A 4th of July/Daniel's birthday post

Before heading up to Portland to look for a house we stayed in the Bay Area for a few days. We thought it would be fun to spend the 4th with family, especially since it was also Daniel's birthday.

This 4th of July ended up being rather historic and meaningful for us as we were able to attend the City of Alameda 4th of July parade for the first time! It is a tradition for all of my family members that live in the Bay Area to attend this parade, sandwiched in between a ward potluck breakfast beforehand and a family BBQ afterward.

It was a great year to attend, as my sister's congregation entered a float in the parade for the first time! Didn't they do a great job? Notice the replica of the Oakland Temple on the front



It was wonderful for the kids to get to be with their cousins again. So many of the floats threw out candy as they passed by, and these guys made out like bandits

My sister put on a great BBQ and we brought a pinata to help celebrate Daniel's birthday



Afterwards we headed back to Grandma and Grandpa Sorensens for present opening. Thank you so much to everyone who helped Daniel feel so special!

All in all a wildly successful trip for us in that we got to be with so many loved ones and we bought a house to boot! Now I just need to convince my pregnant body that all that traveling wasn't really that big a deal...

Woefully behind

As you may have noticed, we have been terrible about updating this blog as of late. There has just been so much going on in our lives that we haven't even had a chance to blog about it! But it's all good stuff and an update on the big events is in order.

First of all, Jake is finishing up his PhD and has accepted a job in Hillsboro, Oregon with a company called Synopsys. This is a great opportunity for him as it will be an excellent match for his training and skills. I'm not even going to try to describe what this company does as it is very high-tech and to be honest, I don't quite understand it myself (Jake says look here and here).

As detailed in my previous post, Jake and I had a wonderful time up in Oregon last week on a house hunting trip and bought a home that we can't wait to move our family into. After six long years we are absolutely itching to be done with graduate student housing!

And last but certainly the most exciting of all is that we are expecting our third baby! Our new addition is due around the end of the year/beginning of next year and we'll be sure and let everyone know when we find out if we are having another wonderful little boy of if a girl will be joining us this time. I know, I know, this piece of news really deserved its own post -- I even penned a cute little poem to use as an announcement, but it just didn't happen. Most of you probably know about this already but for those of you who didn't, thank you for giving me one more chance to share the happy news!

So there you have it; I think we're all updated for now. We will be moving mid-August and starting new adventures up in Oregon. We are so excited to be going where it is so green and I am even looking forward to the rain (it never rains here in San Diego). Joshua will be starting kindergarten in the fall, and it feels so good to actually know which school he will be attending so that I can register him. So many things that have been question marks for so long have now been turned in to exclamation points as in, "Jake got a job in Oregon! We bought a house in Hillsboro!" I'm sure you get the idea!

We came, we saw...you know the rest:

Jake and I took Portland real estate by storm last week and boy was it fun! After viewing over 20 homes and leaving ripples all along the way (listing prices being dropped, carpet allowances being made after our agent gave the selling agents our feedback), we knew this was the home we wanted. Isn't it pretty?


Things went incredibly well on our house hunt and I feel so very grateful. The negotiations were kind of tough but I hear that's very typical and I'm sure compared to what a lot of people have to go through they weren't really bad at all. Although, we didn't find out our counter-offer had been accepted until we were literally about to board our plane back to California. That was stressful, but what a relief to be able to come back home and tell our family that we got the house after all!

I wanted to share some of my favorite things about this house. I just love the exterior. I was just drawn to it when it first showed up on the listings:



I am also in love with this kitchen:


The master bedroom is great too:


Hooray for these planter boxes that are all ready for me to step in and take over:



There are also several mature trees in the backyard (all about the same size as the one you can see on the left in the above picture) including a cherry tree! In my excitement I guess I forgot to take a picture!

Plus, it is a mere 9 minutes from the company Jake will be working for. A huge bonus!

All this being said, we are currently in the thick of negotiations for the home inspection phase. The home inspection turned out well, but there are a few things we want them to take care of before things are finalized, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed (I'm also keeping my fingers crossed that the bottom won't fall out of the mortgage industry before our loan closes).

And last but certainly not least, a huge thank you to Nick, Jayne and Alec for making all this possible for us. They had Joshua and Daniel all week so that Jake and I could work unhindered. There is no possible way we could have accomplished what we did without their help. It really was a win-win situation for us as our kids would have been so bored on this trip, being dragged from house to house and instead they had the time of their lives with Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Alec. They got to ride a steam train, go swimming, go to movies and I can't even name all the rest of the great things they did. Thank you so much again -- I don't think you know how much this meant to us!