Travel, moving, and Friends, Oh my!

Hello everyone! I feel like it's been entirely too long since I posted. There have been a lot of things in the news and such that I've wanted to comment upon, but I've just been too preoccupied as of late.

The trip to Minnesota went great. Even though we didn't have the cord to the mini DVD player for the car, Layla was awesome and behaved almost perfectly for those long days of driving. It was 28 hrs. each way. We took 2 days to drive on the way there, and 2 and 1/2 on the way back.

Layla got a lot of time with her grandma, aunt, and uncle. We also got to hang with old friends, walk around near where we used to live, and eat a lot of yummy food. I definitely got my Somali fix while we were there!

I got to visit my friend Idil who moved to Grand Forks, ND and hang out with her and the family for a few days. Her sweet brother Abdisalaan offered to drive 5hrs to Minneapolis to pick us up! Her son is the little boy Layla is throwing rocks with in the picture. Their family basically adopted me quite a few years ago.


There was so much scenery on the drive there and back, but the drive is brutal. You lose your appreciation for beauty once you're in the car for a few hrs.

Once we got back, we had one day to relax before we had to start moving to our new place. It took 3 days to move, but now we're living in the best possible place for us and Layla too.

We are living in family housing townhomes for the school that I will be attending in the fall for my MA program. There are tons of  kids near Layla's age, and the houses have a fenced courtyard in the center where kids can play. It has been really easy to meet people and start making friends. I will also be able to walk to my classes, and it will be super easy to find babysitters on campus to watch Layla.

We have a week or so to relax now, then my parents and brother are coming to visit!

Road Trip!

Should I be excited about the prospect of driving 28 hrs. in 2 days? My husband and I are driving all the way back to Minneapolis to visit our family there. Are we crazy?

We wanted to fly, buy tickets are insanely expensive. Has anyone else run into that problem this summer? We also looked at taking a train, but the price was even higher than flying!

Looks like we will be stuck driving 2 days straight with this lovely little lady in the car.

If you remember correctly, this is the same drive we did last year, but this time we will have a much less-crowded car. I also think that Layla will be a little better since she is older now. I hope!

Any tips for occupying a little kid for an insanely long drive?

I will definitely bring books and the laptop for DVDs. We also plan on making her run for  15min when we stop for bathroom and gas breaks.

I'm trying to psych myself out and pretend that I'm really excited for the drive itself, when in reality, I'm not!

I am, however, looking forward to seeing my husband's family and all our friends back in Minneapolis, as well as my dear friend Idil who moved all the way to North Dakota. Yes, there are Somalis everywhere!

I am really looking forward to getting Sambusa at my favorite spot, The Cairo grill, as well as getting a couple new skirts at the Somali mall!

I'll post pics of the trip, maybe not until we get back, but I promise to share!

Just One More Day...

My mom and brother are leaving Thursday morning. :(

My mom and I at the OR trail interpretive center

This week has been fun, but kind of sad too. Since I've had my brother and mom here for the past week, I kind of forgot that they don't actually live here.

We've had lots of fun and gone a lot of places, so hopefully I've done my part of convincing them to move here eventually. We have to wait for my dad to retire though.

Today we visited 2 museums, and had lunch at Red Robin. Layla loved dipping her fries in the sauces.

Layla and her sauces

Grandma and sleepy Layla

Yesterday we visited Mt. St. Helens. It was a little cloudy though, so we didn't bother driving the additional 30 miles to the closest viewpoint. It would have cost quite a bit to get in, so we just took pictures from the Forest Learning Center.

Tomorrow we are planning to take it pretty easy, but if its sunny we will go back up on Powell Butte to take pictures and maybe drive out closer to Mt. Hood.

Just like me at first, they can't get over the fact that there are real mountains here!

In other news, Blogger has somehow deleted all the blogs I watch from my dashboard. It did this once before, and they came back after I had re-added half of them. I think I'm just going to give it a day or so.

Home Sweet Home

We have been in our new home of Portland since Monday. The process of driving out was somewhat agonizing with a 1 1/2 year old, but we made it through alright. We stayed in Minneapolis for a few days to say to our friends and my mother-in-law.

We left the city Friday morning and spent that first day driving to Pierre, SD. I thought that some of the scenery in South Dakota was pretty after we crossed the Missouri River, but Pierre isn't somewhere I would enjoy living. There wasn't really much to see, and it seemed like a place definitely lacking in ethnic foods.

