New House!!

Well, no wonder I haven't updated the blog in a while, we have been busy!  This spring our house for the last 10 years sold and we moved across town to a house with a little more room to stretch and grow, and within walking distance to schools.

It was a process of patience, and frustration, and excitement, and extreme blessing.  I learned so much about God's timing and provision and extravagant love for me and my family.  I prayed for the right buyer for our house that would love and care for it and asked that it would bless them as much as it had blessed us over the past 10 years.  It sold to a first time buyer who was getting married and so excited to open that chapter of their life.

I prayed for a house within our budget that would allow for room for Granny and Papa to visit, and room for teenagers (eek!! Am I really that close to that season of my family??) to hang out with their friends, and for a yard with big trees to shade our outdoor adventures.   Well, guess what? God delivered a house that has met our needs and beyond.  This house needed alot  of love (not sure how many boogers I scrubbed off the walls that were NOT ours-yikes!!) and I may have had a few (read multiple) meltdowns, say when the water heater only produced 5 minutes of hot water when we had a house full of guests for a week, but when I started looking around I started seeing God's precious gifts to me reminding me that this is the place he placed us.  *Credit for these thoughts has to be given to Ann Voskamp and her book One Thousand Gifts.  Here a few of the gifts I saw when I started looking around:

• Kids right next door we know from church, and are Libby's age
• The neighbors on the other side saw Libby playing basketball on their hoop with a bouncy ball and bought a new net for the hoop and gave Libby a basketball to play with
• A bedroom for guests, and the guests that came
• A well timed forsythia bloom.  I love forsythia, and after a day when I was sure we had bought a money pit, I came home and a forsythia I hadn't noticed was in full bloom right outside the kitchen window.
• A kid Jacob's age around the corner that has become his good friend
• Bulbs that kept coming up in the front yard
• Flowering trees  
• New schools within biking/walking distance
• Waking up to deer in the backyard

Last morning at our old house

Jacob painting his room

Meeting new friends 

My favorite worker laying down on the job

Dad worked and worked and worked on this house.  He loaded and unloaded tons of boxes, he painted, he fixed closet doors, he fixed stuff I didn't know needed fixing.  I will never be able to communicate how spoiled I am by him.