A few things...

Today, I feel at home. There are many things we've been waiting for and/or doing without. All of a sudden, almost 7 weeks into our life in Salatiga, several things came together for us. We are very thankful for the following simple blessings today....

• The fence. When we arrived at this house, the backyard fence was full of holes. The girls (especially Paige) loved escaping through that fence to venture out into all sorts of dangerous and dirty places. The workers we hired a few weeks ago just finished building a brand new bamboo fence today! Now, we can let the girls play in the backyard without the fear that they'll slip out and run into the busy street in front of our house. They are welcome to go out and play anytime now - even if Mommy and Daddy aren't able to come out and supervise.
  
• The bunk bed. Brooklyn and Madison have a bunk bed in their room. The bed was built by a local carpenter right before we came. It lasted all of one week before it started to fall apart. We noticed it was getting pretty rickety and took the top bunk down - it's a good thing, because the next night the bottom half of the bunk completely collapsed (with Brooklyn in it). The following weeks have included all sorts of "creative" sleeping arrangements for the two older girls, including but not limited to sharing a single bed, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, and one of them sleeping with us in our bed. Finally, about four weeks ago, the carpenter came for the part of the bed that had come apart so he could fix it. Two weeks after that, he brought the bed back, but we had lost four little pegs that keep the two beds stacked on top of each other and we had to ask him to make us more. TODAY he finally brought us those four little pegs and we were able to put the now-sturdy bunk bed back together! Yay! Now the girls have some floorspace in their room...and a real bed to sleep in ;-)
  
• The hot water. We have hot water in our bathroom only. A small, on-demand, water heater sits outside our bathroom window and it's worked fairly well, but not as good as we knew it should. We love the on-demand hot water systems that have been typical of our houses outside of the U.S. (they are usually installed by MAF, since very few Indonesians or Ecuadorians have, or care to have, hot water). But this one would not light right away so it would take several attempts at getting it to ignite. We had to turn the water on, turn it off, turn it on, turn it off....on, off, on, off, on, off until it finally "took." Then it got so bad that we couldn't get any hot water at all - that was the same night that Madison threw up all over herself and really needed a shower. ARGH! Anyway, Sean worked on it and, WHA-LA! It's working! It's so nice to just turn on the hot water in the shower and get it to work on the very first try.
• The couches. Our house here in Salatiga is stocked with the basics - nothing fancy and only what is really necessary for our family of five. It is quite adequate but lacking in the area of "comfort." We had hard wood benches and chairs to sit on but nothing comfy for just reading or studying or visiting with friends. We ordered a living room set one week after arriving in Salatiga and we've been waiting ever since for it to come. It took extra long because of several reasons but TODAY they came! We now have a sofa, love seat and chair that are so comfortable and nice. It is not a necessity, but it is nice to have somewhere soft to sit when all of life is so exhausting. We had to get pretty creative to get it all to fit into our small house, but it was worth it and our house feels so cozy now! This is furniture that we'll most likely be able to ship on to our home base in Palangkraya, so it's pretty fun to get some stuff that is truly, really "ours."
  
• The children's books. I am incredibly ashamed to admit that I forgot to pack or bring any of our children's books to Salatiga. We have a ton of them in our shipment for Palangkaraya but I did not bring ONE book for my kids to read for our year here! I don't know what I was thinking - probably that books were too heavy and bulky to bring. And really, we didn't have the space for them - but it made me so sad not to be able to read to the girls before bed...or at any time of the day. Well, grandparents on both sides came to our rescue and sent lots of really great books to us. It has been so much fun to read together again with the girls and they love their new books!
  

These are all things that our next door neighbors, and most Indonesians we know, live without. It's amazing what waiting for these little "perks" has done for me - mostly, I am able to recognize how incredibly blessed I am with such ordinary things and be truly grateful for them. And also, I learned that they aren't necessities - even though I may think they are!