Okay, it's been a while since I've been able to blog and we've had a lot going on in the last week so I may ramble about a bunch of stuff. If it bores you just skip over it and look at pictures or something :). So, we arrived Wednesday Jan 2nd after a 10 hour drive to our new home in St. Louis to a cozy 15 degrees. I think it got down to 10 that night. The movers came the next day and got us all moved in by the end of the day. So after about a week of unpacking I have most of the house finished except for hanging pictures on walls and hanging curtains. We love our house and neighborhood! We joke about how we live in Pleasantville because the people are so nice here and I guess it was obvious we were the newbies in the neighborhood, so everyone came over to introduce themselves. We live on a cul de sac and our neighborhood is fairly small so everyone seems to know everyone here, which I'm not sure if that's good or bad yet. But the second day we were here our next door neighbors Mindy and Jay came over to welcome us to the neighborhood and brought us some cookies and a bottle of wine. And we've met almost everyone else in our cul de sac. Everyone seems very nice here. One lady, Denise, came over to invite me to a ladies monthly Bunko night so it's been a warm welcome so far.
My realtor insisted that I meet one of her other clients-she thought we would hit it off. It was a little awkward because my realtor, Vandy was suppose to come to the dinner and meet us up there but she had to cancel last minute so I ended up meeting this girl, Laura and her sister-in-law Kelly at this Japanes Hibachi restaraunt. It kind of felt like I was going on a blind date! I guess that's something girls can do and not feel too awkard but if two guys met up, well anyway, it ended well and they were both very nice.
We had an interesting experience that happened going to church last Sunday. We didn't get internet until yesterday, so we had to use the phone book to find a church. We just looked under Non-denomination churches and just picked one called Church on the Rock. As we got there we started noticing that bout 85% of the congregation was black, which we don't have a problem with, just not somewhere we would probably join. So we sat down since we were already there (towards the back, of course) and it was very charismatic from the beginning. After they finished a few songs this woman comes out and her name is Pastor something. She immediately started saying "there's someone here who has a bad right leg. Raise your hand if you have a bad right leg" I think about 50 people, including the lady next to us raised their hands. Then she insisted that we all lay our hands on each other and pray for those to be healed of their bad right leg. The prayer was very interesting to say the least. After the prayer........we left! We felt bad walking out and everyone was looking at us funny because they were the same people that greeted us on the way in, but it just wasn't quite what we had in mind. So, we went back to the house and thought we could catch a later service somewhere else. I found a church called Hope Bible Church and it advertised that they teach "verse by verse" which we love because that's how our church Calvary Chapel preached back in Plano. So we got there about 5 minutes late and it was a small church, maybe about 300-400 people. We were obviously new people but everyone was so nice. It reminded me of an old country church and they sang all hymn music which Leland loves! The pastor was very good. So we will probably go back since it's so hard to find good churches these day where they actually teach the Bible and not just some feel good sermon. The pastor, Bruce Chalka, came up to us after the service to introduce himself. So anyway, we had quite an interesting view of how different churches can be all in one morning!
Sadie is getting bigger everyday. She is 11 weeks old now and we think maybe about 9-10 lbs. She is still such an affecionate puppy. She's almost getting too big for our laps now but she insists on sitting there anyway. I bought her a coat to wear since it gets pretty cold here. She tolerates it pretty well. Doesn't she look like sucah a diva!?
Flowers Leland suprised me with
This is part of our basement. The couch is facing our big sceen TV. We figured we'd make this room our "Media" room. I meant to take more picutres but my batteries on my camers died.
This is our entry way. Leland's office is on the left and and the formal dining is on the right. I won't show you that room since it's stacked with boxes and packing paper right now :)
