Two Weeks In

Two weeks ago the moving truck rolled in with us and all our belongings. God has blessed us so much during this move, we could not have written a script that would have been this good. I'll try and share some of those moments with you in my first attempt at a blog...

First of all, the packing went wonderfully and very low stress on getting out of Iowa City. The truck barely fit on the car carrier that was behind the moving truck but it was on there secure and we were off on a beautiful morning.

Right after we got the moving van backed up to the front door of the Rolla house, the family from down the street came over with three of their children. Char and Kelly introduced us to Caleb, Elly and Josiah. Micah and Joshua were both napping. A few minutes after that the boys were off playing. Josiah is 5 and turns out to be about 6 weeks younger than Andrew. They have had a blast together and he's greatly missed this week while on a family vaction. We both live at the end of a dead end street so the kids can cross the street without too much concern and travel between the yards.

Todd's sisters met us here as well as my parents so the unloading happened very very quickly and the cleaning started on the cabinets and other surfaces. Monday night we ate out, but since then the kitchen has been fully functional to eat in and we have been good about doing that. I have an amazing family who is willing to jump in and help and work so hard!

The house is pretty much as we expected and are still very satisfied with our selection. We like the open living area and the basement area for a playroom. The previous couple took all the curtains with them and filled the holes sloppily. The carpet and walls were in worse shape than we had remembered, but we had thoughts of changing them anyway. Jenny began removing the wallpaper border that was in most of the rooms of the house after all of the boxes were removed from the truck. There's just nothing to complain about so far with the house - it's been great. By the time my parents left, there were tomato and pepper plants in the garden as well as some herbs and green bean seeds.

Jenny started painting last week so there is some color on the walls now. They had used wallpaper border for color before and it was a bit on the floral side for us...solid colored walls are more our speed. It feels more homey already! We bought some couches too so we feel like we have a real house and can have people over! (No TV yet, but that will probably happen next week. We can tune in one fuzzy station but that's it. It's amazing how well we have done without it though.)

As we have talked with our neighbors some more, we have a lot of Christians on our block. The family across the street with all of the Biblical named children go to the Lutheran Church which is our roots though their roots are in the Christian Reformed denomination just like our neighbors from Iowa City! They are a great family - the kids are extremely well behaved and polite and great to have around. Helen lives right next door to us. She is in her early 80's and lost her husband about a year and a half ago. We've had her over for dinner twice in the last three days and I think we'll see a lot more of that. She's really lonely right now and that's the least that we can do! On the other side of us is a young couple with three pit bulls. There is just a small fence between the two yards to contain the dogs...one of them got out today so we know that it can easily happen. We'll probably do something about a more substantial fence very soon for JL's protection. She is concerned as well so it shouldn't be an issue at all.

We have one more week to do the odd jobs around the house and then the summer starts to get a bit busier. Andrew is going to do an enrichment class at the public school in the mornings for 4 weeks. Todd is up to two classes for the summer now which starts the second week of June. I'm still working on Tuesday and Wednesday!

I'll try to be a little more enlightening on future entries but wanted to catch everyone up on our family news! We have the guest bedroom all set-up so feel free to come visit. It has been used by three different sets of people already and we aren't afraid to wash the sheets and get ready for more.