Home

“For instance, we know that when these bodies of ours are taken down like tents and folded away, they will be replaced by resurrection bodies in heaven—God-made, not handmade—and we’ll never have to relocate our “tents” again. Sometimes we can hardly wait to move—and so we cry out in frustration. Compared to what’s coming, living conditions around here seem like a stopover in an unfurnished shack, and we’re tired of it! We’ve been given a glimpse of the real thing, our true home, our resurrection bodies! The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what’s ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less.

That’s why we live with such good cheer. You won’t see us drooping our heads or dragging our feet! Cramped conditions here don’t get us down. They only remind us of the spacious living conditions ahead. It’s what we trust in but don’t yet see that keeps us going. Do you suppose a few ruts in the road or rocks in the path are going to stop us? When the time comes, we’ll be plenty ready to exchange exile for homecoming.

But neither exile nor homecoming is the main thing. Cheerfully pleasing God is the main thing, and that’s what we aim to do, regardless of our conditions.” 2 Corinthians 5:1-9

This post is long overdue. And just long.
But I thought that some of you coming to visit might be interested in seeing your accommodations!

Eight months later, and we have boxes unpacked, pictures unhung, and items missing. We sold our washer and dryer over a month ago (because our place came with a set), and Hubs found the movers had packed things inside the dryer. Other military wives with multiple moves are saying, "And...?" In other words this is normal. This time seems a little different though. It took me six months to experience the nesting bug that people and pregnancy websites keep talking about. This major move has left us less at home than any of our others. We miss our Florida home and have our fingers crossed and prayers sent up to move back there after our commitment here. Already looking forward to that end and with a possible deployment in sight, this station has been our longest commitment, but feels more temporary than any of the ones before. With that said, we are super excited about the potential here in Alaska and look forward to our many adventures in the next two and a half years!

We are completely grateful for this house. Besides the embarrassingly thin walls between units and waaaay too much room for our small family, it has already been such a blessing. Hubs can walk to work, come home after PT and for lunch, and we are completely content having one car. While I'm not a fan of having more room than we use, I am thrilled we have plenty of room to comfortably host Eli's excited aunts, grandparents, and great-grandparents possibly coming to meet our baby boy.  I'm trying to get rooms ready before I'm too big to bend down!

We have a heated, one-car garage and a full basement. All those unpacked boxes I mentioned have a hiding place. He he he! All the easier to not unpack them, my dear. They keep company with Holiday decor, summer stuff, and all things Army. Here are a few pics of the rest of our place. Extra points for finding Jessie. I swear I didn't tell her to pose. She did it all on her own.

Downstairs

Entry/Hallway

We live in townhouse-type housing. This is the entry to the house. The door you see is the one to the garage. The front door is just to the right by the blue rug. Opposite the garage door is a coat closet. The living room is behind me, and the door to the basement is to my immediate left. Past that door on the left is the hallway. It has the half-bath and leads to the kitchen.

Living & Dining

Kitchen

Upstairs
Clockwise from the top of the stairs: the master bedroom & bath, the nursery, and the guest bath are on the left. The laundry room is right across at the top of the stairs. To the right is the guest room, a linen closet, and another bedroom that we use as an office. It is plenty big enough to be a second guest room if we have several people visiting here at once.

Master

{ Click this link to see all about the nursery! }

Guest Bath

Laundry

Guest Room

Office 

Home is a funny place. That word can carry many meanings and memories. For me, that word carries the hope of something more than all this. This house is not our home. Our house in FL wasn't. Our house in NC wasn't. Even the familiar comforts in the places we grew up isn't. Heaven is. Don't you just yearn for it? I do, some days more than others.

Leaving the last place we called home and not feeling particularly at home here sort of feels like an injury. And there are certainly components of the last months that add a hefty dose of insult, but there is something incredible that happens in feeling homeless, feeling homesick, that really ignites the edges of that hole in us that is meant for more. God created us for heaven. We are meant to crave, meant to feel a longing. It is one thing to know this in my head and another to know the raw throb of that feeling in my heart. It reminds me that I’m alive and I’m eternal. I’m grateful for the incomparable power of who God is and what He becomes when there is less comfort, less knowing, less of me. I’m certainly not pretending that our circumstances hold a candle to any injustice. But I am under the revelation that God draws us near in the desert. And the comfort of “normal” starts to seem like something that can work to coddle and cope if we don’t directly engage the issue of eternal perspective and Christ-centered relationship.

This transient lifestyle has emphasized for me just how temporary our stuff and our stay is. But I see glimpses of our unity in the Spirit that will be perfected when Christ comes through relationship and community that God has structured for our sanctification and support as we live within the broken and the fallen. Marriage and family are temporary blessings God has designed for us to endure it together. We who claim Christ are the Church. His body. To care for each other and be able go out from each other to care for everyone else. To be His hands and His feet. It so imperfectly symbolizes His pursuit of relationship with us. His pursuit of our hearts.

But we have forever in our future- where homesickness and homelessness and distant or broken relationship will not exist. So we choose courage over comfort. We choose boundaries over barriers. And we choose mercy over mess-ups. We choose to take up our cross, not our swords. We choose to be vulnerable, to walk in humility and commit to compassion with God as our avid and just Protector. We choose what He desires over what we think we deserve. We choose to know our real enemy, and we choose to know it is not each other. We choose to accept exactly where we are because God loves us here and uses us here. Even if we don't agree or don't like it or didn't plan it. We don't make progress first. He uses us first and works it for good toward exactly who He has made us to be. And sometimes that looks entirely different than what we think it should. So we choose not to blame each other but be still and know that God is good, even if our circumstance or our home or our relationship isn't. That, Loved One, is His promise.

