Home

It is with great pleasure that I announce that we own a home and have begun re-settling.  What a whirlwhind the past six months have been!

• In August we put an offer on a house we never thought we'd really be approved to buy.  We were kept waiting for much longer than we ought to have been, but we finally closed the first week of November.  We moved into our little 1940's house with its many quirks and oddities.  I am dreaming of the many ways we will reinvent it as our own.  It is on a 3/4 acre plot with a beautiful grass yard in front and a whole lot of gravel and a huge shop in back. 
• In September we packed up all our belongings and started moving them into a storage unit back home in Kent.  I was stressed.
• In October we spent a week and a half with Jesse's family and spoke at a missions conference.  Then we drove 5 hours back "home" (which was to my parents' house since we had moved out of our apartment), stayed overnight with them and flew out the next morning to Denver.  We were in Denver for three weeks for a training before going on the field. With nowhere to live when we got back to Seattle.
• November saw the purchase of our house, traveling back to Seattle for a few days with my family and moving!  We got in our new house November 11, celebrated Lyddie's second birthday, went back to Kent for Thanksgiving and then back to the Rez to continue settling in.
• December is a blur, I can't even really remember.  Jesse did a lot of work with the Christmas ministry with the team and I was home a lot with the girls.  It was a lot of adjustment and I was missing my family and friends pretty bad over Christmas.  The girls had a lovely Christmas, I think, and that was my big priority; to slow down, put aside unpacking and spend time enjoying them and the reason we celebrate Christmas and I think I succeeded.

So that brings us to today.  I am tired and ready to see what the next year holds for us.  Right now I am focused on finishing "moving in" - we are all unpacked but it takes so much thought and planning to get a house in order and make it really feel like home.  We are talking paint and furniture and crown molding, chicken coops, goat sheds, and garden space.  There is much to do and a lifetime in which to do it.