Multitude Monday - 1000 Gifts: Our "This Year" Home

No... we don't live in a hut or a mud brick house. In fact, most people are surprised by how nice our Niamey homes actually are. Some things we like better (huge bathrooms, lots of space and no carpets to clean)... some things are annoying (buildings not built to square and sloppy tile patterns)... some are downright frustrating (plumbing and electrical parts that are breaking if you look at them the wrong way), but it is home and you learn to just sort of roll with the punches.

Missionary friends who are on furlough this year are graciously subleasing their home to our family... which gives us that time to figure out where we are going to live for the rest of this term. Please excuse the piles of "stuff" still scattered about in these photos... it will probably take me the better part of a month to actually get the stuff back into storage that we want to keep stored for this year and the stuff out of storage and then put away, things that we want available for use here at the house... and since the storage place is 2 km (about a 10 minute drive) away from the house, we are doing it a carload at a time.

We are so thankful for our "this year" home and for our God who provided for us through the graciousness of His servants... our friends!

#310 a kitchen with a sink where I don't have to stand on tippy-toes the whole time I'm doing dishes

#311 working fridge and freezer

#312 a huge oven to bake all that bread I'm gonna be baking this year

#313 a huge living/dining room with lots of windows

#314 a computer/homework/play/dressing room for the kids

#315 which leads into a "dorm" style room with an air conditioner (and that I actually caught an angry-Elsie-Mae-expression... they're pretty rare... for posterity's sake)

#316 HUGE bathrooms... one even has a bathtub and the kids love the "kid sinks" ...we haven't clued the little ones in on the fact that most people call them "bidets" (hee hee)!

#317 sort of, mostly indoor laundry lines - although the laundry still has to come down or get soaked in a hard rain

#318 an incredible screened in terrace/porch where the kiddos can play and that helps, significantly, control the mosquito population (and where we can store the stuff I'm still sorting through)

#319 a portable fan that sits right by the computer to help keep it cool while we are working

#320 my waterbed - even if my guy filled it with hot water - I blame the sweat rolling down his back and the back of his knees as he worked to assemble and then fill it - I guess that caused him to temporarily forgot that we live on the backside of the SAHARA DESERT!!!

#321 my guy who did work hard to get our waterbed ready for use and who puts up with me teasing him about his temporary lapse in sanity

#322 two littlest girls, wearing nuthin' but their underwear 'cause it was really hot that day, sitting together on the table eating carrots that the two biggest girls cleaned and sliced just so we'd have something to snack on around the house

#323 a carport for the car

#324 our faithful little car (the girls call her "Emily") that suffices to transport our gang while the engine on our Landcruiser is being rebuilt... and we saw that Landcruiser out for a test drive Sunday night, so Tim can't wait to call the mechanic Monday morning!