House Pics

I took a few (or several) pictures of our new house today. Want to take a little tour?

Here it is!  Home sweet home.

This is our yard as seen from our front gate.  There is a lot of wonderful space for kids to play.  And they do! Not only do our girls enjoy that play area in the back there, but the neighbor kids are also here most afternoons playing as well.  You can't see it, but there is also a "flying fox" or zipline.  That was installed by the family that lived here before us and Brooklyn especially loves it!  The car you see is an MAF vehicle that we can use.  Learning to drive again - and on the left side and in a place where normal driving rules don't exactly always apply- has been an adventure but I really love being able to jump in the car with the girls and get out of the house!

I skipped the first room you enter as you come into the front door because it's empty.  Completely.  Eventually, we'll get some furniture for that room too - most Indonesian houses have a front, formal room reserved for entertaining guests. Sort of like a modern-day parlor!  We just ran out of time having things built on Java, so that's on the list of things we'll look for someday here in Palangka Raya.

So this is the room you enter after going through the front room.  Our school room!  The wood desk thing that you see on the right is an awesome school desk with spaces for kids to sit as well as Mom and Dad.  I'll get a better picture of it when...it's a little better organized!  We have space for sitting and lots of bookshelves waiting for our books to come in the shipment - a perfect room for learning.  You can see through the school room back into the main living area.  The two doors you can see on the left are the girls' bedrooms.  You can't see a door to the immediate left, but that leads to our bedroom.

This is the master bedroom.  

I took this picture below because I had to show my mom and sister where my chubby little birdie now resides. Ironically, just above in that upper part of the window, there is a real bird's nest!  Every day our helper cleans out all the straw and stubble that the birds use to try to build their nests...and every day they come back to build their nest again!  Apparently, this has been going on for some time, as in years.  It's a little strange to have a bird nest in my bedroom window...or, at least, it's a first!

Here's my quick shot of Madison and Paige's room.  Yes, I took a picture while Paige was actually napping in there - how else did you expect me to get this done if I wasn't doing it while Paige was sleeping?! 

Brooklyn's room is a really light pink. She is loving having her own bedroom.  The picture above her bed is one that Sean and I had framed from her first grade art class - I don't want to let her keep it in there because I like it so much and had other ideas for displaying it...but until I can steal it back from her....

As you exit the school room, you come into another large room that we have turned into our main living space.  We have a nice spot for watching movies.  Yep, that's Maddie laying down in her "favorite chair!"  She doesn't take naps any more...but she does need a little down-time - especially since she's been getting up before 6 am every morning!

In that large room, we also have our dining area.  The family that lived here before knocked out the whole back wall and put in a screened-in porch.  It's my favorite feature of the house!  We don't have anything in there yet, but I have lots of ideas spinning in my head!  You can also see our kitchen.

Another view of the kitchen.

 

What do you do when you are buying a refrigerator that is currently in use in another house?  You borrow the MAF office mini-fridge!  What do you do when your oven hasn't yet arrived from the States?  You buy a counter-top stove! (Which is easy to find here because it's what most Indonesians use to cook with in their homes.) 

Another view of the dining table.  Behind Brooklyn is another bathroom.  To the left is a door to the guest room (currently a disaster, but soon to be open for guests...hint, hint) and you can almost see the drying lines outside.  We don't have a dryer...but in a place this hot, it doesn't seem to be an issue yet!

 Hope you enjoyed the tour!  We're waiting for all sorts of things to make it more homey - quilts, pictures, homey knick-knacks, kitchen stuff.  That shipment is on it's way - somewhere between Colorado and here!  No idea when to expect that to get here.

A lot of our stuff got moldy in the 2.5 weeks it was in a shipping container, so I keep finding things that need to be wiped down. And even right now there is a guest roomful of stuff I should be organizing that is probably growing mold as I type...but I'm sorta tired of unpacking!

We're settling in well, as you can see.  As always, thanks for your prayers and support.  God has been so good and has worked things out for this move that really shouldn't have gone so well.  Praise Him!  Stay tuned for pictures as we continue to settle in and make this home for us!