A Whole New Life

You guys, it has been SIX WEEKS as of yesterday since our move! We are loving our new little house on London Lane! :D It's hard to remember what it felt like back in October, when it seemed as if we'd never get here...

Our closing process was a little hair-raising because some of the paperwork took a long time to work out, especially with the closing agency our buyers were using, but at last everything was finalized and we were good to go!

One minor mix-up we had turned into a major amount of work – originally we thought we had until Friday on the week we moved to get everything out of the house. Well, on Monday at noon, we just happened to be talking to our buyer and she mentioned they were planning to sleep at the house on Wednesday night, even though they wouldn’t move in until months later after selling their other home up North.

You can imagine our shock and the craziness that ensued! My dad drove home with a massive moving truck and we started loading it with our belongings. It is astonishing how much stuff a family of five can accumulate in ten years after moving into a larger home. We were downsizing again, so we had a yard sale before we moved – and we ended up having a second one after we moved in to our new house because we discovered certain things just didn’t fit!

But anyway, back to our 2-day move – thank goodness we had a friend stop by to help my dad and brothers load the piano onto the moving truck, but he was only able to be there for one hour. The whole rest of the time – All day until 1 AM that first night, and then from 5:30 in the morning until about 1:30 AM the next day, we worked hard. Just our family. And I am so proud of us for doing it! First we packed up the rest of our unpacked things into boxes we’d gotten for free from Ingles and the local Deli, AS we threw things onto the truck. Even by carefully stacking everything neatly, it still took us two trips with the moving truck to get it all moved, and two dark stormy nights unloading everything on the other end. But the job wasn’t complete with just that!

Our family is so “Dutch”, we felt we really had to clean the house behind us. After moving out furniture that had sat in place for ten years, there was dirt and dust beneath! So as we moved things out of rooms, we scrubbed the bathrooms and kitchen and swept, dusted and vacuumed the bedrooms, loft, and living room. I have never worked so hard for so many consecutive hours in my entire life!!

After we landed at the new little house on London Lane, we all breathed a big sigh of relief. But there were boxes EVERYWHERE, hampering even the most basic cooking. So we ended up enjoying several meals of pizza from the SAM’s club that is just down the road. The first room we unpacked was our kitchen, and it felt so good when every last scrap of cardboard had left the space. The new gas stove proved to be awesome to use, and I hope to never go back to electric burners again! ;)

Now this is the coolest part of the story. We’d been invited to a party for the neighborhood at the home of our neighbors who lived three houses down, so a few days after we moved in, we went. We didn’t end up meeting too many of the folks from the neighborhood, but our hosts, Randy and Connie, were so warm and welcoming and they invited us to their church on Sunday morning. We hadn’t been sure of where we would find our new church home, so we decided to go and see what it was like.

We. Were. Blown. Away.

The church was so beautiful, fresh and alive, and the people there have such open hearts and made us feel as if we belonged from the first moment we stepped inside. The worship service filled me with awe and the sermon on discipleship was great!  I think all of us knew at once that we’d found our church home. After the service the worship leader and one of the singers, roommates Bonnie and Cortney, came up to us and told us how glad they were that we’d come. The girls and I ended up going out for lunch on a Monday afternoon and had a wonderful conversation getting to know each other and we hung out and shopped until 4:00! 

The next few weeks overflowed with blessings. 

• Daddy only needs 3 mins to get to work now instead of an hour's commute.
• Sometimes he comes home for lunch and coffee breaks!!
• Mama no longer has to climb a flight of stairs every night to get to her room. Our new house is all on one floor and much easier to get around for her!! 
• Mark got a job spraying weeds for a company called WeedMan, and gets plenty of fresh air and sunshine and walking, so good for him!
• I got a job working at BATH & BODY WORKS - which has been WONDERFUL! On Black Friday, I even won a little staff competition to see who could sell the most V.I.P. Totes! :D

• Steven got a job working at a LEGO retail store that just opened... Can you say dream job?!?! :D
• Yes, this means all 3 of us young adults have jobs now. *happy dance*
• Mama and Daddy and I joined small groups at church and go to Bible Studies every Wednesday evening (mine has been so enriching! Love the young women and my sweet group leader!) 
• The guys and I have been going to "Insight", a gathering for young people (Almost like a church service) at Crossroads, every Thursday evening. Over a hundred other young adults come, and we are so enjoying making new friends and meeting like-minded Christians near our ages!

• We celebrated our first Thanksgiving in our new house - such a special time with so much to be grateful and thankful for!!!

• It looks like I will soon be serving on the worship team at church, singing, which is a huge passion of mine. I'm very excited about that. 

All in all, God is doing such a wonderful work in our lives and I couldn't be happier about it. I've got some awesome DIY projects to share with you, so be sure to check out LifeonLondonLane.wordpress.com to stay up-to-date!

Love & Hugs,