Our basement home.

I mentioned Mark's chapel speech and how he talked about our staging process, but what I didn't say, was that he also talked about our new home.

He gave the speech last Monday...and told me the Sunday afternoon before that it would be really great to include pictures of our home.

Say what now???

After moving in, we made quick work of the kids' room and family room...our room...has been a bit of a minefield.  We had a good size stack in my parents' garage that once I moved some boxes out of the way, more were moved down.  It was very common for Mark to run into things when he got up in the morning.

I spent the afternoon and evening getting our home ready for photos.

I told him he planned this chapel just so I would clean & move out the remaining obstacles!!

Before we moved, at night or nap time when I was sick of packing, I worked on planning our new space.  For however long we were going to be here, I wanted us all to be comfortable.  We are not banished to the basement, but I wanted it to feel like home.  With a smaller space, everything would have to serve a purpose. 

I am so grateful that my parents gave us the freedom to do whatever we wanted.  Which was painting...and moving everything but their couch out.  They have made this move SO EASY.

When I tell people we are currently living in the basement, they are usually surprised, but my parents have a very nice basement...when I say basement in front of my mom, she corrects me to say lower level...but basement always comes out first for me. :)

Without further ado...our basement home:

the hall leading to the kids' room

Eddie, Dani and Eleanor's room

the rocking chair was my mother's day gift from Mark & the kids.

we sold our glider rocker because it was too big, but I SO missed rocking El.

Yup.  married to the sweetest man.

 it's hard to see in the pictures, but Eddie & Dani's beds line up on the wall.

They just fit.  I thought about taking new pictures today...but their room isn't this clean.  I'll take new ones after I wash all the sheets...that's about the only time the beds are made. :)

I do have an IKEA wire to hang on the long wall for the kid's art work...that will eventually be hung up.

 our bathroom

we have a shower down here and use my sister's tub upstairs for the kids.

our family room

this is what it normally looks like.  

the chairs work really well keeping El contained.

it's mostly kid friendly...but still working on our room.

our room

4 bins of craft stuff that I am not sure where to put yet.

Or room is technically a pool table room...we have curtains that we pull across the opening and that's my parents' pool table in the corner with the ping pong top on.

it works great for storing things!  

We have the rest of the toys and all our photo albums in bins under it.

I wasn't comfortable putting our albums & pictures into storage...so I've kept them with us.

And that ends the tour!

If you noticed the door on the other side of our room, that leads to another set of stairs up to the garage and a storage room.  There is also an extra fridge there that we've taken over.  (We use my parents' kitchen for meals and cooking, downstairs mainly serves as a place to store our food.  We've been given storage space upstairs too, but don't want to shove my parents out of too much of their house! :)  My Dad has a home office set up in the storage room and we plan to set up our desk in their too.  It just hasn't happened yet.  And as you can see we moved most of my parents' stuff out...and lots has landed there.  It's a tad crazy.  So...organizing that is my next project!!

We have a storage unit we've rented.  We've gotten rid of a lot, but obviously not everything could come here.  It's stored over there.  I've been intrigued with the little clutter/minimalist lifestyle and while I know we are far from minimalists, I am loving the fewer belongings.

Most people look at me like I have a third eye or something stuck in my teeth when I say this, but we are loving it here.  We feel very at home and not all that crowded.  We are living together, separately.  Which is a saying I never understood until we started doing it.  

Mark explained it to the kids as our home is downstairs and grandpa & grandma's is upstairs...to which Eddie said, 'Dad, it's one big house.' :P

I was most worried about the kids sharing a room...not going to lie, the first two weeks were rough!  But things have settled down and it is going well.

The area where we want to buy a home has about zero inventory and the homes that are for sale are on the market for about a week. (!!!)  So for now we are sitting tight and waiting for the right place.  Kinda hoping that more people decide to move and we have more to pick from.  With wanting to stay in the next house for a long time, we don't plan to jump at just anything.  We are looking for the right one.  

My parents have said we can stay as long as we want...but joke if they start spending every night looking at homes out where we want to live, we will know it's time to go. :)

Annnnd hopefully this is the end of my ridiculously long posts lately!