At long last...The House.

I've put this off long enough.  People have been wondering and asking about our house but I've kept thinking that I would take pictures once it was DONE.  After having lived here for two months now, it's becoming clear that it'll only really feel done once we have gone through every room and made it ours.  But that could take a while (hello, BUDGET!) so I finally just bit the bullet and took pictures this morning.  I didn't clean, I didn't set anything up.  This is how it looks in the middle of a day of playing!  Enjoy!

This is the front of the house (in summer, can't WAIT!).  The door on the right is the one we use.  The other door goes into the living room.

This is the first thing you see when you walk in the door. That's the door you see on the left...attached garage is to the left of that yet.  This window faces west.

On the right, where the jackets are hanging, is the rest of the entrance.  The door you see is into the garage.  Two steps up brings you into the house.  On the right is the desk you just saw.  On the left is the family room.

This is the family room.  Gas fireplace in the corner is the heat for this room.  That window is opposite the window above the desk and faces east (beautiful sunrises out there!!).

More of the family room.  The door you see at the back leads onto our deck.

Walk straight into the kitchen and this is what you see on your right.  The door at the back is the master bedroom (which I'll not share a picture of today...I'll wait until that one is done!)  The kids bedroom is just around the corner by the fridge, straight ahead.  The bathroom door is just to the left of that last cabinet on the left.

Walk to the fridge and turn around and this is the rest of the kitchen.  Bedroom doors are right behind me.  Family room is to the left.  The opening you see on the right is the dining room/living room.  The bathroom doorway is just to the right of that doorway.  This window faces south.

Living room is on the north west corner of the house.  The window faces west.  There is SUCH good light in this room during the day!

This is the dining room.  Excuse the mess on the table.  We were busy doing crafts this morning (Levi's favourite activity these days!).  Plus, he and Kayden were having lunch while I was taking pictures.  Also excuse the placement of pictures!  After we moved in, I just took random pictures and put them on pre-existing nails just to keep them safe and we haven't moved them yet.  The photo wall in the living room is the only place where we actually have put in our own nails!  This window faces south and the entrance to this room is just out of sight on the left hand edge of the picture (the exersaucer is right in front of the doorway).

The bathroom is huge.  I believe the previous owners took out the third bedroom and made both the master bedroom and bathroom bigger.  While the third bedroom would have been nice for us, I do enjoy having so much space in the bathroom!  And, we do have some plans up our sleeve for creating two more bedrooms in the hopefully near future...stay tuned!

This is the kids bedroom (remember, right off the kitchen by the fridge?).  We painted both this room and our bedroom before we moved in.  While we were at it, we painted the oak trim and doors white and replaced the hardware/plugs/lightswitches.  As we work our way through each room, we plan to paint trim and replace hardware/plugs/switches.  We're also on the lookout for good deals on light fixtures but no hurry.  The kids enjoy the fans :)  The spots on the wall are removable so it'll be easy to switch up the look in this room whenever the design bug hits.  The pictures are Dick and Jane photos of the siblings playing.  I thought it would be fitting for a shared bedroom.

And that's our house!  The basement has our guest bed, laundry and storage but is mostly unfinished/wood paneling and has no heat/windows so there's not much to show.  We might do minimal work to the basement but it'll likely just be painted and decorated a bit so that company doesn't feel like they're staying in quite a...BASEMENT.  I believe Nathan's brother has officially refused to ever sleep down there, though both of our parents and my sister have spent a few nights down there with no complaints.  Maybe they're just being nice...though apparently you can't hear the kids from down there so I'm thinking about booking myself a night down there for a little "getaway" one of these days.  Oh, the possibilities!

This house is situated on a 10 acre yardsite with ALOT of grass, some pasture, some old corrals, a shop (where we park our vehicles), and some trees.  It's beautiful out here and we LOVE being here.  We can't see any neighbours by day and at night we only see lights in the distance.  We're 12-15 minutes from town and on a quiet road so we don't even see vehicles going by every day.  I can't even describe how much like home it feels already.  I've loved our homes in the past but this place...it just has that staying quality.  I feel like I'm finally HOME.

What's new?

There have been interesting things happening for the McCorkindale family lately and I figured I should probably share before the rumours get out of control.  ; )

Nathan and I have always dreamed of living on an acreage one day.  We weren't sure if it would ever be possible because being a pastor often means that you don't stay in one place long-term, not to mention the simple fact that living in the town where the church is often just makes sense.  People can drop in, you can easily make it to church-related events, etc.  It's easier to be a pastor when you live right there.  So, after having been pastors/students for our entire married life thus far, we had pretty much put the thought of an acreage out of our minds.  Retirement, maybe, but not now.

Jump to this summer. We've lived here for two years now and haven't really felt like living IN town was a huge advantage in the pastoring game (the church is about 15 minutes from town).  That said, we weren't looking for a new place when we happened to hear about an acreage that was for sale. We went to look at it but mostly just put it out of our minds because it was a big chunk of change and the house didn't seem workable for our family.  But a month later we started thinking about it again and couldn't get it out of our minds.  We went to see the house again and, with fresh eyes, it seemed very workable indeed!  We fell in love with the yard and location all over again (between town and the country-church where Nathan pastors - perfect!) and really started looking into how we could make it work.

We had the dreaded meeting with the bank and they gave us the go-ahead to pursue this property.  All we needed was to sell our house.  The market in town seemed to be at a stand-still with around 80 properties for sale in a 10km radius of town and few of them moving.  But everything so far had been falling into place so we decided to list our house and see what happened.  We met with an agent a week ago today, Friday.  Our house was listed the next day, Saturday, with one showing that day and another one the next.  Low and behold, Monday afternoon came and we had an offer.  Now, if all goes well, conditions will be removed in a few days and we will be moving to the country at the end of the month!

So that's what's happening.  If you've noticed that our house is on the realty site, no, we're not leaving town...well, we ARE...but not really. : ) No, we're not building.  We're just living the dream!

This just seems to be such a God-thing.  We had a dream; God knew that dream.  He brought the perfect property at the perfect time.  Our house sold in record time for more than we'd been hoping for.  And now we'll be spending Christmas in our new home.  What a blessing!*

Today I took Levi and we picked out kittens that will become farm cats once we move.  But they were available now and my inner child came forth and claimed two of the cutest little 8 week old kittens for my very own.  I had been hoping that Levi would just be naturally gentle and nurturing with them.  He loves animals so much so I'd love to see him be good with animals...a born animal-whisperer if you will...but alas, it has been a day of explaining time and again how kittens don't like to be fenced in, how they don't like to be picked up by the tummy all the time, how they don't want to be forced to eat or forced to sleep or forced to do anything.  He'll learn.  Maybe.  Hopefully before we move out to the farm cause otherwise it'll be a long month!

*Yes, I realize that there are some questions that come up when God makes some people's dreams come true while others are praying for more "serious" things with (seemingly) no answers.  I've got nothing except that I can't NOT thank God for this blessing when it seems so much like He's making it all come together.