Home Home is...

This happened today: a beautiful summer day, a reunion with Bridget-y, $5 Takeout Tuesday PJ's pizza, and our porch....we're home, people!!!

It was a wonderful summer that we will always remember, but as always, it's so good to be home!

Home is...

It's dark, after midnight.  The fan is running, pulling the cold air from one of two window air conditioners into the living room, where I sleep.

When I was a kid, we only had one window air conditioner.  Serious upgrades are happening around here.

I love being home.  I just do.  Today, Mom and I went to town with the kids while Dad's caretaker was here, and as usual, when we stopped for a quick bite to eat, I saw someone I know.  Or knew at one point, anyway, way back when.

It's always good to see familiar faces.  Always.  This one was a guy who went to my church growing up, and he told me of how he has never left town, always lived here.

That's how I thought I would be.

I had ideas of how to renovate this very house to the kind of dream home that I and my future family could live in, complete with a balcony and spiral staircase.

Instead, I live at 2319, and that is the place that my kids will always think of as home.

This summer, though, home for our little family of 7 was a 622 sq ft apartment...and it was perfect.  It helped us remember the reality of the cliche that wherever we are as a family, that is home.

(Clearly, I'm not remembering the actual cliche.  Work with me, here.)

In just a few days, the kids and I will return home, where we will be reunited as a family, and we will begin to readjust to life in a great big house.  A house that has hundreds of corners where messes can be made and where sibling rivalry and angry reactions will too often take center stage.  By God's grace, though, this year will be one where grace will abound in our house, offsetting in miraculous ways the sin that will abound there, too.

I call two places home, here with my parents and there with my husband and children.  How blessed I am!  May my blessings be used for the glory of God and the good of others, as the Lord leads....His ways are perfect.

Porch Swing!

Ten years I have waited for a porch swing. Today, this is happening...why did we wait so long?!!?! ‪#‎thankfulheart‬

40 Days (Day 34)

One of the people I'm very thankful for this year is our boarder, Shanice.  She rents our front room while working as a TA at one of the fabulous choice schools here in our city.  She is such a blessing to our family and is, without a doubt, one of Bart's favorite people.

It takes a special person to walk into the life of a family with five children and survive living with them!  Shanice has handled the ups and downs of life here at 2319 with great enthusiasm and faith, and we are so grateful to have her along for the ride.  She has decided to live with us again next year, so on to year two of living together we go!

Beauti-FALL

These are the burning bushes at the corner of our house...thanks to Jeff and Jamie Pytlinski for blessing us with them after Hunt passed away and to Greg and Marcia Lilley for helping us get them planted all those years ago...they are now mature enough that we can really enjoy their beauty and remember His grace when we do.

Let Me Call You...

I call him sweetheart.  He told me tonight with his gaze that he loves me very much.  I told him right back that he couldn't possibly love me as much as I love him.  And through tears, I told him again of the strength God gave him...strength that was strong enough for both him and Aaron.

Middle-of-the-night moments are the best.  They are the only reasons that I'm not looking forward to him sleeping through the night.

Tonight, Bart met some new people.  First, he met Shanice...I think they hit it off pretty well.  Shanice came over tonight to talk about the possibility of living at 2319 this school year.  It was great!  Then, he met the police, who came to our house for reasons that were a bit more uncommon than someone living in our front room.  Thankfully, anyway.

He protected him inside, and now He's protecting him outside.  God, oh Faithful One, protect this house, this family, this ministry...for your glory and our good.

The goings-on around here

The saga began on Dec. 7, but it does appear that at some point, we will get back into our house.  This week, lots of work was finally done, and 75% of the radiators are installed.  The final hook-ups should happen on Monday, and if they do, we should have heat in the house by Tuesday afternoon.  (Wednesday is my birthday, so that'd be a nice gift.)  Here is a scene from the house this week...there are radiators everywhere!  At one point, there were 38 radiators sitting in our house.  Yesterday, the last of the ones we don't want left the house, along with one that we do want.  Oops.  So that one will have to come back.  Kind of par for the course.

In Part XXIII (or so) of the saga--I realize that you haven't heard parts I-XXII, but you'll just have to guess on those for now--I walked into the house on Wednesday this week, and one of the workers asked if I had seen the back yard.  When I told him that I hadn't, he said that I needed to.  I walked out back, and there sat the most beautiful, fully-sandblasted radiator.  Now, this is a big deal because prior to this day, that same radiator had been sitting inside our house with a ton of rust and 4 coats of chipping paint on it.  It was unusable.  But on Wednesday, it was a thing of beauty. 

 

Thursday, it got even better, when Rex and I went over to the house and spraypainted it silver--in our garage.  Now, you aren't generally advised to spraypaint when it's 28 degrees outside, but what choice did we have?  It was either that or let the guys move it back in having only been primed.  That radiator weighs about 800 pounds, so we thought it best to leave it alone once it was back in the house.  Yesterday, they moved it into place, and it looks great!  Rex and I had a good ol' time, too!

The other thing that Rex and I have been up to is getting his passport pictures taken for his Indian visa.  Hopefully we will be able to send the application in on Monday.  Here he is at Walgreen's while waiting for his pictures to be developed.  Yep, that's the smile he used in the pictures, too.

The boiler going out in our house--it's been a rough ride, and I'll really be okay if I never have to work with a contractor again.  Fat chance on that.  But hopefully we've learned a thing or two that will help us in the next go-around.  You'd think we would have learned it by now, what with all of our experience, but as usual, there's always something new that can go wrong so that I have another opportunity to learn.

There's a lot of waiting going on right now...waiting to move back to our house, waiting to get Jag home, waiting for our new normal to begin.  I don't like the waiting, but it's necessary.  And sometimes in the necessary, there's some (or a lot of) good to be found.

I'm sure when I look back, the good will be profoundly obvious. ;)