creepy crawlies

Some of the bugs around here are just your average every day run of the mill bugs... but it seems to me that more often than not, the bugs are outrageously buggy....

little old grasshopper

every day 8" earthworm

kinda even maybe pretty

no fun walking into the bathroom to find this

just the shell (the bugs that leave these make a very LOUD NOISE for hours)

slippery salamander

eeks!

Dancing screaming itching squealing fevered...

Feeling hot hot hot!!!

Last summer when we moved here it was actually chilly for a few weeks (60s). While Seattle was having a heat wave (100 degree weather for several days)... I was wearing sweatshirts here. In August of 2009 it started to warm up a bit and we got a little taste of a "normal" Pittsburgh summer, warmish days and high humidity, but nothing that was extraordinarily unbearable. This summer... we've already had one Weather Alert for extreme heat conditions, and this weekend there is another one.

While I typically prefer being warm, I don't know that I am mentally prepared for roasting like a turkey on Thanksgiving.

lifetimes have been lived...

since this!

A year ago we pulled up to the In-Law's house:

• U-Haul et al.
  
• Voluntarily Unemployed (I've since had three jobs and he has had two, the kids even had a few: sewing, and cat sitting)
• Homeless (we remedied that quickly, thankfully)
• and some (okay, who are we kidding A LOT) of uncertainty
  

Certainly there are some things I would have had happen differently, but all in all NO REGRETS.

Viewing my life through my lens over the last 12 months, I am happy to see that there was lots of love: we connected with each other as a family, connected with old friends, made new friends, and spent a lot of time hanging out with family (one of the reasons we moved here). Explored a lot: both the city, and the surrounding countryside. Experienced some classic Pittsburgh: a hockey game in the Igloo, Kennywood, the Andy Warhol Museum (which on a tangent: I experienced more art here then I did in the last 5 years I lived in Seattle). And otherwise, despite the uncertainty of it all, managed to make it through our first year in tact and mostly happy.