We Moved!

I'm guessing most people know, but we moved last weekend!

Our new house is finally starting to feel like home for all of us. Kyle has finally stopped asking to go "home"...meaning back to our apartment!

Here are some pictures....

The playroom. Having all the toys in one room has really made up realize how many toys we actually have! They love the mat on the floor. Colby loves taking out the letters and shapes and putting them back in!

This is the view from the front door. At the end of the hallway is the kitchen. To the right is the living room and dinning room.

The living room and dinning room...

The downstairs bathroom...

The laundry hallway...

The mud room...

The kitchen...

The hallway looking from the kitchen to the front door...

The boys bedroom. So far, they are enjoying sharing a bedroom. It was a rough first week, but they are finally taking naps/rests and doing okay at night.

The upstairs bathroom...

Emily and Peyton's room. Her Toy Story stickers are now on the wall, along with Peyton's animal stickers. Emily is loving having her own room, but is also very excited to share a room with Peyton when he's ready. She keeps asking when we are going to get Peyton's crib and dresser.

Mommy and Daddy's room...

I just realized I never took any picture outside... Maybe this afternoon I'll take some and update!

Our Apartment in Mason and Our House in Delaware

Our apartment in Mason still hasn't been re-leased. :(

I was finally able to talk to our landlord yesterday about the status of getting the apartment re-leased. She informed me that since we have moved out two other two bedrooms have become available due to evictions. She said she thought she had both of them filled already; she was just waiting on the new tenants to put down deposits. Once those two apartments are officially no longer available, ours will be the next one filled... unless someone else gets evicted between now and then.

Because we are still technically leasing our apartment, it can only be considered available if there are not any other units available in the complex comparable to ours. We have been putting ads online trying to find someone to re-lease our apartment and have had lots of interest and given her several names. It sounded like the two people that she's waiting for deposits from may be people who contacted us saying they were interested in our apartment. Apparently because of a law against "steering," even if its someone we find, she has to put them in the next available apartment... and ours has to be last on that list.

We have a little bit more positive news about our house in Delaware. We are officially in the foreclosure process, but are speeding things up by doing a deed-in-lieu. Our "specialist" we are working with seems to be on top of things... she even responds to most emails within a few hours! It sounds like all they are waiting for now is for the title check to come back... and as long as it comes back clean (which is should), then she will send us all the paperwork to sign our house over to the bank.

So yeah.. that's our update. Hopefully by the end of the year we'll only have one "place of residence" instead of the three currently in our name!

Adventures in Moving

Emily and Kyle weren't too sure about everything being packed up... but they did enjoy playing in the TV stand while it was empty!

The kiddos were very confused about what was going on. It was the worst the last night we spent in Mason when the apartment was pretty much empty. Poor Emily just wanted to be held. Kyle thought it was fun to run around and play in all the open space, but was confused about where everything went.

After we started unloading and unpacking boxes in Ionia, they seemed to make sense of the whole moving thing. They are loving all the extra room and the fact that we don't have any stairs (Mommy is loving the no stairs too!). We are on the second floor, so we do still have to go up and down stairs, but not nearly as often. The kids love that they can run back and forth from their room to the living room and play with all their toys!

Emily and Kyle's room

The hallway backroom

The living room

The dinning room

The laundry room

Mommy and Daddy's bedroom

The kitchen

Colby's bedroom... right now it's storage for random stuff as I figure out what to do with it. Hopefully by Christmas it will be set up for Colby!

The LONG hallway that Emily and Kyle LOVE to run up and down!

And some pictures of my kids being cute :)

We're Moving!

We are taking a step of faith and moving to Ionia next week! We really feel the need to be closer to our church so that we can be more involved in the church and the teens lives without having to drive so far. We are signing our new lease for Nov 1st and trusting that God will provide a new tenant for our current apartment by Dec 1st so that we will only have one rent to pay.

