Carfree in Portland

One of the highlights of our adventurous move to Portland has been that we left our car behind. Literally. We sold our car to a guy in Phoenix for $1,000 and wished him well in that ticking time bomb while we set out to navigate the public transit system of Portland. At first it was a matter of not being able to afford another car since we still had to pay the mortgage on our home in Phoenix. However, now that our house has sold, living without a car is a matter of choice (and we love it, by the way).

We get a lot of questions about how we make it work to live in the suburbs with two kids without a car. I thought I would elaborate a little here and document some of our adventures.

First of all, Ben takes the bus/train combo into work every day. On nice days he rides his bike to the train and commutes that way. It takes him about 45 minutes each way. That may sound like a lot, but given the traffic during rush hour it's only about 5 minutes longer to take public transit than to drive. Plus he doesn't have to pay for gas or worry about finding a parking spot downtown, so it really works out well.

The kids and I are out and about every day. It's a very rare day that we elect to just stay home. It takes about 10 minutes for us to walk to the bus stop. A quick 10 minute bus ride lands us in downtown Beaverton where we go to the gym and the library. If we want to go to the zoo, the children's museum, or downtown, we hop on the train. We also spend a lot of time at parks either within walking distance of our house or along the bus route. I have a bike with a trailer that the kids ride in that we use often. We go to parks, to the forest, and to the homes of friends. We have kind friends who pick us up sometimes and take us places we otherwise wouldn't be able to go. It's very, very rare that we really want to go somewhere or attend an event, but can't do it because we don't have a car.

I actually really love being forced to slow down. We are never stressed about driving or traffic or parking. Sure, we have to allot more time to get places on the bus than we would with a car, but it really forces us to do less, which is good. In my previous life I was so busy running from one place to another, making stops on the way home from other places. Now we are outside all the time. We walk at least half a mile everyday, usually much more than that. It's good for all of us to be outside walking. I notice that me and the kids chat a lot more when we are walking than when I am driving.

When we owned a car we spent an average of $250-$300 per month to maintain it. That included gas, repairs, maintenance, cleaning, and insurance. Now we spend less than $100 per month on transportation. (This doesn't include Ben's commute since he didn't commute when we lived in Phoenix.) Sometimes we need to rent a car. Over Memorial Day we did just that and drove up to Seattle to visit my brother. It cost us about $45 to rent a car for 3 days, so we are still saving big time. We figure that every month we can go without a car is a couple hundred more dollars saved so that when we do buy a car again, we can actually buy something that will be reliable without going into debt for it.

Now here is the golden question: What about grocery shopping? People always ask us that, and it's a good question since it is the one thing we have to do often that actually requires a car. We do a variety of things. Sometimes we do small shopping trips just to pick up eggs and milk, nothing more that we can carry or stash away in a stroller. We have discovered that Safeway home delivery is actually a pretty great option. And sometimes we borrow a car from a kind friend to make a big shopping run that we plan out meticulously so that we have everything we need for at least two weeks. We haven't run into a problem yet.

We love our new lifestyle. We walk and bike all over the place. Our favorite weekend activity is a family bike ride. A couple weeks ago we biked over to the Beaverton Farmer's Market (about 3 miles away) and felt 100% granola for doing so. It was so fun. I have discovered that I love biking as much as I love running. I also love that we don't have a car to worry about. We don't have to worry if it's leaking oil or if it's making a funny noise. We don't have to save $2,000 for the day that a big repair needs to be done (notice I said when, not if). We don't have to worry about whether it gets dented or scratched or whether Lily's milk is going to stain the seats. It's a load off and we love it.

We have no idea how long we will live without a car. Hopefully for a long time, but we are realistic about our circumstances. Our situation right now makes it easy to be without a car. We live within a 10-minute walk (5 minutes without kids) of a bus stop that gets us basically everywhere we need to go. The public transit system in this city is pretty amazing with buses, trains, and street cars going pretty much everywhere. However, if we move or if we add another child to our family things may change. We are just enjoying our situation right now and making the most of it. Portland is really a beautiful place and we are so happy that we get to live here.

The Big Leap

Recently I have been reading The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level. It has completely changed my thoughts about how to attain happiness and satisfaction in my life. I just wanted to write down a few of my thoughts about what I have learned.

