our time at home...

Well I am finally posting about our trip home over spring break! We were very busy during that week, and I have a lot of pictures I want to post, but I will try and only post one for each thing we did, so this doesn't end up being 500 pages long :). Our main goal over spring break was to find a place to live when we move home in a month and a half! God definitely provided, and when it looked like nothing was going to work out (and Kellie was getting very stressed), He came through. I should never have worried in the first place. But we did find an awesome house, in a great location. It is in the Riverside neighborhood, and when we look out our front door we look at the Sim Park golf course, so we have a great view!! AND, a great park to walk our new dog at!! It has a large fenced in back yard, which we are very excited about. We are renting this place, and our lease is a year, so in that year we are going to be looking around to buy a house, which we are very excited about! So these are a few pictures of the house!


So finding our house was definitely the most exciting thing that happened over spring break (besides picking out a puppy, of course:). We got to spend a lot of time with friends and family which was awesome. We can't believe how fast our time here in Indiana has gone, and we will be moving home in just a month and a half!! We are very excited. Jeremy's graduation is on May 19th (yes, on my birthday), and then we are driving back on May 21st. Not wasting any time!! :) I have gotten my job back at Wesley. It is the same exact position and shift and everything! That has been a huge blessing, to know we won't have to worry about that. Jeremy is not sure what he is doing for a job at this time. So here are a few more pics of our time at home.....



This is me and our niece Amber. She is getting so big!!
She will be 7 this April.









Me and my most wonderful sister!!! This was during our,
"its my last day here, so we are going to take a whole bunch
of pictures together" phase :)






Me and Hillary! She came into town and stayed with us on
Wednesday night....we had a blast. So this was right before
me and Jeremy got our butts kicked playing basketball, against
her and Erin...not a good idea on our part :)






Me, Erin and Hill after popping our stove-top Jiffy Pop
popcorn, which we were all very impressed with...as you can tell :)






Me, Melisa and Dianne, painting away on Melisa's new house!!
She closed on her house the week we were home, so we got to
see the whole Birkey family....minus Jodi :(






Erin and I got to go to Exploration Place with Sophie and
Michele!! She has gotten so big!!







Me and Tessia at her birthday party at Sumo's








Me and Erin painting Melisa's bedroom. I have to say, we did
a pretty good job :). And yes, I did do more than what mom
captured in this picture!






The Birkessen children....minus jodi...we missed her!

Emmett

Jeremy and I are finally back in Kansas!! We are very excited to be back for a little while, with our friends and family. Just wanted to update everyone on one of the things we have done since we have been back. I guess us finding a place to live is pretty important, but almost more importantely was getting our puppy!! (Ha, ha). One of dad's teachers at East has a litter of beagle puppies that she is selling for a great price!! So we went out to her house yesterday and we picked our puppy out. It is a male, and his name is Emmett (Jeremy picked that out. I told him he could pick the name, and that I wouldn't say anything. So I am still getting used to that). They are just four weeks old right now, and will be ready to go to homes around the 20th of April. Unfortunately, we won't have moved back yet, and our apartment in Indiana doesn't allow pets, so someone is going to keep him for us for the first month. I wish we could have him for that first month, but that is how it has to be! I am very excited...and Jeremy is getting used to the idea :). He seems like a very mellow puppy, and the owner says that he is the laziest one they have!! So that is what we wanted :). I think I really bonded with him, for the 20 minutes he slept on my chest. Jeremy has never had a dog before, so this will be a new experience for him! These are a few pictures of Emmett, and then one of his whole litter. He is what you call a Blue Tick Beagle, so they have the grey coloring in with the white fur. It makes their coat very soft. They also own the mom and the dad dog, and we got to meet them. I was really impressed with how well mannered they are. They were really sweet dogs, and loved having people around.
We will update on here when we find where we are going to live. There is one house that is very promising right now. We have gone to look at it, and we both really like it, so hopefully there will soon be some pictures up of it also!!

fyi...

