Pictures of Our New House, My Time in Florida, and Ben's Time Alone with the Kids

Samantha: 97 Months, Week 4
Aedan: 63 Months, Week 2
Owen: 21 Months, Week 4

With it being our second Sunday in our new city, we tried out a new church called Fellowship Church. Again, we tried our best to get there in ample time to get the kids checked in to the kids' program, but again, we walked in to the church building and there was little direction or help about what we were to do. It was very confusing and made us feel very awkward. The system wasn't working properly, but a nice lady showed us where the kids would be when we picked them up at the end of service. We dropped Owen off at the nursery and Samantha and Aedan came into the service with us through the music and were then dismissed to children's church. That was definitely something different that the kids weren't used to. The kids didn't particularly enjoy having to sit with us in church, and it was hard to really focus on worship with the kids sitting next to us that we had to pay attention to. The music was pretty good, although there were some songs that I had never heard before. The pastor was good, but it was a little more formal than we are used to. Plus, I don't know if I just stayed up to late the night before or what, but I was having trouble focusing and paying attention to what he saying. After church, we talked about it on the way home, and the kids expressed that they liked the church from last week better. We were hoping this church would be a good fit because it is the closest to our house, so we would likely have more of a chance to meet people that live closer to us. We want to have friends and we want the kids to have friends that they can get together with without having to drive half an hour into Wilkes-Barre.

The rest of Sunday Ben and I decided to figure out where we wanted our pictures and decorations, and were able to finish hanging up the last of everything. We were then officially moved in to our new house! We are slowly getting to know our new city and state. The kids are glad to have the house looking like normal, and now we can get used to our new routine, whatever that will look like. We love our house, the space it provides for our family (and the ability to still continue fostering), the beautiful mountains that surround us, and the lake that is right down the street. We feel blessed to have found this home, and Ben and I often remark how much we love it and that it feels too "grown-up" for us.

With everything finally being unpacked, hung up, and generally cleaned up, I decided to take pictures of our whole house to show our family and friends, so here is our picture tour. I will start with the least exciting part, the garage. We have a one car garage that really is as big as a two car garage, underneath the kitchen side of the house. There is plenty of space for storage of the kids' outside toys, bikes, and other items.

This door leads from the garage into our basement. Izzy was very interested in watching me as I walked around and took pictures.

This is our finished basement that we use as an additional play room. We have enough room for a futon that can be used as a bed when guests come to visit, as well as a couch, and still room to play. The previous owners left their pool table/ping pong table, so that was a fun, unexpected surprise.

We even have a full bathroom with a shower in our basement which will be nice for guests to use as well.

The stairs to the basement are on the right of this picture, and the hallway on the left leads to our bedroom in the back of the house. The doors you can see on the far left of the picture have our washer and dryer behind them.

Here is the master bathroom on main level of the house. There is a door to the hallway and to our bedroom.

Here is the master bedroom. The door in the background of this picture leads to the bathroom. We have tons of closet space, and we have a beautiful view to our back yard.

Also, around the stairs from our bedroom, there is the front room that is supposed to be a formal dining room, but we have no need for that at this point in our life, so we decided to make it a place where the kids could play, and we can rotate toys up for them to play with together in this space on the main level. The door you see to the right in this picture leads out to the small patio off the front of our house, and the door on the left is our front door.

There were doors separating the front room and the living room, but we decided to take them off to open up the space more. The only changes that will be made in these two rooms is adding two area rugs that we have ordered and should be coming in the next week.

Our couch fit perfectly against the corner, and things looked so much more put together after getting all our family pictures hung up.

Around the corner from the front room is our kitchen. We love the layout so much better than our old kitchen.

Here is the view out our kitchen window. It is so amazing to be surrounded by mountains.

Off our eat-in kitchen, we have a large deck in our back yard. Here are some views of our deck and our back yard.

 Here is a view of the back of our house from back near our play set.

 Here is the stone area off the side of our deck that leads down to our driveway.

 Here are a few views of the front of our house.