There are several ideas that I love in this book, but the one that has impacted me most is this idea of having an "Upper Limit". This basically means that in our lives, whether it be in our relationships, our work, or our creative endeavors, we are comfortable with a certain level of happiness. If things go exceptionally well or we have a major breakthrough in one area, we feel uncomfortable with our elevated level of happiness or affluence and we do something to sabotage ourselves to bring us back down. Good ways to sabotage ourselves are to worry about things we can't control, criticize or blame others in our minds, and obsess about ridiculous or offensive things we see or hear. Another way is to start an argument or push away someone we love.

Since becoming aware of The Upper Limit I can see how my life is basically controlled by this. When we have a really great family fun day I get on Google News at the end of the day to read upsetting stories that will dampen my spirits. When I exercise and feel really great physically I eat a bowl of Captain Crunch to be sure I don't feel too good for too long. When we are home enjoying a laid back and beautiful afternoon together I start to feel restless and anxious about cleaning my house (again). If I start feeling too happy or too content I find something to be anxious or depressed about. A lot of the tendencies I have ascribed to my "perfectionist" personality are really just Upper Limit problems that bubble up so that I always have something over which to worry and feel guilty.

The most pronounced example in my life was with a certain boyfriend I had (long before I met Ben). We were the best of friends and we loved each other a whole lot, but our relationship didn't work because he had a severe Upper Limit problem. We would go on a fun, romantic date, and within days he would withdraw his affection. I would be crushed for awhile, things would slowly get better, and then it would happen again. We would have a really great conversation or a really adventurous outing, fly high for a few days, and BAM! Upper Limit problem. He would withdraw again. I could never figure out why we couldn't just be happy and enjoy our relationship, why he was always so worried about something bad happening. Ultimately, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy and something bad did happen. I married someone else! Bad for him, amazingly amazing for me :)

As I have identified this kind of behavior in myself it has been amazing, and also a little scary, to let myself actually enjoy my life. I am so comfortable obsessing about our budget and worrying about money. I am so comfortable being critical of my husband or bemoaning the blessing it is to stay at home and raise my kiddos. I am so comfortable living my life in a kind of haze. It's so easy to worry about the future and to drown my brain in a mixture of current events, pop news, and divisive politics. Those things are easy, but you know what? I am better than that. I deserve to be happy. I deserve to let myself enjoy the awesome life that I have. I deserve to be grateful for my blessings without clouding them over with some fear of impending doom. My husband deserves a wife who is focused on him, and him alone, when we are together. My kids deserve a mom who is present in their lives. I deserve that, and so do you.

Note: I'm not getting paid or anything to do a review, I just love this book and want to share it with those I love most. Enjoy!

Oh, What Can Happen In Two Months!

So our last post was on January 10. Today is March 13 and basically everything has changed since January. Let's see, where to start...

I guess the changes really started happening in the middle of January. As you know, Ben lost his job at Avant back in October. As soon as that happened he adopted an action plan entitled "All of the Above", meaning he applied for jobs all over the country, applied for a PhD program, and worked his tail off to make a full-time gig of his freelancing career. In January he was offered a job with a small company in Portland called Sensory. We prayed and fasted about it and felt that taking the job was the best choice to make. He was doing great as a freelancer, but the constant hustle to get and keep contracts was exhausting. We had four weeks from the time he accepted the job to pack up our lives and relocate to Portland.

As you can imagine, this was incredibly bittersweet. We were so grateful to have a job, but it was so difficult to leave our lives in Arizona. We had a beautiful house, amazing weather, and incredible friends to leave behind. The following four weeks were a whirlwind as we packed up all our belongings, searched for a place to live in Portland, put our house up for sale, put our car up for sale, soaked up as much sunshine as possible, and said goodbye to beloved friends who have become like family.

On February 12 we all flew up to Salt Lake to spend a few days with my family while our stuff was en route to Portland via ABF. Ben only stayed a couple of days and then flew to Portland to unload the trailer, get settled, and start his new job. The kids and I stayed in Salt Lake for another week and had a wonderful time. Things had been so stressful the past few weeks in Phoenix that it was absolutely necessary for us to rest and decompress. We had a great time just hanging out with family and not thinking about moving.

We arrived in Portland on February 23. It was so surreal to fly into this strange place with the thought constantly running through my head, "This is my new home." I knew nothing about the city or the area where we decided to live. I only knew it felt right to come and that God was blessing us for doing so.

