The first of the year

2012 started at full speed. The main event: a non expected or planned move! Moving is always a huge amount of work, from finding a new place to packing the small stuff to moving the big furniture it is a crazy process. This particular move was more than physically tiring it was emotionally draining.

As I told you here we found out we had to move mid-November. We were not ready for it, we were not expecting it and most of all we DID NOT want to move. We've been looking into buying but have not been ready and we had such a great deal at that house: price, location, and space. It was hard to wrap our heads around the fact that we had to move. We tried everything to stay there but it is not what God has for us anymore and you know how that goes.

We looked for weeks. Places were to small, too far, too expensive, too inconvenient or they wouldn't accept Booger and we are not about to part with him, he is such an important part of our family! We got tired, discouraged, and angry. We decided to take a break for the Holidays and resume our look after New Year, when we did Bruce found a little place right up the street from where we used to live.

We went to see it, he loved it, we applied for it and the next day we had a new place to live. It wasn't that easy for me though. You see I want a three bedroom house, with a yard and enough room to fit all our stuff. Is that too much to ask? Well apparently there's more important things that I need to learn and that God wants to take care of. I threw my fit but we had already gone through the application process and to tell the truth we did not have more time to be looking, we had a lot to do and not enough time.

I was really worried that our furniture would not fit in the smaller apartment. I had a bad attitude about the whole situation and I gave Bruce a hard time! He, as usual, confronted me, listened to me, forgave me and loved me unconditionally. He does such a good job at representing Jesus in my life, I love my man. Anyway, to make an already long story not so long everything fit and I love it! I was reminded of God's care for us (we can move any time as long as we give a 30 day notice which works perfect for our plans to buy, might be sooner than we think!). I was reminded that is not the building or its size that make a home it's the people that share live with me(as long as I get to wake up to my hot man, a growing belly and a happy dog I am home!). God touched my heart by sending my mom to help us with the move and bless us with stuff we have been wanting for a while (I would have never been able to pull off all the cleaning/moving/settling by myself, specially because I get so tired and there's a lot of heavy duty work that needed to be done). All these goodness out of one move! How do I ever second guess God's moves? There another lesson! He never stops amazing me!

Now the pictures, not that you care too much but this is sort of my family's diary.

New home

Welcome to our love nest

The kitchen with the island my love got for me

The zebra moved into the office
side of the kitchen, hey I needed
to make it work!

The office on the other side of the kitchen

Livingroom and the awesome rug mom got for us!

Dinning room, so happy it fit outside of the kitchen

Panrty and Booger's food station

Guest bathroom, my decor fits!

Bruce did a great job picking the curtain

The bookshelf we transformed

Our bed fit beautifully!

The fish had to go in our room, bye bye tv,
it will be good for us!

Cool looking master bathroom, love it!

Have I mentioned how much I love making a house feel like our home? I think it worked out pretty good and no matter how long we live here we will be comfortable and happy because we have each other! What a crazy time and how many valuable lessons!

Happy 2012!

Making our home

One of the things I love the most about married life is that we get to 'build' our home. On December last year we bought our very first couches:

Pleader reclining couches

It was so exciting (for me) to go to the store knowing that we had a budget and that we could pick anything we liked within that price range! Sometime between when we got out of the store after the purchase and when we got to sit (and recline) on our brand new couches for the very first time Bruce admitted that he would have never even thought about buying new furniture (that's what craigslist is for, right?). However, I loved seeing his face full of satisfaction the first couple of times we got to hang out in the living room or when he got home from work to a furnished house.

My parents' Christmas present for us was a gorgeous dining set that we saw the same day we bought the couches:

Marble top and pleader chairs

So the dining/living areas were covered, we are so happy with how everything turned out and  specially excited that we don't owe a dime on either piece of furniture(please don't take offense)!

Next step our bed! Long story short we got our bed from some guy that was moving out of his house and wanted us to take as much stuff as we could out of his hands. This was when we first moved to the Sates (after a year in Mexico City), anyway, we rented a U-haul and got tons of stuff among which there were two twin mattresses. We set them together on the floor in our tiny apartment and called it a 'king size' bed. It wasn't as comfortable as it sounds because we would have a crack in the middle, it was a pain! So I got some yarn and sew both mattresses together and voila, problem solved! Then Bruce got some 5 gal buckets and set them underneath to make the bed higher, it worked for a while until the box springs started breaking so, I was forced to take them out and set our bed on the floor. Bruce didn't like it to much but we didn't have an option. Anyway, last Sunday I thought that we could splurge some money of this months budget to buy a decent bed frame. It took two stores and three transactions to get the bed of our dreams (to be honest it's still growing on me but I like it and I love that Bruce is happy with it!). So with no further ado I give you our new bed:



It's massive and it makes our room look so small but it's perfect!



It's missing the drawers on the front and the foot board is cracked so we need to get a new foot board and the drawers which will hopefully be in soon.

So everything looks perfect right? We have a king size bed frame and we don't need a new mattress because we have a 'king size mattress' (insert squealing tires sound effect here); we put the bed together, we put the box springs on the bed and oh goodness our 'king size mattress' is too short!!! Bruce was a little disappointed but we decided that it is the perfect excuse to buy ourselves a new king size mattress (great take on life adversities, right?) Of course that will be next month, but hey our bedroom is coming together!

Inspiration.

So today I was very bored at work and I started browsing through blogger to see if I could find more interesting people to read about (I do this more than I care to confess). Anyway I came across this blog and I just couldn't stop reading!

I've always known that I wanted to be a stay-at-home wife/mom but it never occurred to me that this desire could be more than a wish to not have to wake up every morning and go to an office for 8 hours. For a while now I just thought of myself as a passionless woman that just wanted to stay home and sleep or watch tv all day because no office job sounds attractive to me. Now even when this does sound appealing I don't think Bruce would love this idea and to be honest I don't think I could do that for too long I think it would drain the life out of me as much as my 9-5 job does.

I've been working 9-5 over the past year and although it has been great for our finances (we have been able to live a very comfortable life) and for me, in a way, (I really wouldn't have as much house work to do to keep me busy all day every day); it is not at all what I see myself doing for the rest of my days, gosh no! I think I would die slowly.

Reading the blog I mentioned above shined a whole new light on my desire. It is a God-given desire! He made me that way! He created me so I would want to be a better wife for my husband, have a clean and pretty house, plan, shop and cook meals, be there to see my kids' milestones, raise them and love on them! That's why I've never had passion for the work place or any career in particular.

Now I do have a plan to keep being productive. I am an interpreter and translator and that opens a world of possibilities for me to work from home at least while we don't have kids. I have already given the first steps back home (long story) so I'm praying I will be back home in a couple of months!

Thank you God for the many ways you use to speak to me!