This is a view of our front porch, it is in front of the kitchen on the left side of the house.

The outside of this house is one of its best features, and the kids are really enjoying having all the space to play and explore. Izzy loves all the space to run around, and Ben and I enjoy the privacy, the nature all around us, and being able to sit out on the porch and relax. The property has beautiful landscaping, plants, flowering bushes, apple trees, and lots of wildlife like rabbits, deer, squirrels, and chipmunks.

And now back to the inside of the house. Here are the stairs going to the second floor. (They were numbered before we moved in.)

This is the landing at the top of the stairs on the second floor. The only thing we still want to do with this space is get a cushion and pillows for the window seat. (The door you see straight ahead in this picture leads to a large walk-in attic space.)

Here is Owen's bedroom, which is to the right at the top of the stairs.

Here is Aedan's bedroom.

And here is Samantha's bedroom.

Last, here is the upstairs bathroom that the kids mainly use.

And there's your tour of the house!

On Monday I did our grocery shopping for the week, and Aedan asked me to get him hair gel so he could try out a new look and have spiky hair. He was really excited to wear his hair spiky for soccer Bible camp that night. There was a church just five or so minutes from our house that was doing a soccer Bible VBS camp. They were excited about going to it together and even wore their Guatemala soccer jerseys. I love these pictures of Aedan, and he was so proud of his awesome hairstyle.

On Tuesday we didn't have anything planned, so I invited our neighbors from across the street over to play. It was good to finally meet them. I got a chance to talk to the mom for awhile, and they have two kids: a three year old and an almost one year old. Owen seemed to really enjoy having the younger kids around to play with, and I'm glad we at least have some kids in the area, even if Samantha and Aedan would prefer to have kids that are more their age. I hope that we can find more kids around us as we live here longer and once school starts up.

We made a frustrating finding on Tuesday because we couldn't find the seat for our van that goes between our bucket seats. It was in our storage closet in the basement, but Ben pulled it out and put it in the middle of the room with other stuff that needed to be packed, and told the movers to pack it. I was feeling very frustrated that the list of things we were missing was growing longer and longer, and that we still did not have anything shipped to us yet. I was so mad at myself for not just staying at the house the whole time and making sure they did what they were supposed to do. I didn't want to leave the house before the movers were done, but they took longer than we all anticipated, and with our schedule and with the kids, we just couldn't stick around any longer. We contacted the movers to let them know about missing our seat, and we hoped that we would hear back from them soon.

Here are the kids sitting on the couch watching a show that afternoon once Owen woke up from his nap. You can tell he still has some bed head going on.

Samantha was not very excited about me leaving for a few days, so she made this yarn thing for me and a card for me to take with me. The M was for mom, and it was really sweet of her to think of me in this way.

Our week was going to be an interesting one because I had plans to travel down to Florida to get a car from my grandpa. He had two cars for years, but now that he is approaching 100 years old, he has realized he really has no use for two cars. He was talking to my dad about whether any of us needed one, and we were excited about the possibility of getting his car since moving to Harvey's Lake would require us to have another car for both of us to get around. The best flight we could find was Wednesday afternoon from Harrisburg. It saved us a ton of money for me to fly from there rather than the airport close to us, so we piled the kids in the van and drove the two hours down to Harrisburg.

Here is Ben's description of his day with the kids:

"After we dropped Jenny off at the airport, I decided that it was not really worth driving 2 hours down to Harrisburg and having nothing to do on the way back. So, I realized that Hershey (home of Hershey chocolate) was on the way back from the Harrisburg airport. Getting to the town was not difficult and they make parking there pretty easy. The first thing we did when we got into the world of chocolate was to eat lunch. The kids were very excited that their lunch came with a free Hershey mini chocolate bar."

"After lunch, we decided to not do anything too crazy with the day. But, they did have a free 20 minute ride discussing the history of their chocolate process. The kids thought that the ride was fun, and they enjoyed it along with everything else. However, the kids really want to come back again. They thought the idea of making their own chocolate bar sounded fun. After the tour, they got another piece of chocolate. Then, we headed for home. The kids did well in the car on the way back and it was an uneventful trip."

