One of the more time consuming things about moving is that we had to clean our old apartment. I was off work last Monday for President's Day, so I was able to get a lot of cleaning done. I went over there around noon and worked for about four hours. The place was dirtier than I thought. I started by vacuuming everywhere, even around the baseboards. Then I cleaned the bathroom, including all the drawers and the bathtub.

After that I moved into the kitchen and started cleaning the refrigerator. We had magnets on it that had left a black residue, so I had to clean that off. The vegetable drawers were also dirty, but I could pull those out and clean them easily in the sink. The microwave wasn't too bad since we had cleaned it fairly recently. And I didn't bother trying to clean the drip pans because they're so bad it would take at least an hour to scrub the grime off. I tried to clean them once before and they never did come completely clean. We'll just pay for new ones. That's pretty much where I stopped.

Then on Saturday we cleaned the kitchen counters, sink, and under the sink. Troy also took down all the stuff from the walls, including our curtains and all the nails. It was pretty hard to take the curtains down though because we didn't have anything to stand on. Troy had to get up on the windowsill to reach, which looked difficult. It took another couple hours to get everything completely out and cleaned. We didn't have time to clean the oven because the self-cleaning feature would have taken over four hours. Unfortunately it costs $25 for the apartments to clean it for us, which means our deposit will be even less than I was hoping for.

It felt weird to be in our empty old apartment. Here are some pictures of it while we were packing, moving, and after it was all emptied. We'll miss it.

After three years of living in our original apartment we found when we first moved to Seattle, we started looking for a new apartment. We made a list of what we liked and didn't like about our old apartment and neighborhood and decided it would be a good idea to move. Our lease would have increased at our old place anyway, so it was good we had already resigned ourselves to moving.

Moving was a lot of work, but everything worked out well and we've put almost everything away. We really like having more space in the living room and an actual bedroom. The location is great and is still within walking distance to my work. It's actually a shorter bus ride for Troy from his work too. It's even a little cheaper than what we were paying for our old place. And we're about a 6 minute walk from the grocery store and tons of restaurants. The main drawback is that the bathroom is tiny and there isn't much storage or counter space. Otherwise I think we're pretty happy with it and are looking forward to making it feel more like home. Here are some pictures of the new apartment, during the move and after.

Here's a video tour:

First Hill Apartment on Vimeo.

Today is the start of our fourth year in Seattle. It's hard to believe we've already been here three years. The past year hasn't been as rewarding as previous years due to my plantar fasciitis, but overall we've done some pretty cool things.

After going to Vancouver for the Olympics last February, we didn't do much until the end of May when my friend Megan came to visit us over Memorial Day weekend. We went to Ken Griffey Jr.'s last Mariners game, the Museum of Flight, and the Boeing manufacturing plant.

In July, we took a day trip to the Bavarian-themed tourist town of Leavenworth on the other side of the Cascade Mountains.

One of the best highlights of the year was when our friends David and Karen visited us for a week later in July. We went to Mount Rainier for a day, Bite of Seattle, and just enjoyed hanging out and playing video games.

Troy and I went blueberry picking for the first time and it was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I made some really good blueberry pie with all the blueberries we picked.

We saw a concert paying tribute to Paul McCartney at Benaroya Hall. It was nice to finally go see the Seattle Symphony, I'd like to go again sometime soon.

The only trip we took this year (other than to Texas) was to the Oregon Coast in September. We really enjoyed being on the coast, seeing the beautiful scenery, and just relaxing on the beach. I liked seeing all the lighthouses and going to the Tillamook Cheese Factory. We even took a dune buggy ride on the sand dunes! The weather was the best we could hope for that late in the summer. I'd definitely like to go back.

We didn't do much in the fall or winter. We went to a pumpkin patch for the first time, which was neat. We also started receiving produce boxes from Full Circle Farm and have enjoyed trying new vegetables and fruits. And we took a three hour Thai cooking class to learn more about the ingredients and ways to cook Thai food on our own.

Finding a new apartment and moving has taken up a lot of our time in January and February.

I'm excited about what this coming year has in store for us. Both of our parents and my Uncle are coming to visit early this summer. We might also be going on a week-long National Park road trip with David and Karen. We'd like to take a few short trips as well, perhaps to San Francisco and Vancouver. As for things in Seattle, we'll have another summer full of great food to eat, festivals to go to, and hiking to do.