We choose to let His Spirit discern between what's meant to be a cave, 

what's meant to be a cocoon, and what's simply meant for when Christ comes back.

We wait expectantly with this hope together and we will not find our security or our safety or our fulfillment in our houses or with our stuff or in our jobs or even in each other. In Christ alone. All other ground is sinking sand. 

The Man Cave

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike 'What’s next, Papa?' God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him! Romans 8:15-17 

I wanted to give a preview of the finished nursery for you guys! Our original goal was to just use what we had, Craigslist, and baby shower gifts to make four white walls look like a baby might live there. We are so excited about how this cute and colorful room turned out-- so much better than we thought it would! We are truly proud of what Hubs likes to call the "man cave" and how it has all come together….and how relatively friendly it was for our adorable, baby-sized budget. The whole room costs less than a new crib. Here's the run down:

Wall # 1-- $ 0
When you walk in the room, the whole wall to the left is the closet. At first I thought it was ridiculous to have a closet that big for a baby. I was very, very wrong. Once the hand-me-downs and shower gifts started rolling in, I realized it is so perfect for storing those not-ready-to-use items that we have for when he is just a little bit older.

I made dividers for joey's clothes in less than 6 minutes. I had some extra poster board lying around. I found different circle sizes around the house to trace the inner and outer border. Then I literally just cut a straight line through the donut-shape and wrote the clothes size on both sides. The poster board was flexible enough to bend right over the closet rail. These would've been easy to make a little more cute and professional-looking, but I just didn't care to. They don't need to be built to last, and I would rather spent more time on stuff that shows! Still pretty proud of them.

Wall # 2-- $ 245

The back wall is what really cost any money and what really brought the room to life! We got the rocking chair on craigslist for $35 the week I found out I was pregnant. (I bought the super-soft elephant blanket the same week.) We had just moved to Anchorage and had only been in our house for a matter of days without our property shipment (meaning: zero furniture). But I found this strong, steady rocker already painted a color that I LOVE and knew would work in a nursery for either gender.
So, I made Andrew and his co-worker with a truck drive 30 minutes to go pick this bad boy up. The catch? In my haste, I chose cute over comfort. So I had to break down and spend money on a cushion. Found this one for $15 that totally matched the $7 clearance storage ottoman I bought a couple of weeks ago.

My latest must-have was a white shelf to display adorable boots that were Hubs' when he was a little cowboy. Cannot wait to get joey in these things. Well, ok, I can wait. He won't really be a baby anymore when they fit! So, apparently, a small white shelf is more $$$ than I thought. Spent $18. Shopping is easily one of my top three least favorites things in the world, and at this point, I would have rather had the room done than try to save a few bucks. Worth every penny!

I'm so happy with this dresser that functions as our changing table. One reason is because it is $170 in store, but we caught it online and on sale for less than $120. We wanted this one because it was the best deal for a dresser heavy enough to be a changing table and at the right height for us. The other reason is because I assembled it myself!
We had no luck trying to sell those fish lamps-- a proud Goodwill purchase in Florida-- before our move to AK so we just had the movers pack 'em up. I didn't really want a theme for the nursery, but thought I could use them somehow. I was just hoping it wouldn't end up looking cheesy. I knew I wanted a symmetrical set-up, so we found these inexpensive, mini, closet-maid organizers to use as lamp-stand bookshelves for $19 each. Small, functional, and organized.

Here a just a few bookshelf items:

Cowboys & Indians Footwear Collection from Aunt Kari

Joey's Bama Loungewear Slippers from Keeks & the football we used as a tree topper for the gender reveal.

The collage above the changing table was an accident. I've had the mirror from the first salon I worked in, and had bought the chevron canvas at Target for $8 early in the pregnancy. We found the blue-framed bulletin board on sale for $8 when we bought the two bookshelves. I knew I could make them work together, and all it needed was the matted, framed picture of Jessie in the sand that we already had to pull it all together.

Wall # 3-- $ 0
Because our heater system lines our floors and to focus on any light coming in the window, I wanted to keep this wall open. I've had the curtains for years, and they were one of the first things I put up in the early months.

Wall # 4-- $ 45
This wall houses the door and the crib. I bought the crib for $35 on Craigslist from a lady who was moving and had to get rid of it quickly. It was time consuming to clean all the nooks and crannies really well, but well worth the work for the price. We bought a new crib mattress for $50 with gift cards from the shower. I used some gently used sheets we had that had a small tear in them to make a crib skirt. I also made two door muffs-- they allow you to shut the door without the latch making noise. The additional supplies (thread, batting, tacks, ribbon) cost $10. I love that the solid color worked perfectly to match the big gray bear my parents gave joey for Christmas and the handmade quilt Mimi made! As soon as I saw this adorable quilt completed, I knew it was perfect to hang on the crib for comfort and color.

What's missing?
- My sister and her boyfriend, Ethan, had made the most unique and precious banner to hang over the mantle at my baby shower. Ethan cut, sanded, and stained the wood pieces. My sister found letter stickers to fit. They strung the triangles on hemp twine. I was in love. When I asked "Is that for me??", my sister said, "Ummm, no." She is one heck of a party planner and is adding it to her stash of decor items for future showers. BUT, they offered to make me one! The one at the shower said "Oh, boy!" They had the better idea to wait until once we knew baby boy's name, and I know that it will be the most perfect finishing touch to the man cave hanging over the crib. Can. Not. Wait. Pictures to come!

There you have it! The little man's accommodations are complete and cozy. Total cost was $290. 

We are thrilled to have such a happy little space for our buddy to make messes and memories!