A Town-house!

We have known for a while that we wanted to move from our apartment located in "downtown" Cáceres, but we weren't entirely sure where.  We loved living downtown because we could see the school from our balcony, and EVERYTHING was close by... not to mention we loved our neighbors!  The downside was that there was no place for the kids to play.  We lived on a hill (not just a little one...), so it was difficult to get bikes out or even for one of us to walk all the kids to the park.  There were always cars and tons of people.  We decided the pros of moving farther out of the "center," where we would have more space, would outweigh the cons.  We had been encouraged by some of our leaders to look for a "town-house" this time, as it would allow us to have a small yard AND a garage.  Both of which give options for places for the kids to play! :)

This is a picture of our little yard (before it was actually ours...) This is now the view from my bedroom window. :)

This is our "back yard"... haha... our patio out back.  All these pics are from before we moved in, when we were looking at it.

One thing to realize about Cáceres ( I don't really know about the rest of Spain...) is that there are no "houses"... like what we would consider a "house" in a neighborhood, free-standing and alone. :)  That sounds funny.  Ok, I guess I have to revise that a bit.  There are none of these really available for the "normal" person.  There is one neighborhood on the very outskirts, but they are "mansions" much more for the wealthy, AND they are ON TOP of each other... not literally, but nothing like we would think of as a typical American neighborhood. :)  In addition to this, there are only really a couple areas of our city that even have "town-houses."  It's the newer parts of towns, and very much on the outskirts. 

We were really praying for direction and wisdom in making the decision as to where to move.  We wanted to be where GOD wanted us, and not just where it was convenient for us.  We were praying for direction and discernment... and many of you were praying with us!  Thank you!  God completely answered our prayers.  There were two areas of town that had town-houses (each on complete opposite sides of town), but only one of those areas actually had something available.  Yes, talk about clear.  That kinda settled that!  And then, out of that one area, there were only TWO town-houses available!   The first one we walked into was amazing.  I loved it, but our realtor kept telling us the other one was bigger, so we needed to look.  It was bigger, but there was a lot of damage in it... as well as a lot of mold. Yuck.  Again, a very clear answer.

SOOOO... we quickly decided on the one and only option that was healthy for our family! :)  Thank you, Lord, for your CLEAR direction! :) haha... love it!  The amazing thing is that this one and only option was absolutely perfect for what we needed.  What a gracious God we serve!

The owners have been wonderful.  They installed railings (we have TWO sets of stairs in this house!!) for Nathan, so he could easily (and safely) walk up and down.  They also volunteered to put in a dishwasher for us!  I feel like I'm in heaven!!!!... WOW, the blessing of a dishwasher!  I think I save hours out of my day by having that beautiful thing! haha...

They also gave us the keys to the house a couple weeks before the time we were to actually start our contract.  It was perfect, because we didn't really have a moving truck, so we began to move our stuff little by little over those few weeks.  I didn't have too many boxes, either, so I kept packing and unpacking.  It was actually nice, in some aspects.  When we finally did our big move, I had a lot of things already settled.  The one catch was that we were moving out of a furnished apartment into a technically "unfurnished" place.  (I say technically, b/c we do have a couple of pieces of furniture from them, but not much.)  We've known ever since we started this process that this time would be coming.  We sold much of what owned in the States, knowing we would have to buy everything again here. 

As we began to "pack and unpack" each room, we realized we needed to buy our furniture quickly, b/c I had no place to "unpack" my things.  Read my next blog for our crazy adventure of trying to furnish our new home in Spain... talk about craziness!

This is out front of our townhouse.  Our row of town houses is on the left, so you can't really see the houses themselves.  BUT you can see the huge common area in between.  It's totally a pedestrian zone, so the boys LOVE to play soccer here, drive their remote-control cars and ride bikes.

This is our living room/dining room... again, before we moved in.

And my ktichen!!!  It was really what sold me on the house, because kitchens like this are about un-heard of here!  It's huge.  I just love it!  You can see the washing machine next to the sink.  They moved it outside and installed a dishwasher!  The little white thing behind me (yes, it's shorter than me!) is our fridge...