Our New Home

Good morning! Many of you have been asking and now I finally have pictures to share of our new home. It's amazing what some kitchen cupboards, a paint job and curtains can accomplish! It was a long haul sewing all the curtains as the windows are all tall and the fabric slippery but it was worth it! It's probably good that it took almost 8 weeks to complete things - it kind of grossed me out at first to think about moving in here - but now it's "ours" and feels just fine!! (I think I felt that way before moving into the home we owned in West Allis too...) Best of all - all of the doorframes are now higher and Josh can walk through them all without hitting his head!!

Here's the tour: let's start at the heart of our home - the kitchen (and dining room)! The pretty lattices on the windows are actually security bars. All the windows have them. (They were previously pink, blue and copper with touches of gold - we had them painted plain white.) You saw photos in a previous blog of the kitchen before, here's the after! This room was previously 2 very small, very dark rooms. We had them knock down the walls to open it up. I chose the yellow paint and light colors of wood and tile to brighten it up cause it only has one partially covered window. During the day the door (which is to the right of the stove) is mostly open as well, letting in light. The door goes to the back yard.
Here are Josh and Julia enjoying our back yard - against the wall to the left are the clothes lines. To the right the windows are Josh's office (which is 2 meters wide and 6 meters long but perfect for what he needs!). We have NO lawn - just a cement courtyard and backyard.
This is the other view of the backyard - the washer is in the back (I got an automatic this time - it's backbreaking to use the 2-tub washers, lifting wet laundry in and out of the tub and spinner). The movable drying rack is nice for rainy days. The orange thing is a rainwater reservoir - we use rainwater to supplement city water as sometimes water can be salty or unavailable. We don't drink city/rain water but use it for everything else.
Here's Mitchell in the boy's room. They love their new bunk beds!

This is the bathroom (shower and toilet to the left) that we moved the door from the kitchen to the dining room. It previously only had a "squattie" toilet and a "bok mandi". The floors in the bathroom were replaced with light-colored rough surface tile to minimize slipping (to my huge relief as they were previously really dark and made the tiny rooms even darker and harder to see if they were clean!).

The 2 previous shots are from one of the other (VERY TINY) bathrooms - the sink is 12"x 17" - but it FITS!! We had to search long and hard to find sinks small enough! The shower drains into the drain under the sink. The toilet is up on the "pedestal" where the squattie was previously. Bathrooms here are generally "wet bathrooms" as they flush the squatties with buckets of water and it goes everywhere - same with bathing with a bok mandi - you pour dippers of water over your head and it all drains into a central drain. So no bath mats! They'd be soaked all the time. The bath mats go OUTSIDE the bathroom door so you can dry your feet and not slip on the tile floors OUTSIDE the bathroom.

And this is the "ruang tamu" or sitting room that is traditional in local homes. We ended up putting toys in that room as well as it is the biggest room in the whole house. The front door was my "thing" with this house - previously it was the same color as the pink mat you see in the bottom left corner of the picture - now a beautiful shade of red. I always wanted a red door! (The bonus was that the neighbors offered unsolicited approval - they said it was the perfect shade of red - a brighter color would have been, in their opinion, "too Chinese". Whatever...but glad they approve!) We bought the furniture in this room (and a number of the other rooms) from a couple that had to leave the field for health reasons. The other furniture we had locally built from photos I got off the internet. Most of it is nice and sturdy but unfortunately our dining room chairs ended up uncomfortable! So if you come for dinner - sorry! We don't mean to rush you off with bad seating!

Anyway, that's our new place. We're thankful to have a place to call home for the next year or two - and it's finally "ours" as the homes we've lived in the past 2 years have been someone else's. Location-wise it's great, too. You may notice I didn't post photos of the front of our home - that's for security purposes - but if you want to see it, just let me know and I'll send you a shot.

Thanks for your prayers for us in getting this all figured out, and for continuing to pray as we now begin to prepare for the arrival of our daughter. Last night I was able to get some more information about the hospital I am to give birth at - helps me know how to pack the "go bag". Also we have the additional challenge of figuring out paperwork needed to get a US birth certificate, passport and visa for the little one. The down side (which is a little humorous) is that last night we also watched an episode of Mythbusters with the kids so last night when I was SUPPOSED to be sleeping, I ended up dreaming about having the baby in a hospital with the Mythbusters there testing stuff or doing experiments or something... a little disturbing!!

Today is 4 weeks left until my due date. The ladies in my life here say that it looks like the baby has dropped, which explains the additional discomfort. I'm depending greatly on the Lord for stamina for each day. Thanks again for praying!