a cool logo like Chris and Ali have for Johnson Doodles (got one awhile ago - thanks, Mr. Johnson for your mad design skillz!)

Well, I figure I am out of excuses so I had better kick things off before we have even MORE to keep us busy :) Not to mention people keep asking for belly shots and I feel like a blog is a perfect place for you all to see my growing belly, in all its glory.

If you haven't talked to us in awhile (or just need a recap) here are the Cliffs Notes (Facebook timeline style)... Promise, this is the longest blog post we will EVER have!

• We have talked about moving to Seattle for years (honestly, I think we started talking about it just after our one year anniversary - coming up on number 5 in August!) Fast-forward a few years and here we are. (FINALLY!)
• September 2011: Bob was offered a job after being a very diligent potential employee. (I am telling you, serious follow through gets you places.)
• October 2011: 
• Bob moved to Seattle (sans me or Kenai) and started his new job at KPFF. 
• He came back to Cali so we could celebrate the wedding of some great college friends (congrats ABaal and Blake) in Mexico (Bob needed a vacay after 2 weeks on the job - ha!)
• Came home from Mexico, packed 11 years of Bay Area memories into a 26 foot UHaul with my car on a trailer behind it (Kenai hates the sight of UHauls now for sure) and drove for two days  for a grand total of about 20 hours (should be about 13, but try to tell said UHaul full of our crap to pick up the pace over the Siskiyous... good luck!) and unloaded into a temporary place in Seattle (thanks to Bob's dad John for the heavy lifting support - now do you believe we have a lot of stuff???)

  

  Seriously - he was OVER the drive...

• I started with my new team at Edelman Seattle (same clients in the Bay Area, just a new desk to call home - slight changes since then, but still mostly Cali clients)
• November 2011: We began settling into our new city. Every time Bob voluntarily said, "I love it here" made me smile. While I knew I would love being back in the city where I grew up the most, I had only hoped it would live up to what Bob expected of it - so far, I think it has. We started to look at houses with our real estate agent and fell in love with THE house in mid-November. We saw it in the dark, once, with some interesting tenants present and knew we wanted to move in. We found out it was a short sale, talked about whether we could handle what might come from that, put in an offer on November 16th and never looked back! We celebrated our first holiday in the NW - in Bend at my dad and Robie's house. Let me tell you - 6 hours is SOOO much shorter than 9+. The drive was awesome and we had a wonderful Thanksgiving - so much to be thankful for!

• December 2011: We were busy bees at work and in life - had a great visit with the Johnsons and Becky for Ali's birthday, spent the holidays in Portland and LOVED our new city as we celebrated our first Christmas as residents of the NW!

Happy birthday, Ali!

The nieces and nephews LOVE Kenai!

Fast friends (the fishies helped!)

• January: More of the same - loving our city! Grammy came for a visit (we even went to Pike Place Market in the snow!) and we enjoyed LOTS of snow on a couple occasions (seriously, HUGE snowstorm in Seattle this year and Kenai loved every minute of it). Oh and one little thing... we found out we would soon grow from a family of three (2 humans and a four-legged friend) to a family of FOUR! :)

• February: A couple weeks of Bob and I being the only ones to know about Baby Kehrli before sharing the news with family led to me brainstorming all the fun ways we could tell everyone :) A couple trips to Bend, some skiing, sharing news of the baby with family and verbal acceptance of our offer on the house - a great NW winter!

Bend with Lisa and Tyler

• March: A trip to visit Lauren, Jesse and my mom in Montana, written acceptance of our offer (finally!), speedy plan for closing, putting the brakes on when the current tenants decided to squat for a bit and a 30th birthday celebration with college friends in Palm Springs.
• April: Easter in Portland, packing up to move for the third time in 8 months, finally closing on the house, getting keys and moving in (wahoo!) We got our keys on April 20th and moved, with help from Bob's mom, dad and brother Bill, on April 21st and 22nd (THANK YOU). Never the ones to sit still, we headed to San Diego to celebrate our niece Kate's birthday the first weekend we had our new place :)

• May: Still living out of boxes, we spent weekend number two as homeowners celebrating my birthday up in the San Juans. We were finally home this past weekend and got a TON done with help from my mom and Lauren. Its finally starting to feel like home around here! We are now starting to talk more about what our baby GIRL's room will look like :)

Now that we have this thing up and running, I promise to post much more frequently. And not to disappoint... the requested belly shots! Our little girl is currently the length of a banana :)

12 weeks...

16 weeks...

20 weeks!