The "House"

I have had lots of questions about where we are living while here in Olathe.  We were given some extra money per month by the church in order to rent a place while we were here.  Little did we know, 3 month leases are HARD to come by!  I pictured a nice apartment with a pool, air conditioning, etc.  Well, the apartments here doubled the rent in order to do a 3 month lease....which left us very few options!  Thankfully, a man we go to church with here happened to own some duplexes in a decent part of town, and offered us one at a great price.  It is small, but we were just so happy to have a place to live!

Our duplex is two story, as most houses here are.  The kids were so happy to have stairs!  It is a split level, and the living room and kitchen are downstairs, while 2 bedrooms and the bathroom are upstairs.  We chose to not bring our nice, leather, newish couches because of the difficulty of getting them into the house (b/c of the stairs), so we relax in nice, comfy lawn chairs.  I know, I know....sounds lovely, huh?  We use a card table to eat on--better than nothing, right?  And, the kitchen has very little counterspace--and I mean very little, so I am using boxes as extra space for things in the kitchen.  It truly feels like a camping experience.  At least, that's what I keep telling myself!  The carpet in the living room is dark green, and will turn your feet black if you walk on it barefoot, so I wear my flipflops everywhere.  Kinda like camping, right?   The two bedrooms upstairs are decent, but trying to fit 3 kids on twin mattresses in a bedroom is a chore no matter what.  We didn't bring our bed frames....we're only here for 10 weeks, so we are on air mattresses.  The kids have theirs lined up across their bedroom side by side.  They actually enjoy it like that, so we're letting it be.  We are borrowing a nice air conditioner for upstairs and that has helped immensely!!  It's pretty nice at night now, with the a/c and fans on.

We do have a washer and dryer hook up, but really, why move those big ol' things for just a couple of months?  The kids got to experience their first laundromat trip last week--let me tell you, it was exciting!  I had no idea how expensive it was to use a laundromat!  I got $10 in quarters, and the kids' eyes got HUGE!  They tried bargaining with me--they each wanted 4 quarters.  I had to laugh and tell them we would probably use all of them on the laundry!  They got to had to help load and unload and fold the laundry.  This is SO good for them!  I also had them bring books to read while it was washing and drying.  Good times, huh?

We are fortunate to have a great setup with our Wii and Netflix and a good internet setup, so we feel a little better about living like this!! ha!

It has been a great time for our family to really learn to appreciate what we have at home in Edmond.  We get so caught up with what others have and I know we are all so guilty of coveting what our friends are able to have that we are not...so I think this is such a great eye opener for all of us to really learn to be appreciative. God has been taking such good care of us for so long, I feel like He is telling us to look around--we have it really good!

I will leave you with some pictures.  Please don't judge us by the messiness....this was the first weekend after trying to move into such a small place with all of our 'stuff'.
Here is the kids' setup:

And the kitchen.  See the counterspace in the picture?  That's ALL there is!!!  

And the living room.  

Once again....we are just thankful to be able to be here with Josh.  We will look forward to being in our luxurious Edmond home in August.  (HA.  That is a joke....those of you who have been to our house know it's no luxury!!! But it will be nice to be 'home'.)