Following the Dream: a little catch up

The look of my blog has changed...drastically...obviously. Major problems that are far beyond my technical abilities to fix happened. Therefore, until I have the time and energy to redo a new blog template, header, and all that jazz, it will be this much simpler version that requires me to do very little. But I miss my old one. I loved it. It took me a LONG time to design it all (minus the background that was already done for me). Such is life.

Last week was super busy. I was gone quite a bit, and we were at other people's homes in the evening or we had people over here. It was super fun! But I thought I would catch up on blogging last week. Not so.

Biggest news that was official as of last night is that we are moving. Again. For the 6th time in nearly 7 years of marriage. Can I tell you just how tired I am of moving?! Part of me is excited because that means I get to decorate, find new ways to arrange furniture, and be forced to clean things out. I like to do those things.

Another exciting part is that wherever we move, it will be cheaper. That is mainly why we are moving. Our landlord wants to increase rent. We talked with about ten families in the area and discovered that no one else is having their rent increased or has ever even had their rent increased. Our landlord wants to increase after one year already. We have been living on partial salary for several months now, too, so finding a cheaper place would definitely help. We explained all of these things to our landlord, but he did not even try to counter our offer or even want to negotiate. He told us that he understands that we want to pay as little as we can but that he wants to make as much money as he can, even though it doesn't cost him more to own the house. The greed for the almighty dollar...er...forint. :)

I am super sad about moving because we LOVE where we live. We love this house, we love the neighbors, we love the street, we love the close location to the school, we love the yard. We love everything. But the increased price.

We have looked at a couple places and might have two more places to look at hopefully soon. That is part of the reason why I was so busy last week. They are all still in Diósd, but the proximity to the school varies greatly. The two places we have looked at so far have some good pros but a bunch of cons. Like I said, I love where we live now, and it is pretty perfect for us. I have to keep in mind though that the price is not worth it. Anyway, prayers for wisdom as we prepare to move at the end of August are appreciated!

Total side note... The pulled pork in the crock pot for dinner smells WONDERFUL! I can't wait to eat it for dinner. I never understood cuts of meat in the US (most likely due to the fact that I wasn't much of a cook and didn't try things), but I understand them in Hungarian even less. I had this really helpful butcher the other day who was so kind even with my lack of Hungarian, and he helped me pick a good piece of pork for these sandwiches I wanted to make. Upon shredding the pork an hour ago to let is simmer in the juices a bit more, I realized that this was the perfect cut of pork I needed, so I dug through the trash to find the Hungarian word on the wrap where he wrote the price to see which part it was. I couldn't find it. I remember what the part looked like, so I will have to find my picture of a pig with the parts in Hungarian on it for next time. I am so hungry now.

I have been baking today (Praise the Lord for a break in the temperature!) in preparation for Matt and Leah coming next week!!!!!! We are super excited that they are coming to visit us, and I can't wait to meet and hold little Eden, as she was born just a few days after we left their house last summer. I have really let the house's state of cleanliness go in the last couple weeks because of the heat and not wanting to get on my hands and knees to scrub the floors or anything like that. So on the agenda for this week is cleaning and baking...and hopefully looking at another house or two!

And a few pictures...

Kate loves to play with balls. I tried giving her a doll. No interest. Kevin is proud.

Her new face that she loves to make ALL the time. She does it when she thinks something is funny or mainly to get attention since we all laugh. Totally reminds me of my nephew when he was around this age.