Boston

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for the long hiatus but here's a post to help catch y'all up.  In June we sold our home in San Antonio and headed off to Boston for Dell to do a Body Fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess.  We are loving Boston and having grand adventures every weekend (which I'll post about soon.)  But for now here's a quick peak into our life in Boston.

First technically we are in a little suburb of Boston that is the perfect blend between urban and suburban.  There's a park across the street and we can walk two blocks to our bakery, toy store, and candy store.  Happiness for everyone.  Our street is quiet and filled with boys Henry's age which makes everyone happy.  They roam the street popping into each others homes and it's what I've always wanted in a neighborhood.  Dell takes the train in every morning and most days I can walk to where I need to go.  We love it.  Oh and our neighbors are super friendly.

Then there's our apartment.  We lucked out!  We rented it sight unseen when one month before we were to move we still hadn't been able to find a place that would either rent to a family with three kids or was in our price range/close to train.  We were getting desperate and praying lots.  But after place after place fell through one day Craigslist had a ad for an apartment in our dream area and even said "kids welcome."  And it is perfect.  Our wonderful mothering landlord lives next door and she adores our kids.  She fixes things fast and is so grateful and impressed every time we mow the lawn.  Renting from her is great.  And then there's the place itself.  We were nervous having only seen the few pictures Janet was able to send before we moved out but we are so happy with the layout/everything.  It's one of those thank heaven for unanswered prayers sort of things.  We'd been praying and praying that we could get an apartment a couple of streets away but ended up with a place twice the size on a quiet street with lots of kids and a park nearby for the same price.  We are grateful.  So here's a quick tour of some of our Boston home.



 The Living Room

See the door with the sheer curtain?  That's where you enter our second story apartment.

 

Just to the left of that door is a small hallway where we have our "mud room" of sorts.  That hallway also leads to a coat closet and the stairs to the upper floor where the three bedrooms and second bathroom are.   Here's a picture of the "mud room"

  

The living room has lots of nice windows and the huge catalpa tree outside makes it feel a little like being in a tree house.  You may notice that we don't have a full size coach in our place.  That's because our couch couldn't make it up the stairs and instead of renting an hydrolic crane to lift it through the window for 400.00 we decided to just make due with a loveseat for a year.  :)

  .

The door in the living room heads out to the 3 season porch or "lego lab" as Henry has named it.  He has to share a room with Lizzie so to give him a space of his own the porch is his.  We got a space heater for it and plan on putting up window film to help hold heat.  Here's hoping it will work through winter otherwise we may have to shuffle rooms around upstairs and put Lizzie and Ellie together.

"the Lego Lab."   I love how light and bright it is.  Henry has all of his revolutionary war figures lined up on the window sill right now.  Usually it's full of lego creations.

 

From the living room you can enter either the dining room (left/east) or the playroom (right/west).  (The main floor is kind of one big circle which the kids love to chase each other around.) 

 I love the dining room!  Our big table fits perfectly and there's a built in hutch where we have all of our art/school supplies.  We all gather at the table to do our homework every night before dinner and with the huge east facing windows it's a wonderful place to breakfast as well.  The big tree out the window just lost all its leaves but it was the most glowing red/yellow ever this fall.

  From the dining room you walk past the main floor full bath to the kitchen.  I love my kitchen!  My favorite thing about it is this pantry.  It fits all my food (including food storage) and most of my dishes.  It's bright and light and I have told Dell if we ever build a house a want one just like it-- okay maybe a tad bit bigger. 

 Here's the rest of the kitchen.  It faces south and is pretty warm and bright.  I sometimes wish the windows were larger but in the summer they are just the right size.  :)

 

Kitchen from the other side-- see my pantry?!  Sorry about the aprons in the foreground.  Totally forgot to take them down when taking the picture.

 

just off the kitchen here is our back door-- which I use the most since it goes to where the garage and car are.  Behind the closet doors in my laundry area which was doing laundry and covered in Halloween stuff so I kept the doors closed.  :)

 

Here's another view from the kitchen so you can see how the house is one big circle.  

 

 So from the kitchen we move into the playroom.  I love how it is just off the kitchen and how Lizzie and Ellie have a bright safe place to play.  Still trying to figure out how to decorate-- any ideas would be appreciated.

 So that's the main floor.  No pictures of the top floor due to two napping kids, a quilt in progress and Ellie's room being painted atomic peach.  Trying to decide if it's worth painting when we are only here for a year and as long as you don't turn the light in her room on it's not too bad.  :P