Houses in Bellingham where I lived

On a recent trip back to the homeland (Bellingham, WA) I took a few minutes to drive past the houses I lived in when I lived in that city.

This is the first place I lived, on West North Street.
My mom used to say we were a stone's throw from a neighboring church because once, a kid threw a rock from the church parking lot and it broke a window on our house.

It looks quite a bit different than when I lived there. On the left side of the front yard used to be a huge tree/shrub. I used to climb inside it and hide. Of course since I ALWAYS hid in there, it wasn't a very good hiding spot. An even worse spot to hide was inside the toy box in the carport as anyone could figure out you were in there, sit on top of it and trap you. Leaving you only one recourse: SCREAM until an adult finds you and chases off the neighboring children. Uh, yeah that happened there.

For a child who was having just the slightest trouble with pronouncing the "s" and "th" sounds, living on "weSt norTH Street" was a cruel, cruel address.

Luckily, when I was five, we moved to this house on West Maplewood.

Then

and now.

Uh, it hasn't really changed much. My parents still live there. The driveway is big enough to come up one side and swing around to a full turn, ready to head back out the other side.

The stump in the front part of the yard is from a tree I got for free at a home show when I was around 7. I planted my pine tree sapling in a coffee can and left it on the kitchen window sill for two years. We decided it was getting too big to live indoors (I thought it was going to be my Christmas tree one day) and it needed to be planted outside. I chose that location at the front corner of the yard by the driveway so I could see it every day. And it grew, and grew, and grew up into the power lines and it finally had to be cut down because it was too big to be near the power lines and it was blocking the view for getting out of the driveway. So instead of having "my tree" in the front yard, now I have "my stump".

I moved away. I moved back. Away. Back. Away... Back... and then Lyle and I met and we moved to Bellingham and found this tiny house to live in on Logan Street.
When I say "tiny" I mean, one small bedroom, a bathroom and a living room/kitchen. So basically two rooms with a minuscule bathroom attached. All of it, resplendent in wood paneling.

We took this house because it had an enormous yard for out first little dog, Sophia, to run around in. We discovered, the larger the yard, the more she could go out and get in trouble and the more mowing and upkeep it required. Smaller yard was preferred after that.
Besides, she could have fun anywhere, even on the hood of the car in the driveway.

We lived there in "the cabin" for a year (so named due to the wood paneling inside) and then we moved to this house on State Street.
Of course back then it was a house. Just one floor with a full basement. You can still see the original bones of the old house inside this condo complex. The basement is the lowest row of windows, the main floor is now the middle row of windows in the front structure. The old garage at street level is gone and the driveway, though still steep and curvy, is less steep and less curvy than when we lived here. Also the giant structure in the back used to be an overgrown hillside of blackberry bushes.

I'm pleased to say that both our wardrobe and decorating style have both evolved quite a bit from that year on State Street.
This house was perched on a hill with an amazing unobstructed bay view (I guess that's why they built all those condos onto it) and we lived here for the last year before we moved to California. What a shock it was to give up a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, with full basement house overlooking the water to move into a one bedroom, one bathroom house across the street from a school... for $200 more a month. Of course the weather did vastly improve.