Growing Excitement...

The move into our house has been an ongoing process, for the last YEAR. For those of you who know me well, you may remember that I like to have my ducks in a row and things in my life spic, span, and orderly. I am also known to pack a month before the move, leaving OCD spreadsheets of box contents happily labeling everything packed. I have moving down to an art. When you move 10 times in 8 years, you begin to figure things out. I am generally completely unpacked, boxes hauled off, and pictures on the walls within the first week or two at the most.

Enter the great move of 2009. Once again we spent our anniversary surrounded by boxes as we had every year, but this one was happily celebrated as we would be moving out of an apartment and into our first home. We became real grownups that year, complete with our first mortgage! We were also in the throws of trying to complete our adoption home study, to say life was busy would be such an understatement.

Because we were busy my normal move in process was a bit altered. Shock of the century, we had been here over a month and there were still boxes cluttering the basement. Though I must admit that I was taking a bit more time knowing that we would happily be in one place for longer than the normal year! Then came the flood, August 4, 2009 was NOT a good day for us. We received about 6 inches of water in our beautiful, finished, and yet unpacked basement. That was with the blessing of a sump pump, our neighbor had 4 feet in his basement. The insurance estimate of personal possessions lost and property damage was right at 10,000. We were eventually able to salvage my sewing machine which was an immense blessing. Sadly, as basements without walk-outs are not covered under home owners insurance OR flood insurance we would see little compensation for the loss of property and damage to our home. It would be January before everything was finally hauled off, cut out, put back etc etc etc...and as for the finished product, we are STILL working on it. My goal is to have the basement complete and our house the way we intended by the one year anniversary of the flood. We are fast approaching that day, but also fast approaching my goal!

Enter the growing excitement as that was in fact the title of this post! As we begin to put the finishing touches on the basement construction and finish clearing out the storage I am beginning to see light at the end of an impossibly long tunnel. We have not had it easy as first time home owners to say the least. I will however, say that we have learned so much, and deepened our walk with each other and with the Lord. There were many moments of tears, uncertain of what we would do, or where the money would come from. In those moments we had no choice but to stick together and lean on the Lord trusting Him alone to provide for our needs. God is always faithful to provide in His way and in His time, this walk is an adventure...one that I love more and more each and every day!

Look for before and after pictures...coming SOON!