Home Sweet Home

Today marks 4 weeks of owning our house. We spent the first week moving in and the next 3 getting unpacked. We are mostly settled except a few boxes, some decorations and the garage. We are so thankful that God opened the door for us to buy this house and we love everything about it - the house, the location and the neighborhood! I took pictures of the main level yesterday so thought I would share them :-)

The front entry - the door on the right leads to the garage and the other two are an entry closet and guest room/office

The guest room/office

The living room

The dining room

From the back of the house

The kitchen. I love all the space! I got spoiled with a big kitchen in Roseau and am so thankful to have one again :-)

We love being out here on the deck! Whenever possible we play out here, eat out here or just sit out here and relax

One of these days we will get a table on the patio :-)

When we left our house in Roseau, I didn't think I would find one I loved as much. God has given us more than we expected in many ways since moving here and this house is definately one of them. One of the added blessings is an 8 year old girl - Gabby - right next door! The move has been hardest on Madison and having a friend right next door has been amazing for her. They hit it off right away and are so similiar. They play, play and play! They are great at including Isaac and Hannah too, which is nice for me and them :-)

I will show you upstairs next - or you can just come visit us and see it for yourself :-)

Buried . . . .

. . . . under boxes, furniture and cleaning for the last two weeks.

YEAH - we are in our new house!! Although we have lots of unpacking to do we are having fun getting settled. I will not have pictures for a bit so will show you our view instead. We are loving, loving, loving it!!

I linked these three pictures together for a larger look at our view from the deck. We love to sit on it and enjoy the nice cool nights and beauty around us.

The "lake" area - complete with a human beach, dog beach and plenty of fishing :-) We have been down there several times to swim.

Our house from the pond - it is the brown one. There is a path that we can take down that is a couple houses to the left of us otherwise we cut through the grass :-) I can't wait to put pictures of the inside - we are loving living here.

Trusting Him

As soon as we knew we were leaving MN and heading to MT we began praying for the transition, particularly for Madison. She has two passions - drawing and horses. In Roseau, God had provided two people/places for her to have art and riding lessons. We didn't seek this out for her, it just "happened". God is so good like that! Anyways, not only did she enjoy these lessons, she really loved her teachers. We knew it would be hard for her to leave them and the lessons behind. Once again, God has provided above and beyond what we could have expected here in MT. Through a neighbor of Brock's mom's we found a place for her to take lessons that has been awesome. She gets individual attention, a horse and a teacher that she really likes and the opportunity to use the horse she rides in 4H! We are thrilled about this additional perk and know she will LOVE doing the horse program in 4H. In addition to this, Madison's lesson just happens to be right before her new friends lesson and they get to do their cool down/warm up together. Madison has longed to ride casually with a friend here :-) The way God works out details is always amazing. We are so thankful to be in His loving care!!

Madison and Barney


Madison riding with Samantha and Sadie

Hannah and Isaac also enjoy the lessons because they get to play, play, play in the sand :-)


Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4

Our New House!!!

We are so excited to have an offer accepted on a house! We have loved this house ever since we drove in the neighborhood a month ago. It is a subdivision outside of town with amazing views. It is only 5 miles from Brock's work too. The house has a smaller lot but backs up to a common area so feels bigger. It sits up on a hill and overlooks the lake/pond and playground area. In the distance is beautiful mountains and farmland! The neighborhood also has an awesome trail system that weaves up and down hills, over bridges and wooded areas and fields. We have always wanted to live in the country and have land but quickly realized we couldn't afford that around here. Although this is only a 1/4 acre lot you would never know it by looking out the back. It makes it feel a bit like being in the country :-) As you can imagine - we are very excited!

I took some pictures of the house off the realty site so they aren't great but at least you get an idea :-) I can't wait to move in and take pictures of my own :-)

The garage is 3 stalls (1 is two deep) so Brock loves that!

View from the back

The view from the back deck - the snow covered lake, farm and mountains. I will not get tired of looking at this!

The living room - there are nice hardwood floors in the entire main level that you cant see in the pictures.

The kitchen - I love the size :-)

Eating area on the other side of kitchen

Formal dining room (off of the living room)

The family room - this is upstairs and has great views out several windows

Another view of the family room - we will get LOTS of use out of this room!

The master bathroom. There are 3 bedrooms (including the master), family room, laundry room and additional bathroom upstairs. Downstairs there is the kitchen, dining room, living room, guest room/office and 1/2 bath.
We can't wait to show you more!

Good News!

