Alex:
When we lived in Texas Alex was teaching Spanish at Plano Senior High School, a job that basically fell in his lap right after he graduated so we were super blessed in that respect. He taught for 2 years, loved some aspects but hated most, especially the discipline side of things. While we were flipping our house he realized how much he loved working with his hands and being physically tired at the end of each day rather than mentally drained, and decided he needed a change of career. At this time we were getting kinda restless, dreaming about living somewhere else once again and decided to move closer to my parents in Oregon. He took this chance to switch careers and applied to a Plumbers/Steamfitters/HVAC union and was successful in his application and got an apprenticeship as a Plumber! He started working here in Medford, Oregon for a local company at a hospital. He worked there for a couple months and was then laid off because they had no more work at that time. This came as a bit of a blow to us as we had been applying for houses in the area and finally got an offer accepted on a house we loved only to realize we weren't going to get financing now. So he got put back on the Union's waiting list to find another company that was hiring apprentices here in Medford, but was told it may take a little while as there are only 2 big companies that hire and they had more apprentices down here than they needed. So then it was decision time... we either wait who knows how long for him to get a call and just find a temporary job in the meantime, or we move to a bigger city, Eugene or Portland. Portland, as it turns out, is in desperate need of apprentices and have more jobs available than they can hire out for so Portland it is! Alex has been working for a company called Carr Electric for over 3 months now on a hotel they are building downtown. The hotel is still in construction stage so there are no walls and he is exposed to the weather all day, but he is loving it and that makes me so happy! He is learning heaps and hopefully some of that knowledge will be transferable to house flipping, because that will open up all kinds of project ideas for us! He is such a hard worker and is the best husband and father in the whole wide world.
Well Allira is officially a 'two-nager' now, knows her own mind and doesnt like being told 'no'. She is becoming such a little sweetheart though, always offering kisses and hugs, finally loves snuggling and loves to help out around the house. She helps sweep, paint, load the dishwasher and picks up things off the floor. She is learning manners which Im so happy with! Always saying 'thank you' and 'ta' which is kind of the same as 'please' in my books. She is very reverent during prayer time too, folding her arms and squinting those little eyes closed haha its the cutest thing... She gets along really well with other kids and is so good at sharing which makes me so proud! Talking is coming slowly, for a while there every word she didnt know she would point to and say "sa" which i guess means 'something'? I dont know haha but she would be going through her alphabet like 'a, b,c,d,e, sa, sa, sa' etc. We have passed that phase now though! Still not quite forming real sentences but she gets things like 'all done bath' and 'here you go mum'. She is super friendly and always saying 'hi' to things, it used to be things that she liked such as puddles or slides and stuff like that but now we have narrowed it down to people and animals. She also knows her alphabet and words that start with the letter, like a for apple and y for yellow. She can also count to 20, can name any color she sees, and knows the names of almost every object. Her favourite thing is playing with her toys (obviously) but will only play if someone is in there playing with her. Everyday its the first thing we do when we wake up and the last thing we do before bed time. I also got us a membership to the Portland kids museum which she lovveessss, its been the best thing to have this winter up here so far. I think its more for my sanity than her enjoyment though haha being locked up in the house drives me crazy! You dont realize how important it is to have adult conversations until you go days only talking to a toddler. So places like the museum, indoor playgrounds and places that have toys or something like Ikea have been real life savers for us. It rains a lot here in Washington so we are going to have to become good at finding indoor fun. One other thing Allira loves is her accessories. she loves wearing hats and scarfs and gloves and throws a fit when you try take them off of her. Its a headache, but a very very cute headache. She is getting better at eating now, which has been a huge relief! I mean she has never been an impressive eater but a couple months ago I would be lucky to get her to eat more than a couple bites of something a day. It stressed me out so bad that I literally woke up dreading the day and trying to feed her left me in tears. She still had tons of energy though and would drink milk like there was no tomorrow so there wasnt too much cause for concern. Im still not sure what caused that little phase, it lasted a good month and a half though! It was during the time that Alex had left to go work in Portland while we stayed behind in Medford until we could find a house to buy, so that could have contributed to it, and she was also growing like 6 teeth at once which probably didnt help either... I dont know.. But now she is growing and putting on weight again so I can breathe a huge sigh of relief! I really hope our next baby loves food! But aside from the little daily dramas, Allira is the best part of our day and fills our lives with joy and purpose and funny, funny little memories :)
Maygan:
Other than being very very pregnant, not that much is new with me. Since we left Texas Ive become a full time stay at home mama, so my days are filled with ensuring Allira's happiness and counting down the hours until Alex comes home haha that really is the basic gist of it.. I even bought a minivan to seal the deal! Yep, Im a real mama now! I still have dreams of finishing my degree to be an elementary school teacher but until life decides to settle down I cant really do that much to work towards it. We do plan on staying here for at least 5 years though, which will be the longest we have lived in a place since getting married, so that should give me the chance Ive been needing! Washington state is seriously so beautiful, I love that we live here now. Sure its cold and rainy but when the sun does decide to come out its like heaven. Huge pine trees everywhere you look and they make it smell like Christmas everyday, everything is always green and glimmery, and seeing Mt. Hood off in the distance all covered in snow just makes it picture perfect. I could probably live here forever if it had good BBQ and hotter temperatures like Texas did. Im very curious to see where we are going to end up. Maybe one day my powers of persuasion will win Alex over and we will move back to Australia haha just maybe...