My day was pretty uneventful. It's much easier to travel by yourself, I had no trouble at all getting through security, and I enjoyed being able to just sit and read in the airport and on the place. It wasn't hard finding where I needed to be to get the shuttle to my grandpa's house. I got to his house about 6:30 and then took him out to dinner at Perkins before going back to his house and fill out the paperwork for transferring the title and car over to me. It was good to see him for awhile and to talk over dinner, even though it was just for a little while. I arrived at the hotel just before 10:00 and then made my plans for the next day. It was a little spontaneous and crazy, but I decided to spend the day at Disney World by myself.

After getting up on Thursday morning, I stopped at Target to get a few things like a tank top to wear at Disney and some sunscreen, before going to the tax office to make sure everything was squared away with my grandpa's car. He wanted extra reassurance, and they said everything looked good until I could get the car registered in Pennsylvania.

At Disney I decided to get a park hopper and just wanted to go on my favorite rides. I started at Hollywood Studios and stood in line for Tower of Terror. I had an audiobook on my phone that I listened to while I waited, and it was not bad at all. Then, Rock n' Roller Coaster had just been shut down for awhile and had just reopened, so I grabbed lunch quickly before hopping in line before it got super long again. After riding that ride, the rain came through and I got poured on. I ran out of the park and used some of that time to drive and travel over to Magic Kingdom to ride more rides for the rest of the day, like Pirates of the Caribbean, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Peter Pan, Space Mountain, It's a Small World, and Haunted Mansion, concluding with a wonderful fireworks show at the end of the night. Disney was definitely different on my own, but I really had a fun time, and it was totally worth staying an extra day.

Here is Ben telling of his time with the kids on Thursday:

"My main event on Thursday was to take the kids to the closest state park as a way of getting out of the house. The kids played on the playground for a while and then we went on a hike. They liked the hike a lot. They were so cute walking together and making sure that Owen was safe and walking carefully. Samantha and Aedan kept remarking how much fun the hike was and how they wished it could happen again. So, it was something that I decided we need to do more of. They enjoy being outdoors and just seeing nature."

"Later on Thursday, we got the larger area rug we had ordered. Our house was coming together quite well. I played Skipbo with the older kids while Owen napped and then they hung out outside until dinner time and bedtime."

I was out pretty late at Disney, so I let myself sleep in a little bit on Friday morning before heading out on my drive back home. I planned to take two days, stopping after about ten hours on Friday and the rest on Saturday. It was not exactly the most fun doing that long drive all on my own, but it was the best option considering our circumstances, and I enjoyed listening to podcasts and audiobooks as I drove which helped pass the time quite well.

Here is Ben telling of his time with the kids on Friday:

"The excursion for Friday was a trip to the Allentown Zoo which is about 1.5 hours away from our home. We got there pretty quickly after it opened and stayed until early afternoon. The zoo is not super large, but it was big enough for them to enjoy it and small enough for them to get close to animals. They could get close to all the animals and Owen really likes watching any type of animal move around so this was very fascinating to him. The kids really liked being able to feed the giraffes, and Owen thought it was cool to have the giraffe's tongue take the lettuce out of his hand. We had lunch at the zoo and headed out. Probably the neatest thing to the zoo was actually the exit. You ford a river (in your car), and then drive through a bison and elk preserve. We had the opportunity to see several on our way out of the zoo. Both boys napped on the way home."

Here is Ben telling of his time with the kids on Saturday:"The main thing we did on Saturday was wait for mommy to be home. This was the only day where we didn't have an excursion and we mainly just played in the house. We played outside for a while in the morning before lunch, and then largely all were just pining away for our mommy. They were all super excited to see her after her being gone for three days. Jenny doesn't normally get to go do things by herself, so it was nice that she was able to get down to Florida and spend time at Disney before heading back. But, we all missed her and the normalcy that exists when all of us our home."

(Blog about July 7-13, 2019)