We are very excited to have accepted an offer on our house in MN. We will be going to pack up the rest of our belongings soon. We close at the end of this month. We cannot believe how we witnessed God's hand in this all. We felt discouraged many times that it hadn't sold yet. However, He continued to reveal to us why it was "good" that it hadn't. He worked on issues in us through this time that were essential. It was amazing to see Him bring things to light that we didn't realized were issues just so He could walk us through them. We felt Him leading us to really address our budget and how we were spending HIS money. We had just finished ironing out the kinks and addressing our sloppy budget habits when we received the offer. His timing is ALWAYS right! :-) Thankfully, we always had underlying peace throughout the 9 month process because we knew moving to MT was His will for us. He had shown us this in many different ways. Therefore, we only needed to trust Him to finish what He had already put into motion. Unfortunately, there were occasions when we allowed ourselves to get bogged down with the "hows". Thankfully, He continued to challenge us to trust Him and trust His plan for our lives. We are happy that the outcome was the sale of our house but are confident that had there been more waiting in store for us, more disappointments and a greater loss of money we would have continued to trust Him and continued to believe that His good is always BEST (even when it isn't the "good" we had in mind)

Now we are off to do some house hunting. Hopefully, I will have pictures to share soon :-)

Like I Said . . .

I never tire of taking pictures of these beautiful mountains. They change all the time so it seems I always have a new opportunity :-)

The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. Psalm 97:5 (ESV)

The mountains amaze me because they represent to me the power of mighty God. The power to create and the power to "melt like wax" something so grand and magnificent. They continually remind me of what an awesome God we serve!


The beautiful bright blue sky and deep blue mountains were awesome this particular day.

I love the pinkish tint on the snowy mountains

I was up watching a beautiful sunrise and tried to capture it. I was experimenting with shutter speed to try to catch the dark colors yet the bright pinks. I was frozen and ready to call it good enough for now. It is still beautiful even in the midst of my camera illiteracy :-)

Come on In

I have finally taken some pictures of our house in MT to show you our new stomping grounds :-) Unfortunately, our house in Minnesota has not sold yet so we are just renting here until it sells. We left half of our stuff in MN and only brought the essentials with us. Now, instead of looking all over for something we just say "oh it must be in MN still" and we are suddenly off the hook :-)

Here is the outside. We love the neighborhood - it is right across the street from a park, has an awesome view of the mountains, is less than a mile from grandpa and grandma, is 3.5 miles from Target and Costco and about 5 miles from lots of others (old navy, gap, pier one etc), and it is about 5 miles from where Brock works so he still comes home for lunch.

I haven't taken pictures of the main level yet. I will try to do that today - if I get a chance. You would think I have lots of time on my hands, not knowing anyone yet. I stay completely busy doing the normal things of the house (homeschool, running errands, cleaning, cooking etc.) I am not sure how I will fit an "outside life" in when the time comes :-) So, the pics for today are of the upper level. After going about 6 steps up, here you are in the hall

The first door on the right is the bathroom. The bathrooms are probably the worst rooms in the house - they need lots of work (mostly new floors, paint and vanity) But oh well, there are 3 of them so that is great! Another thing we really like is the nice tall ceilings in the main and upper levels.

The next door is our bedroom. It is nice and big with a bathroom (yeah!) and big closets. Although we do not have tv (at least for cable) we do LOVE to watch movies. I guess that would explain why we owned a movie theatre :-) It has been so fun having a nice big library to check out movies from. We checked out a PBS special on the Donner Party the other night. That was possibly a mistake - I dreamt I was fighting to survive along the oregon trail all night long! Brock said his dreams were filled with zombies! I suppose we may need to pick less tragic movies for the sake of our sleep :-)

If this were our house it would be pretty fun to redo the bathroom's. It wouldn't take much yet the difference would be like night and day! I know that people differ when it comes to what they think looks best but I thought maybe there was a general consensus about what doesn't look good. I guess not :-)

Moving on to the next room (this is at the end of the hall) is the school room/office. Painting is another thing I would do in this house if I could :-) I love having this room - it serves for alot of different things and we spend tons of time in here. I am in the process of getting all my scrapbook stuff set up in here also so I can do it whenever I find time :-) The big nice closet is perfect for organizing school supplies, crafts and scrapbook things.

The last room upstairs is the guest room/Hannah's room. If I failed to mention the intense need for repaiting in several rooms then I definately should mention it now :-) We tried to peal off the cherubs (is that what they are called?) but they are stuck HARD.When Erika (Brock's sister) tried to lay Finn down for a nap in here he kept pointing to them in distress. They are a tad scary looking I guess! Hannah has all her clothes and stuff in here but just not the most important thing - HERSELF. When we take the time to kick her out of our bed we will get her crib set up and get her in here. Hopefully she isn't scared of flying, chubby, naked kids on her wall :-)

There are 3 more levels to go! Once I am through then you will see why it is hard for me to keep it clean, at least keep it all clean at the same time :-)