(I know this isn't a house picture. See bottom of post for explanation.)We now occupy yet another old house, full of quirks and charm. Happily, this one is more charm than quirks (which is more than we could say about our 12th St. house, no matter how many good times we had there). Our new home is in the Springfield section of Jacksonville, close to downtown, a designated historic district full of houses built in the early 1900s. The owners we rented ours from spent five years of weekends rennovating, so we're moving into an almost completely redone space, which is a new experience for us after two NY previous homes that required major work just to feel, well, not yucky. We've had some minor projects: the kitchen sink broke the second night we lived here, and Ryan had to move or install some shower curtain bars and towel holders and the like, but the place was clean and freshly painted at our arrival, a major step up for the Myers family.
This house is HUGE by our standards: two stories: four bedrooms, with a sunroom off the master bedroom, plus an office, 2 1/2 baths, large eat-in kitchen, formal dining room, and living room. The kids are glorying in having their own bedrooms - and Mom and Dad are enjoying having our own bedroom, too. As I'm sure you can imagine. (Not that you want to.)
Ryan and I went to Chattanooga a few weekends ago for a Vineyard conference for prospective church planters. We enjoyed Chattanooga, a riverfront city with an active downtown scene. We stayed in the historic Chattanooga Choo Choo, where you can sleep in a choo choo, eat in a choo choo, and choo choo around the hotel grounds in a little trolley. (We did none of the above, sleeping instead in a strange Chinese-themed building with a elevator dolled up to look like a pagoda, and taking the free city shuttle bus around the city in our free time.) We came away from the conference feeling like we could plant a church; what we still don't know is whether we should. For now, we're pretty sure that God is calling us to "dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness." For us, that means reverting to old habits: gathering as many people as possible as often as possible, and having a great time doing it.
It's been a long time since we've had a home large enough for large crowds of people, and we can't wait to fill it up! So come visit us, okay?
Due to technical difficulties with iphoto and our external hard drive, we have no photos of our house to post. So instead, you're getting pictures of Daniel practicing his swordplay. He's about to dress up as a knight for Halloween, hence the plastic weaponry. Sophie is going to be a knight, too. The dollar store rocks.
You're also getting a photo of Sophie on one of her more injury-prone weeks. She scratched her forehead taking her shirt off (I'm not sure how it happened either), then got hit with a ball while she was wearing her glasses in Sunday school. On the upside, she got to hang out with her cousin Lauren at an early birthday celebration. In case you're wondering, Lauren is the non-scabby one of the pair.
