Move

Daniel celebrated his 8th birthday the day before our move out of our house and into our temporary apartment. He got to celebrate at school (above) with pizza, cupcakes and presents from his classmates. Grandma and I (Carisa) got to go to school at lunch time to take the cupcakes. He also celebrated at home (below) with more cupcakes and presents from family while surrounded by boxes!

We moved on Saturday with tons of help from Grandma (Paul's mom) and our Crossroads family. In this picture are Ryan (our worship leader, in the van), Jeremy (the drummer, in the yellow stocking cap), Jose (our tear down team leader), Paul and Dan (our youth minister). There were at least 6 other guys from church there helping: almost the entire worship team, some of the teens from the youth group and other good friends from Crossroads. Stacy (one of the children's ministry team members) helped me with several trips to the apartment and organized my kitchen! Calista (the associate minister's wife) helped pack up my dishes for storage. Throughout the week before Paul's mom helped pack and with Jae's schooling and Daniel's homework. She stayed with the boys and made it possible for Paul and I to do all the running around we needed to to get ready for the move. If it weren't for all the help on moving day and throughout the week before from our church family and Paul's mom I don't think we would have been able to get it all done in time.

Here are some pictures from our temporary apartment. It's a really nice sized Brooklyn apartment. We're right on the main strip in Bay Ridge: 86th St. We have such entertainments as: high schoolers swinging from the fire escape outside our living room window on their walk home from school! Seriously, it is a really nice apartment and we're very blessed to have it.

Our kitchen window looks out in the apartment building courtyard and has a view of the door to the laundry room.

The view out our living room window.

The boys' room is bigger than their room in the house. Plenty of room for big messes!

We have no new news on either of the houses we've put bids on. But we closed on the sale of our house on Friday. We are officially NOT homeowners for right now and have the downpayment for the purchase of our next house in the bank.

I'm glad to have one move behind us. I'm really looking forward to getting into a house and getting settled and being able to focus more of our attention on ministry. All of this has taken so much time and energy. But we realize that it's necessary to make it possible for us to continue to live and minister here in NYC. Please continue to pray that God will provide the best house for our family and ministry and that will provide the income we need.

Follow up on Daniel's Christmas day hospital visit: he hasn't had any more problems with hip pain and his pediatrition said that usually there are no after affects from what he had. We are very thankful to have him running around again. Well.....most of the time..... :-) Thank you for your prayers for Daniel.