Things I'm Looking Forward To In the New House

1. Having a pantry so I don't have to kneel down and scrounge through the cupboard for stuff.
2. Having a 21 cubic foot refrigerator with an ice maker! Our tiny fridge holds so little and it will be nice not to have to make ice all the time (we love ice).
   
3. Cleaning 3 bathrooms (well 2-1/2). Just kidding! I hate cleaning bathrooms. I did enough of it as a janitor for 2 summers at the elementary school and as a maintenance chick for one summer at camp. Although it will be nice to have a 1/2 bath downstairs so we don't have to make a run for it upstairs when the need strikes (especially once I start potty training again.)
4. Jenna having her own bedroom. I've mentioned a few times how much I dislike sharing a room with our darling baby girl. It's time she had her own room and we had our own little sanctuary back.
   
5. I'm also thrilled that her room will be on the 2nd floor. When she takes her morning nap I have to try to keep Ian super quiet so that he doesn't wake her. If she's on the 2nd floor we shouldn't have to worry about that.
6. Speaking of the "little sanctuary" in number 5 - have you seen the size of the master bedroom?! It's insanely huge! I plan on putting some kind of overstuffed reading chair in the bay window (searching, searching, searching on Craig's List for the perfect chair - I thought I had one on Saturday, but someone beat me to it! Arghhh!)
7. Having not one, but two walk in closets in the "little sanctuary". Of course, I get the bigger of the two. :o) I know Trevor is looking forward to having his own little nook. His is actually big enough for a small desk - he could have a mini home office in there. He doesn't have enough clothes to fill it anyway!
8. Having a garage! It will be so nice to be able to park the car out of the elements. In the summer to get it out of the sun and out of the snow in the winter. Of course, it will take awhile for us to get it all cleared out after the move. Which is another reason I'll be glad to have it. It will be a place to be able to sort through boxes without having them smack in the middle of our small downstairs.

We've come a long way from our 300 square foot studio apartment on the campus of WBC/CBS. As I re-read this list I have to laugh as I remember what life was like in that tiny apartment. There was no real kitchen to speak of - just a small counter with a sink, two burners (no oven) and a few cupboards. The refrigerator was horrible! There wasn't even a "real" freezer in it. Just a little ice box that had a flimsy door that was never intended to seal shut. It just kind of flopped open and shut. We had to defrost it every few months or the ice would take over the space. We couldn't keep ice cream in because it just didn't stay cold enough.

I think our entire apartment was about the size of our new master suite. Our bed sat in one corner across from the "kitchen". If I didn't do the dishes that day then I would lay in bed and see them about 5 feet away. The bathroom was 3 steps away from the bed. We had bookshelves around the headboard of the bed with the computer on the other side so that I could get some sleep if Trevor had to stay up late on the computer. We had a tiny little 2 person table with chairs that slid completely under the table about 2 steps from the bed and on the other side of that was our "living room" which was comprised of a futon, old recliner (from Trevor's great-grandma) and a small TV. Now that I think about it I can't believe we got all of that furniture in there!

Originally we didn't have the TV because I was sure that we could live without one. I had pretty much lived the last 4 years without watching TV. I was in Bible College and didn't have one in my room and didn't feel like hanging out in the lounge to watch TV. I had better things to do - like be all "gah-gah" over Trevor and spend every spare minute with him. Or hang out with friends. Well... married life proved to be much different. Especially married life in a 300 square foot apartment with a husband who spent most of his time doing school work. So after about 4 months without a TV we inherited a tiny 13" from my grandma. It was better than nothing!

I cannot believe we lived there for 3 years! It was all we could afford on our very limited income. As I look back I now realize that we could have probably have gotten food stamps, but I had no idea how poor we really were. Somehow we were able to pay Trevor's tuition every semester and and put a little bit in savings at the same time.

Don't get me wrong - I HATED it! I'm pretty claustrophobic and there were times that I thought I was going to really lose my mind. I was ecstatic when we could finally move out of there into a 2 bedroom apartment! It was the quickest move in the history of Bethany. We had so many people there to help and everything was boxed up and ready to go. We had the truck loaded and the place completely cleaned out in 30 minutes. We were only moving 5 minutes away so I think when all was said and done it only took 2 hours at the most.

So, yeah - we've come a long way!