More Introduction

  I have to add before we get into Calvin's correspondence that when I envisioned being the mother of a Mormon Missionary I figured that I'd live in a house like the one I grew up in (four bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, nice kitchen, usable basement). It was a really great home to spend my childhood in.
  Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for the home we live in now. We have a fenced in back yard. We have the best neighbors you could ask for, seriously, they are the best. They helped us bury our cat when Todd was out of town on a business trip. They took me to the hospital when I fell and broke my foot when (yep you guessed it) Todd was out of town on a business trip - and they had dinner plans that night too. They serenade us with their garage band (and it's good music)! We live right across the street from a golf course, so we never have to buy golf balls. We have a back lawn and a woods area for the kids to explore and tromp around in. It's a great place to live.
  We have about 900 square feet of living space, which isn't too bad. But if you figure that at one point we had 4 rats, 3 large dogs, 2 birds and 2 cats plus 5 people and a business it seems pretty small. Then we lost some pets and added a baby! Basically we live on one floor, with 7 foot ceilings, two bedrooms, a small kitchen, a front room, a dining/multipurpose room, and one bathroom. It's not so bad until you remember that we're a family and families tend to have the same *ahem* schedule. So when we come home from church it's a race to see who gets to the bathroom first. I can say that it's a good thing we have bushes around the house and that at least 2 of our family are male. The rest of us have become adept at crossing our legs and eyes and fingers and toes. Then there is the leaky roof, the leaky basement, the rats in the walls and all the other "fix-it-up-stuff" than an old house accumulates over the years and you never seem to have time to do. *sigh* Oh well. Some day it will get done.
  Calvin's room was upstairs, in the "attic." He liked it up there, even when he couldn't stand up straight in the middle of his room. After Sophie was born, we moved the recliner chair up there and it became "the man cave."
  Miranda has had designs on Calvin's room for the last year and a half. She has become very vocal in her petitions for her own room (and has suggested that perhaps she could move upstairs and Calvin should move to the living room) every week for the last 6 months.
  So though this is not the house I expected to raise my Mormon Missionary in, it is where we are supposed to be. I might add that the way we bought our house is quite miraculous. The house was being sold "as is" for $6,500. We knew this was where God wanted us to be, and still wants us to be today. Though some days it really would be nice to live in my sister's house that has lots of bathrooms. It's for sale by they way. It's a gorgeous home, in a beautiful neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia. Here's the link to the website: http://www.210nvt.com/