Home Sweet Home

I have been thinking a lot about why Stewart and I felt like we should buy our home. With the current real estate market the way it is and our need to sell our home in three years it can be a bit scary at times to "own" it. We know that everything will be okay but we also realize that we wont be selling at a profit and walking away with a bunch of cash to help set us up during residency like we had hoped. I have determined that there must be a different reason why we felt we needed to buy and why every other house fell through except this one. I find myself often searching for a grandiose reason. The other day as I was running (my reflective time) I realized that there are probably a mixture of reasons for our need to buy this home. In my pondering I came up with these few reasons:

Missionary Work

Stewart and I are in a awesome situation to help all the inactive people in our neighborhood and that has really been great to be doing missionary work. I think the most exciting part of this has been our neighbors across the street, Larry and Emily. They are not members but I think they will be. They are old enough to be our parents and they have been such a help to us since we moved here. The day we moved in they brought us a ton of food and things (even their own microwave) to help us out until we could get to the store and get our refrigerator and pans unloaded from the trailer. Emily has MS and she is really sick. She can hardly walk with a walker so the kids and I try to visit her a lot and bring her the mail everyday. Larry is always trying to talk religion, politics, science, ect. with Stew. We have had then over for dinner and invited them to church and things and I am really hopeful that they will join the church. Just to be their friends and apart of their lives has been a huge blessing. We feel so grateful to have their help and hope we can in turn help them out too by sharing our testimonies and friendship.

My Business

I need to be at home with my kids, but UNR is so tight with their loans that I need to make money... that leaves a home business. It would be impossible to run my business from an apartment thus we had to buy.

Kids

We could not live in a small apartment for very long simply because of our kids. It would have been really hard to cram our kids into a tiny apartment for a long amount of time before we'd be dying for more room for them to run, play, explore and make all the noise they want. Renting a house would have cost us almost as much as paying a mortgage so buying is smart in that regard too.

Our Ward

Stewart and I felt at home so quickly in our ward. I have never experienced anything like it before. I never once felt uncomfortable there. Everyone is open, down to earth, and so so kind. Yeah, they are human but honestly I adore all of their humanity. We feel like we have support and friends here when we need it...our family away from family.

Growth

Stewart and I needed to grow up some more. I think the Lord wanted to test us and give us an opportunity to stretch our faith. We have done this completely on faith and as of yet it still seems a little backwards but we know that, like always, after the trial of our faith great blessings come about.

It Makes Us Happy

When we realized we were moving to Reno the first thing I did was see how many Walmarts there were and if their was a river with a running trail. :O) Even more then I depended on Walmart I depended and loved the Provo River. I would run along it almost everyday. It was my sanity, my therapy. I felt so blessed to have it so close by. It was beautiful, calming and just perfect. I thought I would lose that when we moved. But I didn't! We live right next to the Truckee river! I have another river! That might seem so weird to some but to me this has proven to be a huge testament to the Lord's tender mercy in caring about the little things I care about. I run by it almost everyday and I love it. In connection with that I love our quirky little community. Everyone is so nice and friendly. It's pretty in it's very humble way. There is a little park, a its own tiny tiny school, a pool, and lots for the kids and I to explore. Everyday on our run we see ducks, geese, trains, lots of friendly neighbors, wild horses, and we go down this little farm road and get to see cows and more horses. I feel like they have so much to enjoy so close by. The first week we were here I remember feeling like our home in its funny little neighborhood was going to be our sanctuary from the craziness of Med School and having to live in this complicated world. It has become exactly that.

Basically our home is humble, there are things I wish I could change about it everyday, money is tight, its value has dropped tons in the months since we bought it, our neighborhood isn't much more then an upper class trailer park but it is home. It makes us happy, we always feel safe and we are so grateful for it. I probably would have never thought this would be our life, that hidden in this odd corner of Sparks we would find our sanctuary but I guess Heavenly Father knows better then I. :O) We truly love our home sweet home.