All is Well.

We are here. Life is good.

It has been a busy week. We arrived last Saturday and unpacked our zillion boxes, settled our rooms, crammed summer reading, finished school forms, attended orientation at the kids’ new school, packed the boys’ packs for their upcoming trip, gotten charge accounts at the local sandwich places (for school delivery—seriously?!), joined the “Y”  and attended class parties, welcome parties and family get-togethers. People have been incredibly welcoming: calling, introducing us, dropping off pies, hiking guides & yoga schedules. Last night a friend and I were talking about how everyone here seems to be in a good mood. It makes sense. People who are here have chosen to be here; they love the place. Most were new here once too, so they’re happy to share their knowledge, and their community. There are a lot of commuting fathers so Ross is in great company and gladly receiving much guidance on how, pray tell, to best commute from this fairly remote but gorgeous utopia. Especially challenging when there are fires raging on three sides of us. In the meantime he has been enjoying his early market hours– on both ends; particularly the 2:00 market close.

We’ve fished, hiked, golfed, swum, ridden and taken the gondola up the mountain to see some of the World Cup Paragliding (craziness!) We’ve also spent a ton of time on our bikes, which, since we live right in town, has been a blast. Loving not being in the car, especially after 30 hours of serious quality family time on the road.

The kids have all been pretty great so far. I’ve gotta give them a lot of credit for  getting along so well with few outlets besides one another. (Just as I wrote that Luke said,  “Stop being such a pig, Whitney.” So don’t worry, you’d still recognize them.) Walking into class gatherings not knowing a soul is not easy either. They’ve done well.

The boys leave Wednesday for their camping trips. All  6^th through 12^th graders are broken into mixed aged groups of fifteen each with a teacher/leader (who by the way they call by their first names. In fact, all adults are called by their first names, which is an interesting piece of culture for all.)  If the smoke is bad the trips could be canceled so we’re praying the winds cooperate (whatever that means when you have smoke coming from every angle. )We’ve been alternating between being submerged in pea soup-like smoke with ash falling from the sky and then the whole mess blowing away for a while and enjoying blue skies. To give you a sense of the smoke, the picture here was taken mid-afternoon. Clear and gorge now. Time to get out!