Saturday we left Pierre in the morning and drove until we got to the famous Wall Drug store. I wouldn't recommend stopping there unless you like overcrowed tourist traps. I was hoping to get some buffalo jerky, but what they had there was so overpriced that I couldn't justify buying any. The rest of the day Saturday was agonizingly long. We stopped at a couple spots in the Black Hills, but avoided any of the other major tourist areas. Our original plan was to stop at Mt. Rushmore, but it would have added at least 2 hours to our drive by the time we got there and took pictures. The scenery in western SD is amazing though. We crossed into Wyoming, drove through a couple hundred miles of it, then finally crossed into Montana. Southern Montana where I-90 crosses through is a huge Crow reservation. They have some beautiful land, but you can also tell that the area is pretty economically depressed. Saturday night we stayed at a hotel in Billings that had a Mongolian Grill restaurant next to it. That meal was a beautiful ending to a very long day.

Sunday was also a day of a ton of driving. We continued northwest through many more miles of Montana, and finally crossed into Idaho. Some of the elevations in the border area are pretty high and the scenery is amazing. At one point close to the border there were even snow flurries coming down from one of the mountaintops. I kept imagining how this trip would have been on the Oregon trail before modern highways lessened the grades of the mountains. We just crossed through the northern border region of Idaho where the state is only about 100 miles wide. Just after crossing the border into Washington, we stopped in Spokane. It wasn't a bad city, but we were too tired to do much after such a long time in the car.

Our final day of travel was the shortest. We left Spokane and went south and west through some of the farming regions of Washington. This is the area where they grow a lot of cherries and apples. There were also a good number of vineyards. Interestingly, most of the crops were irrigated. Apparently the thin rocky soil doesn't hold moisture well. The area along the WA/OR border along the Columbia river is also really beautiful. There are basically huge rocky cliffs that form the gorge. Once you cross the Cascade range, the climate is different and everything starts getting green. That is the thing I love most about this area. I am happiest where there are lots of trees.

Layla was pretty good throughout the whole trip. Aside from a few screaming fits when she got tired, she was entertained by reading the same books over and over again. Husband and I took turns sitting with her in the back and alternating driving. She craves constant attention and would get very angry if she was awake and no one was playing with her. I'm just glad that we're finally here.

Our new place in Portland is great. The apartment is huge, 2br, 2ba, and a small deck patio. I already got some plants for it. The only downside is that we have no furniture other than an air matress and some pillows. Oh well. We just ordered a bed, and are looking for some bookcases and other seating options. Anyone know where we can order Arabic couches online?
We have this idea of doing a majlis style sitting room with some papyrus and other pictures from Egypt and Iraq to decorate.

Any suggestions would be greatly welcomed.
Thanks for reading my insanely long post!

Farewell Peoria. . .

I am finally leaving my parents' house after being here in Peoria for a whole year. It was nice to have somewhere to stay while Dave was deployed and we've had some great times here. I will miss my parents and my friends who still live here, but I would never choose to move back here.

Yesterday we took care of seeing a lot of the family at my cousin's house, who was having a 1st birthday party for her little girl. They were having a pool party, so Layla was the only baby swimming topless yesterday! She absolutely loved the pool and got a little upset when we took her out.

Our plans get a little hectic starting tomorrow. We have to pack everything we have at my parents' house into our little Mazda Protege. Then we are driving to Minneapolis, where we will say goodbye to Dave's mom and siblings and our good friends there. After that we being the approximately 1800 mile journey from there to Portland. Since we are staying a couple days in Minneapolis, we should InshaAllah get into Portland next Monday (the 22nd).

We should already have an apartment held in Portland, that way we won't be homeless when we get there. Our original plan was to rent a U-haul and drag our car behind, but the U-haul was $1400 one-way and the tow dolly for the car was another $400, so now we are only going with what we absolutely need. The only problem is that my husband and I own a lot of books. We may have to ship quite a few of them, but I know that should not cost anywhere near $1400.

When we get to Minneapolis, our mechanic friend will be looking over the car, rotating tires, changing the oil, and putting on new brake pads. We also got AAA just in case we break down along the way.

I am so excited about making our new home in Portland! We're finally getting out of the Midwest.

We're back!