We have absolutely fallen in love with Portland! We have a wonderful ward who has been so good to us. We have friendly neighbors. The weather has been unusually mild, with the sun coming out frequently. As I mentioned above, we sold our car in Phoenix because we were certain it would leave us stranded along some lonely stretch of highway if we attempted to drive it to Portland. This means that for now we have no car, which has been a wonderful adventure. In a short time we have became adept at navigating public transit, riding our bikes, and taking advantage of car sharing programs like Getaround. We enjoy not having the stress of car ownership so much we may keep it this way! Ben is enjoying his job and he likes the people he works with. Even though it was hard to change everything, we are so grateful for the opportunities the Lord has blessed us with. We still have our house to sell and some other things to get in order, but we are confident things will work out just as they should. Tommy and Lily have adjusted well also. In the short time we have been here we have eaten at two food trucks, visited the Children's Museum, obtained a gym membership, attended story time at the local library, and explored the forest. We love the culture and embrace the weirdness that is Portland :)

Here is the story of the past two months told in pictures, mostly of our two cute kiddos.

Enjoying the zoo and our backyard in Phoenix:

Moving: 

This was Moving Day. We had 10 men show up at 6:00 am on a Monday to help us move. By the time breakfast rolled around we had nothing left in the house, so we had a doughnut picnic.

Goodbye, beautiful house! Sell quickly and make someone else happy!

Portland:

New parks with green grass and trees! And we have to wear shoes and socks and coats!

Food trucks in downtown Portland.

Gettin' around Portland style.

Fun at the Children's Museum.

Fun at home. (Lily has learned how to smile big for the camera. Also, she is still not walking, for anyone who is interested.)

This little man is riding a big bike with training wheels and he is so proud of himself! (Also this day he was wearing three long-sleeved shirts for some reason...with shorts.  Go figure.)

We biked up to a nature park and then locked up the bike and walked around for the afternoon. It's amazing how fast civilization yields to pure forest here.

Christmas 2012

This Christmas was a first for us: we spent it with extended family! Usually we stay at home in cozy Arizona, buy a pizza, and hang out in our pj's for Christmas. But this year we decided to trek up to the snowy land of Utah to be with family.

We went to the Mesa Temple and saw the lights on Thursday night (the 20th), thinking this would be a great way to kick-off our little vacation. We were supposed to leave early Friday morning. However, Lily had other plans. She would not go to sleep Thursday night no matter what we tried. She's usually a great sleeper, so this was very strange. By about 3:00 am all of us (including Tommy) were still up, so I took Lily downstairs to see if she was hungry. By the way she downed the slices of cheese and Cheerios I offered her I guessed this was the problem all along. Once she got some food in her belly she slept great the remaining hours of the night. Turns out she was starving, poor girl.

Since we got almost no sleep that night we felt very uncomfortable about driving all day Friday. We decided to delay our trip a few hours and stay over in Las Vegas rather than make the entire trip in one day. We had a slow morning, took naps, exercised, and started off for Vegas around 1:00 pm. We stayed in a hotel just off the strip for $20 that night! Now, it wasn't a great room, but it suited us just fine for one night. Except that Ben and I didn't get any sleep again because we each had a child in bed with us. And those children like to move around and squish us at night. And Lily may or may not have fallen out the bed once during the night. Needless to say when Saturday morning rolled around Ben and I were exhausted. We slathered on some peppermint oil to wake us up and headed out for Salt Lake around 6:30 am.

We were blessed with a very good drive in spite of our exhaustion. The roads were clear and Lily only had one poop-plosion, so that was good. It was remarkably fun to arrive at my mom's house about 5 hours before she was expecting us.

On Sunday we celebrated Lily's first birthday. Cute girl demolished her cake and probably could have eaten another whole one. See the previous blog post for the best birthday cake video out there.

It started to snow the morning of Christmas Eve. It was a perfect white Christmas. We ran a few errands that morning, cleaned up the house, and shoveled a whole lotta snow together. Tommy had a BLAST in the snow! He wanted to go out and play in it every day we were there. Thanks to Grandma Chatterton for buying the kids their snow gear. They both looked adorable all bundled up, and they stayed really warm, too. Lily couldn't quite sit up straight or crawl in her snow gear, but that's probably best for everyone:)

Tommy really wanted to build a snowman, but the snow was so powdery he had to settle for a snow fort instead. He loved making and throwing snowballs!

Christmas morning was beautiful and SO fun! Everyone was so kind and generous to our family this year. We are so grateful to the many angels who made this Christmas so special. A big thanks to Shawna for those adorable pj's the kids are wearing! Lily was starving on Christmas morning (as usual) so we opened up the treats she got in her stocking so she could munch on them while Tommy opened his presents. The rest of the day was spent hanging out, playing with presents, and visiting with family. We were so lucky to get to see all of my brothers with their families this time around. Plus, we even got to see Aunt Steph and Uncle John later in the week (I can't believe I didn't get a picture!).

