where in the world

Where in the world have we been?

Here's what has gone on since I last blogged (2 months ago!?!):

We moved to Virginia, just South of DC, for Mark's job. He is still in landscaping but doing a lot less manual labor and a lot more meeting with clients, designing, etc. He loves it!

Lily is changing before our eyes. It seems like she is hitting new milestones left and right. (8-month post will happen!)

We moved again. Wait, what?
Yep. If you haven't heard through the grapevine, we moved again. For those of you who haven't heard, here is the full story:

Back in August we moved to a townhouse in Woodbridge, Virginia. Mark and I randomly chose this location, mostly because it was cheaper than the other suburbs. Mark saw the townhouse in person while I was still living in Ohio. I'll be honest, I wasn't too excited about it after seeing the pictures. The kitchen looked old and the open-backed stairs scared me with Lily beginning to crawl. I told myself it would be okay and once we got all of our furniture and pictures up and put away, it would feel much more like home. Long story short, it didn't.

We lived in Woodbridge for 6 weeks and 4/6 weeks we had a handyman doing something. For the first 4 days we didn't have a functioning dryer. For the first 4 weeks we didn't have a functioning oven. Then water spewed out of a drain in the laundry room and we couldn't do laundry again for 4 days. Ugh. Did I mention it wasn't very fun?

To the meat of the story..

Once the laundry was "fixed", I caught up on all of our laundry and didn't do laundry again for 3 days. When I went down on a Tuesday night, I found water all over the floor in the basement (laundry room in basement) and the washing machine 1/2 full of sewage. DISGUSTING. A day later, it was COMPLETELY filled and all over the floor in the laundry room. Unfortunately, we were renting from landlords who were not willing to do what was necessary to fix/clean the basement and since they live in New York, our hands were tied. We stayed in a hotel for 4 nights because the air was so bad. Honestly, they are very lucky we didn't get a lawyer. At one point the landlord told me I could get some bleach to clean out the washing machine. Um, no. (In a nutshell, that's the way they wanted to handle the situation).

While at the hotel (Thurs., Fri., Sat., Sun.) we frantically looked at new places to live. Our realtor was very helpful and understood that we needed to find a place within a few days. We prayed and prayed that one of the five places we were going to see would work. The fifth place we looked at is where we live now.  (Big happy face!)

We are so incredibly thankful for all of the help we received from our new church family. With only a few days notice, 15-20 men came on Saturday morning and had us packed up and moved into our new place all within a few hours time. WOW.

I am still in awe of how God comforted me during this awful time. Even when I wasn't sure if the health department was going to condemn the property (and all that implies) I knew God had a bigger plan for us than to be in Woodbridge.

Thank you to Barb and Katie for all of your help(!!) and to all of you who prayed, we are loving our new home.