Welcome to our home

Welcome! For all of you who asked to see some pictures of our home--here they are!! Enter at the front door and I will do my best to show you around.
When you enter the front door above, you immediately enter the main living area. It is a very large room that has lots of windows and a nice high ceiling. I took a picture of the four corners of the room to let you see where we live every day.
The windows above the couch are looking out into the back yard and the door to the back yard is right by the blue mat seen in the lower left hand corner.

The door way you see in this picture leads into Nate's wing of the house :) There are two bedrooms on this side of the house-Nate's and a spare room/office (pictures below). There is also a nice bathroom with a shower, and a large storage room.

Our dining area looks out into the back yard as well.

And the kitchen! Complete with pictures on the fridge of all our family and friends. The kitchen is well supplied so we don't miss too many things we left at home. There is even an old bread maker that makes a half decent loaf of bread-although it sounds a bit sick when it is mixing the dough, hopefully it will last us the whole year....

We also have a water filter by the kitchen sink so we can drink that water and we don't have to buy any. That is very handy even if it only trickles out most of the time :)

Now for the west wing of the house (actually I have no idea what direction our house is facing! It may be the north wing...)

The first room in this wing of the house is our main floor laundry. Since we only have one floor, it is not surprising, but I am thankful for it. We have both a washer and a dryer but so far we haven't needed the dryer because things dry really quickly outside.

I am standing by the laundry room door to take this great picture of Nate :) Our room is to the left and Kris and Lauren's room to the right. Ryan and Brad's room is just around the corner.

I even took a picture of the bathroom becuase I think it is really very nice. We have a lovely bathtub, which is quite a luxury in this country. It is much nicer than the bathtub we had at our old house :)

Kris and Lauren's room.

The boy's room

And our room.

Nate's room (which is on the other side of the house, as I mentioned earlier)

And the doorway to the spare room-which we hope both of our dear parents will come and occupy one day!

The house is a bit bare. We didn't bring a lot of homey things with us-just a few picture frames and of course our clothes. I didn't even bring very many of the kid's toys.

But this feels like home and we are thankful to be here. The weeks before we arrived here were busy with visits and traveling. We slept in many different places. Even in G.C. when we first arrived everyone was feeling unsettled and displaced. But after we arrived here we all felt like we were home. The little boys never asked when we were going to go "home", like they often have in our other travels. We thank the Lord for answering our prayers.

"Home is a comfort, and home is a light,

A place to leave the darkness outside.

Home is a peaceful and and ever full feeling

a place where the soul safely hides.

And being at home should remind you that still,

there's a place that's prepared just for you;

and I think my home is just heaven's reflection,

as long as my home's here with you."

Michael Card