There goes the neighborhood....

I feel as though we've invaded our new neighborhood. I mean, how could we possibly belong here? There are houses and families and kids and school buses and neatly tended yards - and we live here, in one of the houses, with a (for now) semi-neatly-tended yard, and we're a family, with kids. We're not just walking through from a nearby apartment complex. We LIVE here.
I keep waiting for someone to knock on the door and tell us to leave.
But so far, it hasn't happened. It's such a switch, this move. I guess it really drives home all the changes we've undergone in the past year. A year ago, we were just another young-married couple, heading off on an end-of-summer trip to Boise. We were hoping and praying to be blessed with a child soon. We lived in a tiny apartment near campus, with every detail arranged just the way we wanted. Our life was so different. Blissful and blessed in its own way, but so different. Little did we know how things were about to change, and how blessed and fulfilled we would feel just a year later.

The beginning of our journey - first day of our honeymoon, at the base of the Column in Astoria.

Back to the neighborhood. I'm not sure exactly why I don't feel like we belong here. Perhaps the exhaustion has caught up with me. On the other hand, maybe it's that feeling of going from just-past-newlywed couple to mom and dad with two kids in just a year . . . I guess I haven't quite caught up! At least once a day, we have to do something or something happens that makes me snap to attention and remember that this is normal. The most recent example? It's Tuesday, which means it's garbage day. At 6:30 this morning, as Dan dragged the cans out to the curb (did I mention I love him?!) I told him to put the recycling can back, it wasn't recycling week. Well, when we got home from taking him to work, guess what? I was wrong. According to the rest of the street, it IS recycling week. Luckily, it was just past 7 and I wasn't too late to correct my error. The walk to the garbage can may be a lot shorter than it was in our apartment, but there sure is a lot more to keep track of in order to make the garbage go away!
I really do like it here, lest I sound ungrateful. We are very blessed to be living in this adorable little house. We are renting it from a family member, which is a great arrangement for us right now. There is a nice big yard and we have a garage. Right now, it's full of boxes, but it's still a garage. Eventually we'll put the car in it. Most importantly, I can take the girls with me to run errands and unload the car without help, since I'm only going about ten feet out the door while they stay inside. It is a little strange knowing that the whole street can see your comings and goings, but I kind of like the lack of anonymity. It feels a little bit like Wistful Vista. I'm still expecting that knock on the door, but I'm going to enjoy it here while we can! If there's one lesson I've learned in the past year, it's that you can't take any stage of your life for granted. Our lives change in God's time, not our own, and while these changes have certainly been for the best this year, we need to drink in every blessed moment all the same.
I hope you all have a wonderfully blessed day!