We're finally mostly settled in our new apartment. Last week and weekend was really busy with all the packing we had to do to get ready. Thankfully we still had most of the boxes we used to move here, including four big wardrobe boxes and boxes for our kitchen dishware and appliances. We signed the lease on Thursday and moved in some small things that night and Friday night.

We had originally wanted to have the movers come Saturday morning around 8 or 8:30, but our old apartment wouldn't give us the elevator key to use because the office didn't open until 10. So we ended up changing our move time to the afternoon, which had a big start window of 12-4. We used Gentle Giant, which I read good things about and checked on the BBB website. It ended up working out well that they came later because we were still busy packing up things and getting furniture emptied. Three big, strong guys showed up at the old apartment around 12 and took about an hour and a half to get everything padded, wrapped, and in the truck. I was impressed with how fast and hard they worked.

The only thing that got broken was a cheap picture frame that fell off the wall when they were lifting the mattress. To compensate, they didn't charge us for the packing materials used to wrap the mattress (which we weren't told about in the beginning, but I guess it didn't matter). It seemed to take longer for them to move everything into the new place. The couch looked especially difficult to fit through the door. They ended up finishing around 3:45.

After they left, we spent the next several days unpacking and putting things away. The place was quite a mess for a few days with boxes everywhere. We still have some piles of stuff here and there that we don't know what to do with or where to put, but it's starting to look like a home now. We hope to have some pictures up by this weekend.

We're finally moving this weekend after several weeks of searching for the right apartment, packing, getting rid of stuff we don't want, and waiting until the big day. We'll be able to move in small things and boxes Thursday and Friday. Then the movers will move the bigger furniture Saturday sometime between 12 and 4. The forecast currently looks very favorable for Saturday: sunny skies with 0% chance of rain, while all the surrounding days have a chance of rain/snow. Hopefully the move goes smoothly!

The camera we bought shortly after we moved here has had some photo quality issues lately. It looked like there was something on the lens, even after we had carefully cleaned it.

We decided to buy a new point-and-shoot camera that would take higher quality photos. So far, I like it. My favorite thing about it is that it has a wider-angle lens, meaning essentially that it can zoom out farther than other cameras and capture more of a scene. This is especially helpful for indoor shots and self-portraits. It also has image stabilization and is smaller than our previous camera. It came in multiple colors and Lesley chose a greenish color.

Last weekend we started going through stuff trying to reduce what we have. We have a lot of stuff from when we were kids that we can't really get rid of, like school yearbooks and stuffed animals. We got rid of a lot of clothes we never wear in preparation for going down to 5' of closet space in our bedroom. We'll have to store more clothes in the chest of drawers, which we've been using to store random stuff. It was quite a mess in the apartment with all our boxes out in the hallway and living room.

We're planning on packing a lot more stuff this weekend, our last full weekend in our current apartment. It's kind of sad to be leaving it, after being there almost three years. We'll miss being close to Whole Foods and REI. We'll also miss the view we have of Queen Anne Hill and the sunset to the west, even though it is partially blocked by Amazon buildings.

We'll probably go out to eat at a few more places nearby before we move. I want to order take out from Laadla Indian restaurant again and we might to go Seastar this weekend. I'd also like to walk to Lake Union Park again.

It's definitely become our home, but I guess it's time to move on. Our new place will be bigger and cheaper. It's also in an area we aren't very familiar with, so we'll get to explore a whole new neighborhood and try out all the restaurants in the area.

As we look forward to moving into our new place, we're trying to think of where we want to put all of our furniture and how we want to decorate. The place we're moving into has white paint over the walls and kitchen cabinets, so we want to add a little touch of color by painting a wall in a different color. We've never had anything painted before, so we're picking up color swatches and trying to figure out what color we want to use.

We're thinking of a shade of green, as everything else is very neutral - the walls are white, the carpet is brown-ish, and the closet doors are grey. There are so many different shades of green, though. Our current color scheme has some green in it, so we want the wall to match. I don't want the wall to be too grey-colored, because we get plenty of that from the sky. I think a green with some yellow in it would be nice, but we don't want it to be an olive color. So, we're going to go back to the unit and see what shades of green would look best.

We're also thinking of painting parts of other rooms like the bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom, but I don't know if we'll do that. At our current apartment, the bathroom is already painted in a neutral tan color, which I think helps the feel of the room. So, anyway, hopefully we pick a good color for the living room and any other rooms - there are a lot of options.