Baby #2:
I am due with baby number 2 on May 6th, so that makes me 26 weeks pregnant already! We got a gender ultrasound done at 19 weeks and surprise! Another girl! it was very sad news at first because we both really really really wanted a boy but after the news settled we realized how awesome its going to be to have another girl! Allira is going to love playing with her and the fact that I get to dress them up in matching outfits so they hate me when they are older is just too good to pass up! Ah they are going to be so cute! We still havent decided on a name yet, we have this giant list of like 1000 names we like but none we love. Alex likes Zoey and I'm liking Everly but we will probably just have to wait until she is born to see what she looks like. So far this pregnancy has been pretty smooth. I was really sick and hating life for the first two and a half months, the fact that I had to eat food repulsed me but I got over that thank goodness and ever since Ive been golden! I do get tired very easily but that could also be due to the fact that I literally chase a toddler around all day.. Other than that Im still able to do all my usual activities, I dropped running for walking for comfort's sake and overall feeling good. I started feeling baby move really early, like 14 weeks, and the doctor said that could be something to do with the placenta being backwards or something like that? I cant remember but Im pretty sure its just because baby is already training to be a ninja. Or a gymnast. Or a really ungraceful ballerina. Either way she has been keeping me awake with her rumblings and tumbling's at night and killing me with her kicks during the day. They are some seriously powerful kicks. I can already physically see them from the outside of my belly. By the way my belly is huge, Im pretty sure I was at least half way through my third trimester before I was this big with Allira. This could also be due to the fact that for a while there the only things that sounded good to me were McDonalds fries and chocolate mousse. I think Ive put on like 15 pounds or something like that already, and it isnt all going to my belly, Ill tell you that. Now that we are finally getting settled in our house its time to track down and whip out my maternity clothes, because this mama is getting uncomfortable.
(Sorry no baby bump pictures, I really need to get on top of that...)
Now that Ive mostly caught up on us individually, Its time to catch up on us as a whole. Since leaving Texas, we lived in Medford, oregon for a while in my parents' basement. Its funny, we said we would never be those people but there we were houseless, jobless and unsure of our next move and my parents were awesome to let us stay there for a couple months while we figured out our next move. I think they only did it so they could see Allira everyday haha. Allira adores her grandparents and they definitely spoiled her when we were staying there! Same with her uncle Myles. I think he is her real favourite. Medford was fun for a while, its a pretty small town with not that much to do except hike and go to the movies so thats basically what we did. When Alex got his job up here in Portland we immediately started the house hunt only to find that the market was worse up here than it was in Texas. We would look at a house and give the agent the go ahead to draw up the paperwork for an offer only to find out it was already taken. That happened like 4 times. We reluctantly came down from our house-with-a-big-backyard cloud and started looking at townhouses/condos around Portland. Then we had to come down from our living-in-Portland cloud and started looking across the bridge in Vancouver, Washington. We finally found this one and put in an offer straight away even though it was so far from our dream house it would make you cry. Actually the smell alone of the place would have made you cry. The people that owned it before us had rented it out to a lady that owned Chihuahuas who apparently didnt care if her dogs went potty on the carpet. Or walls. Or anywhere in the house for that matter. So the first thing we did when we moved in was rip up those disgusting stain-covered carpets and we have been walking on the subfloor ever since. We closed on the condo on the 30th of December 2016, grabbed the keys, headed straight for Medford to grab all our stuff out of the storage unit and headed back the next day (due to the fact that a big snow storm was heading our way and we didn't want to be driving a big moving truck over the mountains in snow). We pulled up to our new home at 10.30pm on new years eve, unpacked for a bit, quickly rang in the new year with a bottle of Martinellis and some Ghiradelli chocolate, then went straight back to unloading. It was an awesome way to ring in the new year. And that's only half sarcastic.
We weren't even here for a week until we heard the news that Alex's father had very unexpectedly passed away. Its hard to know what to write here. I don't want to get too personal and into all the emotions that were felt and are still being felt, we have them recorded elsewhere, so I'll just write the basic facts and hope that will suffice for this entry.
Alex was at work on the Friday when his sister Celeste called him and told him that their father had suffered a heart attack. It was about midday. Alex then called me and told me the news, and we decided to pack and leave for Utah straight away. After the 12 hour drive we arrived at about 4.30am on Saturday morning. The rest of the family came in from different states over the next couple days, and it was so good to see them all together again. They laughed together, cried together and planned for Richard's funeral together. All 12 of them spoke at the funeral and it was amazing seeing the different ways they all paid tribute to their father. It was such a beautiful service, Richard was such a loved man, he was so kind and generous, always making you feel like you were the most important person in the room when he spoke to you. Hearing all the Cope siblings exchanging memories of him over the course of that week made me sad that I didnt know him longer or better. What a life he lead, and what an impact on the world he made. Something that was really special was that each of the Cope brothers and a few of the sisters each got to help bury their father. They each took a shovel and filled the grave together, which was an very special experience for Alex. Alex is dealing really well with coming back to reality. I think that week with family helped him more than anything else could.
Now that we are back home it feels weird, but we are keeping busy on the house and trying to get back into the routine of things. We are so grateful for all the generosity and kind words we, especially Alex, have received from friends, family, acquaintances and even strangers over the past couple weeks. We are so lucky to have such amazing people in our lives.
