A New Home

A few weeks ago, my husband and I sat down to discuss the next year. He had been job hunting for the last couple of months, and kept asking me where I wanted to live. My best answer was “closer to family;” we liked the small town we were living in, but it was a four-hour drive to my parents and a seven-hour drive to his parents. My husband finally suggested a town that was central to most of our family, and we decided to go house hunting there.

He printed the classifieds, I called a few landlords, and we packed our stuff and hit the road. That evening we stopped at friends’ on the way (we usually try to break up the seven-hour drive as Sunshine gets bored after about three or four hours). The next day, we looked at four places to rent and found one that we liked. We told the landlady we’d take it, and drove back to the city to run a few errands there before taking off on holidays for the weekend.

On Monday, we were back at home, packing and getting ready to move. My husband’s parents showed up on Wednesday with a pickup truck and a brand-new cattle trailer, and we began loading it up. The trailer was a foot narrower than the trailer that we had used to move last year, and so my father-in-law, with precise mathematical calculations suiting a retired engineer, predicted that we’d need a second trailer. My uncle was ready to bring his trailer up—until we got everythings stashed into the first trailer.

My in-laws took off with the trailer Wednesday night, and my husband, Sunshine, and I camped out on the floor of our now-empty house. The next day, we cleaned the house, went for lunch with friends, did the walk-through with the landlord, said goodbye to a few more friends, and hit the highway. On the weekend, we went to a reunion at my husband’s Bible school. Then on Monday, we were unpacking the trailer at our new place.

It’s been fun to see the new place slowly turn into a home, as our things get settled and organized and make the place ours. The previous tenants painted it wild colours—mustard yellow, cranberry red, dark purple, lime green—so we’ll be repainting a few rooms. We’re liking the ten-foot ceilings, especially with some of my tall furniture. And it’s fun to run into my grandparents at the gas station and be able to invite my husband’s parents over for dinner.