That title may be a bit misleading. I mean, we’ve had a lot of major changes in the past few months—and have more to come!

First of all, we moved from Chengdu to Portland at the end of March.

It was a literal breath of fresh air to come to a city so green and with a daily AQI score in the single digits. We really enjoy living in Portland. Not only is the city really walkable and interesting (there’s a reason there’s a campaign to “Keep Portland Weird”), but the surrounding state of Oregon is beautiful.

I heard on a commercial this morning that there are more than 250 state parks across the state. There are so many naturally gorgeous places to hike and explore that I’m in heaven. On a clear day, you can see three, snow-capped mountains on the horizon and there are so many waterfalls that it reminds me of Switzerland. The only thing that makes me sad is that we’ll only be here until September.

That brings me to my next big update. We have decided to move to the Philippines for the next three to five years. Matt took a job with his company in Manila, so we’ll be headed there by the middle of September. Our baby (it’s a boy!!) is due in the middle of July so, just as with Baby Girl, we’ll be moving halfway across the globe when he is just about two months old. Thankfully we are pros at moving small children internationally by now, right?

Finally, my book is in the last stages of editing and production. I’ve hired a professional editor to get it cleaned up and as perfect as possible and am in the process of hiring a designer to make it look good. With any luck, it’ll be coming to an Amazon near you in the next couple of months. Once that is done I’m hoping I’ll have a little more time to devote to my blog. Let’s be honest, though, I’m going to be chasing after a toddler and taking care of an infant while we set up in a brand-new country. I may be lucky enough to grab a shower, let alone update my blog those first few months. I’ll do my best to keep at least short updates coming, though.

Before we left China, we were fortunate enough to get in a couple more Asia adventures. We traveled to Tokyo in February and took a quick weekend trip to Hong Kong in March. Japan was incredible. I’ll have to dedicate at least one full blog post to our adventures there. Hong Kong was equally cool and quite a different experience from mainland China. I’ll work on a post about that too.

We’ve done some traveling since we arrived in Portland. We’ve were fortunate enough to make a trip to Hawaii in May (Matt had some work with his customer there) and we spent Memorial Weekend in Seattle. Now that we’re in the final countdown (about six weeks to go). Matt still has a trip to California to go, but I’m happy enough to squirrel up and start nesting.

If I can manage it, I’ll try to get in another update before Baby Boy arrives. Either way, stay tuned for our upcoming adventures as a family of four in the Philippines. Not only will it be a new country for us, it’ll also be the longest we’ve been in one place in more than three years.