Hubley Happenings

Hubley Happenings
Angel Fire Summer 2014

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

The Apartment

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Most of you know that after we sold our house, we lived in an apartment for three months. I wanted to document a few things about apartment living on the blog so we wouldn’t forget about our lovely time there:) Well, sort of.

I wrote a lot in my Thankful Journal those three months just so I could stay positive. I knew it was a blessing to have a roof over our heads and it was only for a short time, but I have to say it was pretty miserable. Just to give you an example of how bad it was, Nathan would start screaming, “No, No!” almost every time we pulled up to the gate. I’m not exaggerating. The last time we went back, I took the kids to help me clean and to turn in the keys. Nathan thought we were going back for good and he had a massive meltdown. He wouldn’t get out of the car. Hannah kept saying, “We’re not going back to live here, right mommy? We have a new house, right mommy?” I felt so bad for them. I think we were just so used to going outside to our backyard. We felt confined….even though it was almost the same square footage as our old house…crazy. Our one salvation was that we were near the river and could take walks daily, weather permitting.

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Nathan always called this tree stump a horse and loved riding it.

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Our neighbors upstairs were horrible. They were a bunch of guys who had dirty mouths and walked stomped around upstairs ALL. NIGHT. LONG. Sometimes, Scott and I would just start laughing in the middle of the night because our circumstances were so frustrating. Our neighbors would be stomping around and yelling, the lights outside came into our bedroom and were blinding making it impossible to sleep, and our room smelled like a smoker had lived there for the past 1000 years!

OK…enough of that. I just didn’t want to paint a false picture of those three months. Even though we knew God was faithful to us and was working for our good, it was difficult.

That being said, we still managed to have some fun.

We hung up our “Give Thanks” banner for Thanksgiving and counted the many ways that God was good to us. As you can see, it stayed up through December when I hung up our Advent calendar. I really needed the reminder to give thanks!

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We had our Advent devotionals around our little table and baked our holiday cookies in the kitchen.

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Nan even helped us decorate our Christmas tree.

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Funny story…see the tree on the right? That was our original tree. We needed a Christmas tree, but I really didn’t want to buy one this year because….well, just because. All our decorations were in storage and we always have a real tree. But one day as we were coming home from a walk on the river, we spotted someone’s tree trimmings. Hannah was so excited. She scooped up as many branches as she could and we proudly carried our branch tree home to the apartment. We put them in a vase and hung a string of Dollar Store lights on them. I thought it was pretty good and the kids thought it was perfect. Nan ended up bringing one of her old trees and we had fun decorating it too.

This was Rudolph movie night. The kids definitely watched too much tv those three months. It was my fault entirely, but sometimes it was the only thing that kept us all sane. Anyway…aren’t they cute?

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Well, we closed on our house the 21st of December and were able to move in before Christmas (thanks to the help of friends and family). When we look back to the days in the apartment, we can see God’s hand with us the whole time. He is faithful and good. Even when we doubt Him…even when we don’t think He hears our prayers….even when we are not faithful and grumble against Him. He is faithful and He is good. 

2 comments:

CarrieZ said...

I laughed out loud a few times reading this, especially at the thought of Nathan crying at the gate. That's hilarious. Good to read your positive words about trying circumstances. Thanks for the reminder about God's goodness!

Donald and Angela said...

This was a good post friend - thank you! Writing things out to remember for later is important and a good encouragement to me! Glad y'all are in your home!!! Much love to you, delightful Hubley clan!