Don't Tommy and Uncle Carson look so much alike? Two good-lookin' guys! The kids loved playing with their cousins while we were in Utah. Tommy absolutely idolizes his six-year-old cousin, Jarom. He'll do everything just the way Jarom does it. He loves playing Angry Birds on Grammy's iPad with Jarom. He also loves watching "Curious George" with Makayla and running around playing pretend games with both of them. Lily loved playing with Jet this time around. They can both crawl and pull themselves up on furniture, so that was cute to watch them interact. Baby C.J. (again, I can't believe I didn't get a picture of all the cousins together!) was only about two months old at Christmas, but Tommy talks about him all the time. He always says, "Lily is bigger than C.J." Yes, yes he is, Tommy.

We love you all and hope you had a great Christmas!

Lily's Birthday Cake Video

Ben put together this awesome video of Lily's birthday cake eating extravaganza - The Cakening. Check it out. It's about the cutest thing I've ever seen. She's goes from being upset that her hands are dirty to shoveling the cake into her mouth by the fist-full. What a cutie!

Christmas Eve Baby

So, Lily was born on Christmas Eve last year, which means that celebrating can be a little, for lack of a better word, cray-cray.

Normally, I think we'll be celebrating two Saturdays before Christmas, but this year we were in Utah with the Wards and held a combined birthday for Lily and Jarom. As it was Lily's first birthday, we did the Cake Thing—you'll remember that Tommy had some good cake action himself. So, without further ado, we present "The Cakening":

December 2012

Here are some things we have been up to lately:

We've been going to the zoo often, trying to make the most of our membership before it expires next year.

We've been spending lots and lots of time outside.  We love our backyard and the beautiful weather we enjoy now!

Look what the UPS man delivered!

Lily ate bacon for the first time and loved it (this is not surprising, of course).

Our kids are cute in their brown footie pj's.

Lily got tubes in her ears a couple of weeks ago. She hasn't had any ear infections, but she apparently couldn't hear well out of her left ear. She has failed her hearing tests in that ear since birth, so we finally did tubes and it seems to have done the trick! I was surprised how easy the actual surgery was. It was nothing like what she went through in September (thank goodness). We got to the hospital at about 6:30 am. We waited around until about 7:30. They did all the normal prep work and changed Lily into a peach colored gown that made her look so angelic. She started to get restless and fussy because she hadn't eaten for over 12 hours, but she really was a trooper. Around 8:00 they took her to surgery. I waited for about 10 minutes before the doctor came to tell me they were all done. It was very fast. I heard her crying as soon as I stepped back into the recovery area. They told me, "That's normal, she's coming out of the anesthesia." Really, I think she was just hungry. I nursed her for about 15 minutes and then she was totally fine. Like eerily happy. She sat up and smiled and clapped her hands as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I changed her into a onesie and realized that it was too cold outside to take her home like that, so I wrapped her in my jacket and pushed her out of the hospital like that. This was just a regular medical center and they must not see babies very often because I felt like a total celebrity as I paraded Lily through the halls on my way out. Nurses literally swooned and fell to the floor to get a better look at the adorable baby wrapped in a jacket. Now, I think she's pretty dang cute, but even I thought that was a bit overboard. She took a great nap that afternoon and has been fine ever since. Thank goodness for the miracles of modern medicine! Speaking of modern medicine, I have been looking for awhile now for alternatives to it so we don't have to go to the doctor so often! I recently discovered Essential Oil Love where they host free online classes about using essential oils to relieve common ailments like stress, headaches, and tummy issues. It has been great for our family so far. We've all had the flu this week so we have been using those oils like nobody's business and they really work! I use oils like lavender and wintergreen right before bed and I've been sleeping better than I have since Lily was born last year. Check it out if you have a minute:)

As far as our employment situation goes, things are looking pretty good. Ben has been able to carve out a decent career as a full-time freelance writer. We have been very blessed. He is still open to other career opportunities that present themselves and he has also applied for a PhD program that could be awesome. We'll see where we end up. For now we are just so grateful that we can pay our bills. We've been so grateful for all the help we have received from friends and family. Thank you so much to those who have helped in any capacity, whether it be prayers in our behalf, meals, notes of support, or financial aid, we really appreciate it. I feel so humbled and grateful to be the recipient of so much love and support.