Just an fyi, about my previous post. Evidently that sweet old man I talked with, forgot that they had already rented the house out to someone else. He called today, and told us that. I think his wife had promised it to someone, and hadn't told him yet. So, I guess that wasn't the house for us. Melisa still has her appointment tomorrow morning to look at the other option for us. So we are praying that that goes well. If anyone, knows people who rent houses, or if you see anything you think we might be interested in we are definitely open to whatever!! We would love it, if you see something to let us know! Thanks.

houses and more houses....

We just wanted to update everyone on our housing opportunities for when we move back to Kansas, and ask for some prayers. Jeremy and I have really been looking for a house to rent, versus an apartment, and this past week I have been calling around on a few that I found at the Wichita Eagle online. We are mainly looking to rent in the Riverside, or College Hill area. So as I am calling around on some houses, this one in riverside comes up and I call on it. It seems like an amazing deal, with all of the features we are wanting in a house. It even has a fenced in back yard for the puppy we are going to be getting!! So as I am talking to this renter, she keeps telling me how she just loves to rent this house to young couples, because it is just such a cute nice and fixed up home. So I just continue to get more and more excited....while totally getting my hopes up. It seems like a wonderful answer to our prayers. The renter was acting like she thought this house might be gone by the time we come back to look over spring break, so I set up an appointment for our good friend Melisa to go and look at it for us and take some pictures. Once I call the lady back to confirm the time, she says, well I just want to let you know that I have a man looking at the house tomorrow for the second time, and he is really interested. So she is not sure if it will last until Melisa's appointment with her. Now all my hopes and dreams are crushed. Meanwhile, I am supposed to wait to hear back from her on that option. Jeremy and I have been praying about our living situation a lot, and last night, we prayed for a while before we went to bed, that if this is not the house for us then that we might find something even better. All while I am really trying to have a good attitude, that this house could possibly not be the right house for us (I just couldn't imagine it).

Well.....to make a long story short....today we found one even better. And it is not confirmed, and no one has gone to look at it yet, but it really seems like a God thing. Mom just happened to be driving through riverside looking for some rentals for us, and saw this one. Which has been kept up much better on the outside, than the previous house. So she gives me the number and I called on it. This very nice older man answered the phone and gave me a lot of information about it. I continued to ask him if he allowed pets, and he said, oh of course! You can have as many as you want! Ha, ha. I think one puppy for now will be good. But he said that they have a fenced in back yard, with a kennel, that we could keep the dog in overnight if we wanted. So I asked what he would charge for a pet deposit, and he said, oh well I won't charge you anything. What?!? I have never heard of someone not charging a pet deposit. So I continued to ask what kind of a lease he would require, and he said, that we could do month to month, 6 month or a year. He didn't care. He said we are not going to make you stay here, if you are un-satisfied! Which is a huge answer to prayer, because we wanted to possibly do a shorter lease, because we are planning on looking to buy (but if this house worked out, we might be there longer than we think). So by this point, I am pretty much in love with this very sweet man. Well....I said I was going to try to make this short, so much for that. He asked again for my last name, and we ended up figuring out that he goes to Asbury (where Jeremy and I go to church in Wichita), and he knows Jeremy parents really well from when they went there! And there is more....his next door neighbor for years, is my mom's uncle Bob and aunt Wilma. We just kept making all of these connections, and we talked for quite a while. So...mom and dad are going to look at the house on Sunday afternoon for us, and take some pictures. He said that once they got there, if it something we are really intersted in, that they could put down a deposit, and he would hold it for us until May (which has been a problem with some other rentals). His exact words were "with a name like Fredin, I would be glad to hold it for the two of you!". I got a good laugh out of that one. He even said that we would pick out the paint colors, and then they would paint the inside for us! So...it kind of seems like too good to be true, but I feel so blessed that God would give us two wonderful opportunities within two days. We just wanted to ask everyone to pray for us as we are trying to make this decision. And if this is the house for us, that the doors would just keep opening. Sorry, this ended up being longer than I expected!! We are coming back home a week from this Friday and we can't wait!!! We are so excited to see everyone!!