We have been working with our landlord to get out of our lease... the only way to terminate our lease is to find someone else to re-rent our apartment. Because we living a low-income tax credit apartment complex, we can not sublet; a new tenant has to go through our landlord and be approved and sign their own lease. We asked about a month ago that our landlord start looking for someone to re-rent our apartment too, but it didn't really seem like anything was happening. So Brent posted an ad online himself last week and we've had several interested people. We have told them all to get into contact with our landlord and have passed all of their info on to our landlord as well. From what we hear on our end, there are two people that are pretty serious... one that wants to move ASAP and the other the middle of November. Hopefully our landlord will work with one of these two to get them approved so that they can sign a lease for our apartment.

Brent is going to keep working his job here in Holt for the time being. Driving the Focus back and forth three times a week is cheaper than driving the van back and forth, like we are doing now. But he has started to look for another part time job in the Ionia area. He is in the process of apply to be a substitute teacher in some of the area schools, and seeking whatever other opportunities might be available.

Please pray with us during this transition. There is a lot to pack up and do in a short period of time. Please pray that we will have the time and energy to get everything done that needs to be done to make this a sooth transition. Emily and Kyle are already concerned and confused as to why we are packing up boxes again. Please pray that God will provide a new tenant for our apartment in Mason as we are trusting Him too. Also, please pray for the financial aspect of the situation as we will have two rents to pay for the month of November, along with moving expenses and all that other fun stuff. Pray with us that Brent will be able to find another job in Ionia so that we can pay our bills. We are trusting that God will provide us with everything that we need; just as He has been doing the past two years since we left our old church in Delaware (and WAY before that too!). 

If you need our new address for whatever reason, send me an email and I'll give it to you.

An Update on a Few Things...

House
We decided over the weekend that we were ready to just be done with our house in Delaware. In December it will be two years that we've been trying to sell it. Brent called the bank yesterday to see what we need to do to do a "deed-in-lieu." This is kind of like a foreclosure, except we just sign the house over to the bank and don't have to do through all the normal foreclosure stuff. We are waiting for a phone call back from our short sale specialist before we can proceed. Hopefully this won't take as long as all the short sale stuff took.
As Brent was hanging up with the bank, we got an email from our Realtor saying there was someone possibly interested. So, I guess we are going to wait until we get a for sure yes or no from that person before pursing the deed-in-lieu.

Brent's Employment
As of October 1st, Brent will be employed part time by Shiloh Community Church! Yesterday he found out that he was going to be able to work part time at his current job for the time being. He will work Monday, Thursday, and Friday at Maxima and then Tuesdays during the day at church, and then we will be at church on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings.
The plan is for him to find another part time job in the area of the church once we move so that he is not having to have an hour commute.

Housing
We have spoken with the manager of our apartment complex about getting out of our lease. She said that only way we can get out without having to pay lots of money is if a new tenant is found to rent our apartment. She has listed the apartment as available, posted adds, and is trying to get into contact with some people she has on a waiting list. She sounded confident that she could find a new tenant to sign a lease starting November 1st.
Next Wednesday on the way to church we are going to look at an apartment near church that will be available towards the end of October. So if it all works out, that would be great timing for us.

It's A...... BOY!
We did find out the gender of the baby, but didn't want to tell right away. I went back and forth on the decision so many times. In the end I decided that if we could find out, we would. But we weren't going to tell people right away. I decided that we would tell Emily and Kyle and talk to them about the baby using the baby's name, and once they were able, they could tell people. I didn't take Emily very long and she started telling people! She's one smart girlie!
So we are having another little boy....Colby Thomas :)

Our New Home

Our townhouse came with a new pet... a HUGE squirrel!

Emily and Kyle were very good helpers when it came to unpacking!

We found a playground very close by... Grandma and Aunt Kara came to play with us!

We like our new house... but we like to be outside more... and if Mommy and Daddy don't let us go outside... then we stand at the window and beg to go outside and play.

Now that the cute kiddo pictures are out of the way... here's picture of our townhouse...

The upstairs bathroom

Our bedroom

The stairs (the front door is at the bottom) that I WILL NOT fall down!

The kitchen (the door at the end is a bathroom)

The downstairs bathroom

The pantry in the bathroom

 The kitchen and dining room

The dining room

The living room