A Procession of Elephants

Barnum and Bailey's was in Kent a couple of weeks ago to perform at the Showare Center...which is right down the street from my parents' house! When we found out that animals would be passing the house between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m., my brother, my mom, Aislin and I kept a close eye on the street for those whole two hours; but when noon came around and people were standing by the sidewalk or sitting in lawn chairs at the edge of their driveways and still no animals, my brother and I got impatient and decided to jog down the street in the direction they'd be coming from. We decided that, if we saw any animals coming, we'd book it back to the house to get my mom and Aislin ready. As we were crossing the street at the first intersection, we saw cop lights down the street and then big brown figures. We just stared and squinted, trying to figure out what we were seeing. And then an ear flapped and we heard a trumpet-like sound in the distance. We were like little kids seeing elephants for the first time...because, well, it was our first time seeing them on the street...near our house... So awesome.

Life in Mt. Vernon

(House on the right)

Yep, the Sweets have moved again! We left Kent for Quincy about this time last year when Tim got a job at the Microsoft Datacenter; and then last month, we moved here to Mt. Vernon for Tim's new job in Anacortes. He'd been working for Siemens for over two years now but he was offered a better job with a company called Integra (the software company, not the telecom company).
On Aislin's b-day we went driving around Mt. Vernon looking for a house to rent, and after a handful of heck-no's and one maybe, we found this one. It has 3 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths, and a deck that overlooks mountains and trees.
Since we gave away most of our furniture before we left Quincy we decided to stop by Mor Furniture on our way to Mt. Vernon. We stayed the night at my parents' house in Kent, drove to Mor and picked out a nice sectional and then went back to my parents' house to get the moving truck. From the Mor loading area, we drove straight up to Mt. Vernon where the missionaries and members of our new ward were ready to help us move in.
The next day, we finally got a dining table! WHOO!
The walls are still pretty bare (in every room) but we're working our way up to buying wall frames for the rest of our pictures!
I love that door...

The master bedroom (with the dresser mirror still sitting in front of the window...*sigh*):
Aislin's bedroom isn't used as much as her last one... It just has her furniture in there because her bigger toys are in the spare bedroom and the smaller ones are in the living room.
She never played with that thing as an infant, but now she DIVES through the arcs like she's trying to hit all the dangly things at once...with her face.

We've adjusted to life in Mt. Vernon pretty well, and we're glad to see Aislin feel so at home in our new home! We've been exploring parks together, the trail to the local grocery store, the library, etc...and wherever we go, she's more than happy to wave and make new friends.
Here's Aislin with a little girl who lives in our cul-de-sac. When she saw us move in, she came over that evening and said, "Can I play with your baby?" We cracked up because our first visitor was for our daughter :P

This was taken at a park a few blocks from our house. It was quite a walk! She was standing at the top of a toddler jungle gym and watching the older kids play.


This was taken at another park. As soon as I took her out of her stroller and set her down, she immediately walked away from me and towards everyone else! She kept walking up to other people but she seemed to know that they were way too old to play with, so she'd turn around and entertain herself.

We've been meeting more people from church so I just recently met some moms who have kids about her age. In fact, Aislin met a little boy at church today who's almost exactly a month older than her (off by a day)! So maybe they'll be at playgroup and she won't just have to watch the older kids play!

In other news, we didn't take pictures of Tim at the airport but he just got back from his first business trip :) He went to Wisconsin for four days while Aislin and I stayed with my family. He said people in Wisconsin say "baa-cood" instead of "barcode," and that flying first class (which only happened on the way back because there were no seats left in coach) wasn't that great because everyone was drinking. Otherwise it was a good experience :)

Oh, and one last thing: it rained today!