Preparing for the Expat life ...

Cora will be an expat before she is even one year old! CRAZY!

At 10 months old tomorrow, Cora is helping us work on all the final details for our upcoming journey. Currently, we are figuring out where to live in Bern that will allow us to bring our pets (kind of a nightmare but we are hopefully getting close to making something work), getting final work done on our house for the appraisal on Saturday (if the appraisal goes well with the bank and the lady gets her loan then we will hopefully close the end of the month), selling and packing as much stuff as possible, helping Siobhan with last minute wedding plans (her wedding is next week), saying bye to some of our favorite people and getting some last quality mountain biking and hiking in on some of our favorite trails. It's kind of a stressful time (especially since nat will now be gone most of the month) but we are trying to have some fun. 

Cora's been a good little helper, although she is on the move like crazy lately- climbing stairs, boxes, crawling everywhere and has so much energy!! Here are quite a few pics of the last week or so...

Bend!

Cora's brewery tour begins ...

Mt. Hood

 Here are a few cute videos:

Evacuation!

The day we returned home from Colorado, a huge fire erupted VERY close to home. After spending one day too close to the fire, Cora, Nat, Tanner and I fled to Mackay, Idaho to take refuge at our friend Mollie's house. Although we were all a bit unnerved that our town was possibly in flames, it was a pretty fun time. 

(Currently, the fire has died down quite a bit and is now almost 80% contained. Only a few structures were burned, but our trails will be charred for a couple of years.) 

After hanging out in Mackay for a couple days we headed home to a smoke filled house to do some cleaning and then hit the road again to travel to Bend, Oregon to visit our friends Sean and Jill. We are loving Bend and don't want to go home tomorrow!

In between the fire evacuation party in Mackay and our trip to Oregon, Cora had her nine month check up. She is still tiny, weighing 14 lbs and 6 oz, but is still 25% on the hight curve and is gaining weight at her own little perfect curve. 

Visiting Lee Martinez Park (before the horse tried to eat her foot).

The fire from our front porch. Yikes!