Moving Day

I'm going a little backwards with my blogs. Showed you a little of the house first and now I'm going to talk about the moving day. It was quite a feat of muscle and sweat.

We moved on Aug. 15th. It was the very last day we could stay in our old house. The house we moved into wasn't finished yet, but we didn't have a choice. We waited as long as possible and even gave our new land lord 15 extra days to get the work done, but the work ethic isn't the same as it is in the states. Today is the 24th and we just got the rest of the cement work done in the house. There is a little painting left to do, but with Ramadan starting in a few days, I'm just hoping the work will get done by winter. Justin and I have already done some painting of our own. We are learning how to do all kinds of things over here. The African adventure never ends!

Ok, so back to moving day. We had everyone meet at our house at 8:30 am. About 10 guys showed up and in 2 hours the old house was empty and the new house was filled. AMAZING. We only moved 2 minutes away from our old house. It was so funny to see the faces of the nationals. They couldn't believe how the foreigners worked. Eventually the driver of the moving truck got out of the back and just let our guys do the work. Our former land lord told Justin the day after, "You will never see people here work like that. It would have taken us all day. Incredible, just incredible." We feel so blessed to have wonderful friends who are willing to sweat in 100 degree weather to help us move. The body of Christ takes on many forms and one of those is a moving crew. :) We ate pizza together afterwards and enjoyed hanging out while the sweat cooled. Nothing like a little sweat to tighten the bonds of friendship. I've included some pictures of a few of the guys who helped us move. Pretty good looking gang aren't they?

Home Sweet Home

Hello everyone. It has been almost a month since my last post. It has been a whirl wind of a month, but we are finally in our new home and I'm able to "nest" once again. I have enough pictures for several blogs so in the next few days I will try and post several articles, but for now I wanted to catch you up on the best part--our new home. We moved into a "fixer-upper" but thankfully Justin is good with fixing things. I think it is a source of stress relief for him too. Here is a little overview of our new home: 4 bedrooms (our room, Ellie's room, guest room, and office for Justin); 1 sm. bathroom with shower and a closet toilet; BIG kitchen (yippee); living room and dining room combo; with a garage and garden in process outside. Here are a few pics of the new house.

The Living/Dining Room

The Kitchen

Ok, it is taking forever to upload these pictures today. So I will stop with the picture tour and maybe convince Justin to give you a video walk through of our house later today. At least you can see a little of our new home. Hope you all are doing well. Have a good Sunday!

Packing

We have been packing almost everyday for the past couple days getting ready to move. We didn't want to move, but our land lord's daughter wanted our home (which is located right below his) so out we go. Can't blame her, it has been a wonderful house and I'm really going to miss it. It has represented security, comfort, and peace in a not always friendly culture. God has provided a wonderful new house for us to make into a home. The new place is wonderful, but I'm a little tired of moving. Good thing the bible says our home is in heaven. At least there is one home I will never have to move away from.

Elianna has been a champ while packing. She has no idea what is going on, but it sure is fun in her eyes. So many boxes to play with, so little time. One day Justin and I were packing in the bedroom when Elianna crawled away. I didn't hear anything for a while, so I wondered what was going on. When I found her she was going through one of our book boxes. It was so cute I had to take a video of her. Her career as a librarian is off to a good start! All she needs to learn now is how to read. Eating the pages might be a resume killer too.

Beach

Every Thursday some friends of ours have decided to have "beach day" in August. Everything slows down during the month of August here because it is so hot and it is not unusual for families to take 2-4 weeks of vacation. Our trips are usually only a couple hours because Elianna wears out pretty quickly, but she sure loves the ocean. We bought a "floaty" that she is able to sit in. She kicks her feet and tries to jump while sitting in it from excitement. She is figuring out what sand is all about too. Since everything goes into her mouth she has definitely tasted both sand and ocean. Here are a few pictures from our last ocean adventure.