No Move

We have decided not to move. Even though we knew that a potential move would be a few years off, it is something we've been thinking about and investigating lightly. However, after driving through the neighborhoods we like, we realized why we ended up where we are in the first place. In order to get the majority of things we want, nay need (said a bit tongue and cheek, of course), we have to sacrifice on some other things. So we're going to make some improvements on our house (not immediately) and decided to stay indefinitely. Among the improvements we'd like to make:

• Custom, built-in shelves/storage on either side of the fire place in our living room
• Custom bookshelves somewhere in our master bedroom (location TBD)
• Convert dog room to nice living space for long term guests - add closet, change carpet, decorate nicely
• Convert third car space in our garage to a dog room with climate control for the dogs*
• Add storage/shelving to the garage
• Eventually do something with the carpet in the living room (change to hardwoods? change carpet to another type? move carpet further in to make high traffic area avoid the carpeted area?)
• The Big One: Re-landscape backyard so we have flat tiers ... this will be very expensive and we're not sure how feasible it is, but we'll see
• I would also like to do something to make the front of our house pop a bit more. Maybe brick walls leading up to our house with flower boxes built in? Something solid like that.

It feels good to have made this decision. I kind of started to feel like we were in limbo. And I really do like our house and our neighborhood. Avery will just have to learn to love the hills!

In other news, we did our photography session with Avery this morning. She took about a 45 minute - hour nap before we went, but we did have to wake her up to leave, so by the time we got there, finished chatting with the photographer, and got started, she started to melt down. Poor girl. She did her best, but was definitely not the smiley baby usually caught by most cameras. Hopefully we got a few good shots.

I'm so excited about the new roll carts for recycling. It'll make things so much easier! This post also inspired me to ramp up my recycling efforts even more. I always am very conscious of recycling stuff that they'll pick up in the bins. I haven't been so good at going to extra mile to recycle stuff they won't take (e.g. batteries, though I don't throw them out. I just have a massive pile of them). Plus, it gives me the opportunity to put shelving, etc in our garage for organization (eventually). This makes me very happy indeed. And it's times like these I'm so thankful that we live in Portland where recycling is such a common thing.

* I feel the need to note, for anyone who may not have been to our house, our dogs DO come in the rest of the house, but we use the dog room for when they're dirty and this is where they sleep since they wake me up otherwise. :)