The Upcoming Move, Part 1

We are moving. At least to the best of our knowledge, that's the plan. We don't know where or when. We do know that we intend to stay in the same city and we have some notions about what part of town we'd like to live in. So now it's a matter of waiting to see what God has for us.

We moved into our current house almost 2 1/2 years ago. Life in the previous house is a very long story, with all sorts of twists and turns. Maybe I'll get energetic and post it here one day - in multiple parts. Through a series of events we'd never have forseen, we were able to move out of that house and are renting the house we're in currently.

We really like where we live. The house is great for our family, the neighborhood is very nice, and we have good access to most places we want to go. However, since we rent, there are some things over which we have no control. Things like this:



and this:



This would be two of the four designs in the wallpaper in our kitchen and dining room. Not that I'm opposed to the colors green or orange, per se. I just don't really want them to be partners in this busy story on the walls of my areas of domesticity. They also clash something terrible with all the cute red, white, and black checkerboard & cherries theme I had going in the last kitchen.

Then there are the utility bills. Having an old furnace and windows that aren't as efficient as they could be don't really help so much. We do close off the family room, since it's not used much (mostly storage these days), and we don't use the furnace more than necessary. We really do make an effort to keep our usage down as much as possible.

The utility rates have gone up every year, as I'm sure they do all over the country. We're nearing the end of our third winter here and we reached an all-time high of almost $400 in one month! No, we're not having a tropical, run around in flip-flops and bikinis kind of environment here. That was staying fairly cool most of the time. After that bill, we had to move into the "staying fairly COLD" stage of living. The one where your thermostat is set between 59-61 degrees, regardless of HOW cold and snowy and windy it is outside. Brrrrr!

It was at this point, we decided that we really did not want to pay that much money to freeze. It would've been a different story if we were roasty toasty at that price. At least we could've cut some corners. But there really weren't any left to cut. We realized that it must be time to move.