The Owens Family: January 2016

I'm sorry this post is a little late this month but there is a really good reason for this. The house we were living in here had problems with the septic system which made it very hard to live in any longer.

Christmas was good. We were very blessed and the kids had many gifts from our families. It is so hard to be away from family at the holidays for me. I really think that is the hardest part of living far away. When I think of holidays I think of family. We had a quiet Christmas with just ourselves. We Skyped with our families and were grateful to see them at least.

After Christmas is when we started weighing the decision to move. We had been praying about this decision for a few months. The problem with the septic became apparent after being in the house for three weeks. They had said that the septic should be emptied every six months or so but with our family size it may be more like every four months. Well after three weeks of being in the house it needed to be emptied. At first we thought maybe it hadn't been emptied in a while prior to us moving in, but two weeks later it began overflowing into the house again! This time we really thought something was wrong with the house, maybe a blockage or something, but no, the septic was full again! This continued every two weeks. Every time it had to be emptied the house would stink awfully for most of the day. The house would begin to smell again prior to needing to be emptied again as well. The fumes gave us headaches and it just was too much. We spoke to the landlord and really the only option was to attach the house to central sewage, which was expensive and he did not want to do this. We thought maybe we could tough it out through the contact till September but one morning after the sewage was being emptied I went upstairs fumigating everything and found Braeden in the bathroom corner crying on the floor because the smell was so bad! That's when we decided enough was enough and we had to move.

As soon as we made the decision to move literally two feet of snow fell on the ground in a few days! No joke! We went from no snow to two feet of snow all while planning a move. The move went smoothly but it was exhausting with all of the shoveling of snow and such on top of moving! Now of course that we are settled the snow has stopped and is melting! Ha! The kids are a little disappointed that we were so busy moving when the snow was here that they didn't get to go sledding and such. Who knows maybe it will come back again?

We have officially been in our new place for two weeks now. Yesterday we finally got internet and TV service which was the last thing we were waiting on. The new place is in the part of town we really like. There is a park right down the street and walking paths on the streets. It is close to town and the airport as well. There are many young families in this area too. The house is called a partial house because we are living on the second story of a two story house. It sounds weird but is much like a duplex, but instead of being side by side, were on top. This house is much smaller than the other house, but still has plenty of room for our needs. The price is half of what we were paying before which will allow us to save for a down payment to buy something in the future. The rental market here is fast and can be hard for families, so we feel it is important to plan to buy in the future.

We are grateful to be settled again and pray that we will be able to stay at this place for a while and put some roots down. Moving twice in three months is not easy! Not to mention that we have moved twelve times in the fifteen years we have been married! Whew! I joked with Justin when I realized that and told him I had no idea I married a nomad when I married him! All joking aside though we are very blessed and humbled by God's graciousness to us through everything. We thank you all for your prayers and support!