More House Pics

Ok, so it is not actually official yet, but many of you are asking for some more pics of the house we found, so here they are. :) Thanks for praying for the meeting on Friday, it went really well, and they now have a verbal agreement to rent the house. However, they were having fax issues on Friday so the contract has not yet been signed. So there is still a chance it will fall through if there are things in the contract that we can't live with, but hopefully all will look good. We should know by early next week - which is good since we move a week from Friday!

The house is actually located in a gated subdivision about 10 mins from the airport in Naga (and the wakeboarding place too!). The neighborhood is quiet with not much traffic, so it should be safe for the kids to ride their bikes and play with friends!In addition to being in a gated subdivision that has a security guard at night, it is in a compound with 2 other houses. One of the houses is the other half of the duplex from ours. We have not yet met the family who lives there, but we have mutual friends. The other house is not yet rented so we are praying it will either stay empty or we will get good neighbors on that side.

Here is a pic of the front gate to our compound - you can see our neighbor's side of the duplex in front.

Here is a pic of the empty house (taken from the front corner of our house) behind our half of the duplex.

The apartment itself is much smaller than we have right now (about 1000 - 1200 sq ft), but it is in great shape. This pic is taken from the front door, looking at the dining room then through to the living room. The door to the tiny kitchen is to the right, and the stairs going up to the bedrooms are behind that wall on the left.
There are actually only 2 bedrooms, which poses a little problem. First, Mikayla is getting old enough to need a separate room from her brothers. Second, we need a place to do school. This is the largest of the bedrooms upstairs, and we are planning to put up a divider to create a room for Mikayla in the back of it. Then we are hoping to buy/build loft beds so that their school desks can fit UNDER their beds. That is really the only way we can fit it all in.
While the inside is nice (in a cozy way), it is the yard and neighborhood that we are excited about. The compound feels like a private little subdivision within a subdivision, so it will be very safe (that was one of our main concerns as Steve will be traveling a lot next term). Here is a pic from our back door of the little house that is separate from the duplex.Check out this big back yard that is shared by the 3 houses!
We are hoping to get a trampoline for the kids while we are back, and they are SO excited to have one in their back yard. They are also excited to finally have other kids in the neighborhood to play with as we have been isolated from others these last few years.

Thanks for praying for the perfect place for our family - God answered your prayers! Please continue to pray that if this is the place that God has for us, that all the details will go through smoothly.