#60 - This is home. Home. - Aug 1, 2012

Today is the day that made all the difference. A home is not a home without a piano. And now we have a piano. A home also needs a couch, and reliable place to rest.


We worked through the morning, clearing out more boxes and preparing for more stuff, and the team arrived just before 10. We noticed broken things and took notes as we went so we can make a claim later. It’s part of the deal, we all know it happens. My smaller airplanes all had broken tails, our headboard had a piece broken off, several wooden pieces had scratches or small splinters broken off. Take notes. Getting worked up doesn’t serve and purpose, so we just documented it.

As we did yesterday, Aria was in charge of inventory. She hung around by the truck and marked off every item as it came off. We found out at the end of the day that she had done a perfect job. Every box and item was accounted for.

During the day, Katrina directed traffic, and I worked through kitchen and dining room boxes. I wasn’t able to keep pace, but I kept enough stuff moving through that there was room. By the time the team left, our bedroom furniture was assembled and in the right place, and we had a bit of a game plan to move forward.

Piano in the foreground, keyboard facing the fireplace.
The window on the right overlooks the pool.
And the firebox is full of packing paper to start fires with.

I was also expecting guests to come over, so I had a deadline before I needed to start cooking dinner. I decided that I wanted to get 1 room complete. The kitchen was impossible, and the dining room needed a dining room table, which comes on Friday. The bedrooms would not be immediately useful. So the living room was it. I found some ceramic figurines (Jesus with Children sitting, and Jesus with Children walking) and put them on the fireplace stones. They flank a vase with tulips and roses. The couch and love seat form 2 sides of a square. The other 2 sides are the fireplace and TV. The piano is off in a corner. The entire area is more compact than I thought it would be. I pictured it being a little expansive, but this is not. It’s very nicely balanced, really.

I think and hope that the living room sets the tone for our house. It is comfortable, simple, not ostentatious, and modern. It is not a room you need to be careful sitting in. It’s a room designed for people to be together. As we had hoped, it reminds us of Eagle Crest. And we live here.

My guests cancelled, so we ate donburi without them, and then Katrina and the kids went out to swim. I headed to the basement to search through boxes and find the cables I needed to get the internet to our TV and the cable signal to the cable box. I was able to accomplish a lot down there. I have a game plan to organize the space, and I found the cables I needed. I had to salvage a connector from the excessive TV setup down there (they had cable going to literally every non-bathroom in the entire house), but that worked out fine.

Katrina and the kids came in from the pool, we had family prayer, everybody brushed their teeth, and I went upstairs to finish the basic setup for our bedroom – putting the fitted sheet on the bed, the pretty pillows, unloading my suitcase, placing the nightstands where they go, clearing paths to the closet and bathroom, finding and plugging in my cell phone charger. Every single thing. We take so much for granted when we don’t have to do it every day. I’m grateful I don’t have to move my furniture every day. Or any one of a hundred things that get done once and don’t have to be done again.

At the end of today, I felt right inside. I’m more comfortable and more at peace and happier here than I have been in any other place I have lived. The kids are content, Katrina seems content. It’s just so good here. I feel very blessed that things worked out the way they did. We are supposed to be here. I know it.