All Moved In

It's incredible how much peace one can have in such a short amount of time when circumstances change. Yesterday, we packed up the hotel room and moved down the street to our longer-term rental house. We went from a single room with two beds, a TINY kitchenette (is that redundant?), single bathroom, no yard... to a 1,000sqft house with two complete bedrooms (3 beds), a bathroom, a nice sized kitchen, laundry facilities, a living room, a dining room, and TWO yards. The backyard contains food-producing vegetation! Huzzah. Saoirse (seer-shuh) LOVES the space, as do the rest of us. Kamatz? Well, he likes it under the master bed. Cats.

The air is fresh and it has a sort of crispness to it. Being able to open windows and let that air in makes us all happy in ways we can't explain. Sawyer just came in with a sappy look on his face and declared "it smells so good outside!"

We have a garden an a half! A half? Yep. I say half because the second section only houses tomatoes and bell peppers whereas the main garden area houses raspberries, beets, carrots, cucumbers, squash, and a melon I think. There is also a yellow apple tree. So much fun having an established garden again.

Out front there is a tree with long green bean-looking things. What a mess! Those things drop and all but cover the front yard. So, we will have some yardwork to do but that's good for the body, the soul, and for putting our boys to work when us adults don't want to use our body anymore. *wink*

The boys have thoroughly enjoyed having a room to themselves again. The two beds has been wonderful and the table and chairs in there has provided the perfect Lego building location. It is so helpful to have a space for them to go if they need time apart from each other. That doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Also, we enjoy having TWO DOORS between them and us at night. *wink, wink*

Jake and I are living it up thanks to having a bedroom of our own again. Being able to hang clothes, have separate drawers, a laundry hamper, end tables, windows, table lamps, a place for my salt lamp and essential oil box... glorious! We also set up the computer in there so we can watch our nightly guilty pleasure of Big Bang Theory after we put the boys to bed. Once that's done the whole setup gets turned off. No extra EMFs desired, thank you very much.

This house is wonderfully located for the things we enjoy. The freeway is close. Dutch Bros is close. Parks are close. Downtown in close. The church we might attend is close. It's wonderful.

Oh, the church... we visited Whitney Baptist Church yesterday. We enjoyed it. It was wonderful to be recognized as new! So many lovely, welcoming people. It's been a long time since we've attended a Sunday School Class, Jake and I. Honestly, we've never attended one together. So, this move to Idaho has been a real treat in this regard. I have Jake with me, right next to me, on Sundays for church. Thank you, Lord. The boys had classes themselves and then sat with us for the second service. While I love having the boys with us for a sermon and worship music, it is hard on Dempsey. He simply has too much energy to sit still and take in an adult message. So, I caved and let him have my cell phone. I need to find a Biblical coloring book for him to work through during this part of church.
Yesterday's message was on Colossians 2:6-15. Like the pastor stated at the beginning, we didn't not get through it all. Such a meaty passage to unpack and I LOVE how he doesn't water it down in an effort to blow through it. He will adjust his plan to accommodate taking more time with this passage. Sawyer enjoyed the experience overall. He's telling me his favortie part was towards the end when the pastor was explaining that while traditions are not bad, they become bad when they become more important that the reason we started them. From his Sunday School class he enjoyed receiving some visuals of the 10 Commandments to help him remember them in order.
Dempsey enjoyed his class, worked to remember new friends' names, and enjoyed being able to meet and play with new kiddos. Like I mentioned before, it was hard for him to sit (still) with us during the worship service. We'll work on making that more enjoyable for him.

Oh, I forgot to tell you, this house is fully furnished. How awesome is that? See, the owner was going to AirBnB it (which usually means it's totally furnished and people can just rent it short-term) but decided we were worth leasing to for awhile. As a fellow believer, she was interested in helping a Christian, cancer-fighting family out in their transition time. What. A. Blessing.

We are eager to see where God will take us and have us put down roots. We are meeting such amazing people all across the valley that it makes it both difficult and fun trying to figure out where we'd like to be. We have met lovely people in just about each city in the valley. Of course, people who live in those cities think we should more to their city.  It is comical to hear people talk about traffic or visiting another city as taking forever to get to. We chuckle because it used to take us 15 minutes to go 2-2.5 miles! Now, we can cover 30 miles in about 30 minutes. It is just not apples to apples. Yes, they have traffic.... for what they know. Let me just tell my CA peeps something - IT'S NOTHING LIKE THE TRAFFIC YOU KNOW! During rush hour, you're still moving at around 50mph. Even the busiest street (Eagle Rd) that's most congested moves because there are lights to govern the drivers. Is it annoying? Yes. Is it downright maddening, not in the least. It just goes to show the stark difference between life here (in the growing valley) compared to life in SoCal (the newest sardine can). For me, aside from people we love, CA has nothing on Idaho. Nothing.