Progress on our haven (only thing left is closing)

The appraisal for our house purchase came in fine yesterday. We signed off on all the improvements required for the sale. The only thing left is to close. The close will occur, God willing, at the end of the month. So now we are are excited about making the move. We know a lot about that part of the world, but not so much about the particular place we chose. We love everything we have seen in our visits and within a two hour drive of our house we have a gazillion old friends. Right in town it surely seems like we have a great and growing group of new friends we look forward to getting to know better.

We are some what apolitical these days, or at least we are trying to be. Still, we know we are moving to the belly of the beast when we go back to the Pacific Northwest. Portland and Seattle with all their natural beauty are notorious for their lack of decorum and reason with respect to the hard left politics of at least a plurality of their populations. We want to live on the west side of the mountains and avoid some of the lack of tolerance in those places so that restricted our choice a little. The place we chose is almost the exact center between the two, maximizing the distance to both of them. The picture in this post is of Kelly stirring the pot more than of Kelly making a political statement. It was a brave thing to go dressed like that to school in Seattle. She needs the haven just as much as us. We were assured by our new friends in our new town we will fit right in and it surely seems like they are right from what I have seen so far.