Month: June 2012

Man it’s been a long time since we last posted. Crazy how fast time goes by. When we last updated, we had gotten the keys to our place. After we arrived, we realized that there was actually more work to do than we’d thought. Over the past few weeks, we have been cleaning, painting, tearing down a wall, going to Ikea, returning things to Ikea, painting some more, cleaning again, making lists, checking things off, going to Ikea, returning things to Ikea…are you getting a picture of all of this :-). But…we are home now! HOME Last Saturday was our first night in our new place and we were all grinning from ear to ear to just be…ahhhh. There’s been lots of hard work for sure, but it’s been worth every bit of it to unpack all of our suitcases and take shirts out of actual closets (actually Kliedershranks as they are called here not really closets at all more like huge wardrobes). We are incredibly thankful for so many simple things like putting our kids in beds each night and handling temper tantrums in private.

So…Sorry that we’ve kept you out of the loop on all the ins and outs, but we will share some of our top surprises from the move.

1. If you’ve watched House Hunter’s international, you know that renters here bring their entire kitchens. Cabinets and all. What we didn’t know is that lighting is also something that moves with the renters. On the second night that Ian came to paint, his plans where thwarted with the surprise of no lights.

2. Mattresses here are sold by actual measurement. So, there is no “twin” size mattress, for example. There’s 80×200, 90×200 and 100×200. We ended up having to return one mattress and buy some foam to stuff another to make it all work.

3. Ian can tear down a wall! The owner of this house had put up a wall 10 years ago to accommodate the last renters. This left the house with no family room and he gave us permission to tear it down. Ian and a friend spent 4 hours one day working on it and a few days later he moved all of the debris outside in the rain.

4. Painting a room means walls and ceilings. That’s a lot of paint and a lot of neck work.

5. One actually can grow tired of going to Ikea. Especially when every trip home requires building on your husband’s part. Bonus though, our kids love the play area there! They actually look forward to going.

It’s been an awesome 3 weeks setting up and adjusting to living on our own again. Tomorrow our shipment from the  States arrives and we are looking forward to unpacking things from home. Thanks for following along, and thanks for grace in the gaps.

 

We officially have keys to our HOME!!! Tomorrow we begin the cleaning and painting and we hope to move in by the end of the week. I may not be able to sleep tonight because I’m so excited. Little by little, we’ve been accumulating furniture at good prices from people that we’ve met here and we’ll have to make a big run to IKEA at some point this week to fill in the gaps.

The timing of this move is great as Ellison is at home on a 2 week break from school and we have our fingers crossed that maybe our shipment from home will clear customs and hit the road this week as well. Thursday is a public holiday so we’re not holding our breath- but we’re hoping.

This new place is yet another story of God at work on our behalf here. It turns out that we are actually going to be living in a house that was divided in two (we are on the right side). The owner of the house goes to the church that we will be interning with and heard of our need after we got rejected from our first attempt at getting an apartment here.  He has been building a new house for the tenants who were there, and they moved out this past weekend. We are really thankful that we will have a garden (yard) in the back and we also have incredible flexibility with the lease terms (one of the hardest things about getting a place here was that we are not sure how long we will be here).

Needless to say we are grinning from ear to ear. We have basically memorized the ikea magazine and have been studying home decor blogs for cheap and neat ideas at how to create a new space for us. It’s one of my favorite things to do and has been one of the hardest parts of this wait. We are looking forward to the next few weeks of making a haven for our family and a welcoming space for hosting new people that we meet here.

Have you done anything neat in your home lately? Got any fun blogs you check or ideas to share? Do tell…

 

For the past 6 months or so, our kids have been wondering whose birthday we’d celebrate first in our new country. And the winner was…

Our little guy turned 2 two a few weeks ago. We kicked the day off with his favorite breakfast- cookie cereal, then we headed to church. After church we picked up Happy Meals on the way home and he was one happy boy.

Later on in the afternoon the boys took a nap and the ladies in the family made a birthday cake (thanks to the Duncan Hines mix in our luggage) and birthday dinner. Ellison got all into celebrating his big day which was really sweet.

He loves blowing out candles and he also loves anything sweet so his cake was a hit.

So much so that he ended up getting into it when no one was looking.

The one thing we were all sad about was not being able to really celebrate his day with anyone else. Normally we would have had a big family birthday with all of the Atlanta cousins so that was a bit of a downer. To our surprise, some of our new friends stopped by knowing it was his birthday with a a little gift for him. They came at just the right time to enjoy some cake and sing the birthday song.

We are really thankful for Asher. He is a little guy who brings smiles to our faces when we need it. He is the most cuddly of our three and I eat that up! I’m not sure if it’s because he’s our 3rd, but we are truly enjoying watching him grow and it’s so fun to see our oldest two really excited about experiencing new things through his eyes.

Happy Birthday Little Guy!