It is so great to be back and have things somewhat back to normal. We're back from spending 10 days in our former home of Minnesota, and now we're going to be staying with my parents for about another 2 weeks. Layla is adjusting really well to having Daddy around again.

Actually, within only a few hours she was playing with him and would ask where he was if he left the room. Now she's usually willing to accept him instead of me if I'm doing something. It's so nice to have everyone back together again.

Now we're in the process of packing so that we can move to Portland in a only a few weeks.
It was great being back in Minnesota. I love it there in the spring and summer, I'm just not a fan of snow and cold in general. I grew up in IL and have lived in MN, so it will be nice to live somewhere outside the Midwest for once.

While we were in Minneapolis we got to eat Somali food, hit up our favorite Chinese joint, and took lots of walks around town. I also got a couple new skirts at the Somali Mall. The prices there are so great. I got some Henna done there and got invited to a wedding. I didn't end up going though because I decided that I would spend the them with Dave and Layla and sleep early instead.

Portland here we come!

So we have now been back from our whirlwind trip for a couple days. Actually, its taken us most of that time to catch up on sleep. We are also still staying up too late and getting up too late due to the time change. Layla is enjoying being back home and not having to be in the stroller for the entire day.

As soon as we drove into Portland on Thursday, I knew that it was right for us. Portland reminded me of Minneapolis and is similar in size to Minneapolis and St Paul put together. The city was really clean, had lots of stuff to do, and also struck me as being quite family friendly. I think my sis was getting annoyed with all the little kids almost everywhere we went. Being stuck sleeping with Layla for an entire week will do that to almost anyone.

When compared to Seattle, Portland was much more manageable. I realized when we were in Seattle that if we ever wanted to buy a house, we would have to either settle for a condo or be willing to live like an hour outside the city. That's not ideal for either the husband or myself. Portland has plenty of single family houses in the city, and overall prices are manageable. We're planning to get a place that needs minor updates, and do them as money allows. We are also not above buying a house in Vancouver if we find something really great.

I also don't imagine that we'll have too much trouble finding jobs there. Now I am just so excited about moving that I can hardly contain myself. No more 6 mos. of winter for me!

Ethiopian food

Today was our last full day in Seattle. We kept ourselves busy almost the entire day into the evening. The early part of the day was spent on Bainbridge island, just a short ferry ride across the sound. It was beautiful and fun, but also would be an expensive and annoying place to live if you worked in Seattle. We got Teriaki for lunch, and had ice cream at a place called Mora. The ice cream is actually made on the island too. There are a lot of little boutiques selling clothing and such, but we didn't actually buy anything. Later we crossed back over to the city, went to a bookstore on Main, then walked back to Lisa's place. After we rested for awhile, we walked to an Ethiopian restaurant called the Blue Nile and had a nice dinner. Tomorrow we will be renting a car early and heading down to Portland. I'm really looking forward to this part of the trip!

Seattle!

We are in Seattle right now trying to decide whether to move to Seattle or Portland when the husband gets back from deployment. So far, Seattle has given me a pretty good impression. I don't have any experience of Portland to compare it with, but I still have some pros and cons. We have been taking pictures, but I don't have any way to upload them until we get back home since I didn't bring the laptop here.
The waterfront area and scenery here are very beautiful. The city is very green in March when compared to Minneapolis, and it's definitely big enough. I just have to decide whether its too big.
Some other pros would be the decent public transport, walkability, and variety of things to see and do. So far the rain hasn't bothered me at all. Seattle also has more job opportunities for the husband and myself.
So far the cons include higher housing costs, bad traffic, and higher cost of living. So far its looking like it would be hard to buy a house here with a decent sized lot in the city for a reasonable price. There are a lot of other little things that I might post about in more detail later once we have something to compare it with.

Sorry no updates! Here's what we did in December. . .

So I know that no one probably ever looks at this blog anymore since I haven't updated in so long. For some reason I can't keep up with anything like this even though I'm online quite a bit. So here goes for my second try.
Layla and I have been pretty busy for the past few mos. In December we visited some friends in San Diego and went to a wedding.
Layla had a terrible night at the wedding for several reasons. The first of these was that I forgot her pacifier. The second was that the wedding started around 10 and lasted until 4am. Then there were the 3 nights of parties following that. She was a trooper and was great on both flights like she always is.