HOME at last!

Allow us to show you our new home! God has lavished His goodness upon us with this place. We are now settled into our home in the town of Issy-les-Moulineaux (pronounced this way: ee-see lay moo-lee-no). Here are the stats:

Our address:
19 rue Auguste Gervais
92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux
FRANCE

Issy is just outside the actual city of Paris. We are 1 metro stop beyond the highway that circles Paris, so we are right next to Paris and it is easy to get to the 15th arrondisement (where we are working to start a new church) and other Paris places from the metro stop which is 3 blocks from our home. We are also close to ALL of our teammates (within 2 miles)! It's amazing what God has done!

Our apartment is a 3 bedroom apartment with 2 baths. The space is 90 square meters, which is about 970 square feet.

So, do you want to SEE it? Here are some photos. (Sorry, I got carried away...there are a lot of them!)

Here's the outside of the building. Notice the hill. We are getting into shape and shedding pounds on this hill! The kids' school is up the hill, everything else in our lives is down the hill.


The entrance to our building:

The digicode pad. This building has good security.

Inside the building, here are our mailboxes.

Here's one of three bicycle rooms.

And, the garbage room.

The door to get to our elevator. You have to have a key to enter, or be 'buzzed' in by us.

The elevator. It actually holds more than 2 people! We feel very spoiled with this one...our whole family fits!
We're on the 3rd floor by the French way of counting (the 4th using the American way). Notice there are no numbers on the doors. We have to describe where our apartment is to anyone who comes to visit, i.e. we're on the 3rd floor and our door is right by the elevator. Also, notice the doorknob in the middle of the door - very French.


Here we are! Our entryway:

Notice the BIG closets! And, the light bulb dangling from the ceiling. The French take their light fixtures with them when they move. We're working on putting new ones in.

We have French doors at the entrance to the living room! How fun!

Looking into the living room/dining room area:
We have our desk in the living room too. Here's Mark working away!

And, the piano is in here too. A very multipurpose room, I would say.

Finally, the living room. You can see the terrace just outside the windows which still need curtains. We'll get there eventually!

Now, the kitchen. The hallway into the kitchen is rather interesting. (Our water heater is behind those closet doors.)
We're almost there...


Ah, the kitchen! The cabinets were left WITH the apartment. This is not normal as they usually take their cabinets with them. We saved LOTS and LOTS of time and money by getting an apartment with a built-in kitchen! We are so thankful!

How do you like that bright cheery yellow? I love it! And, how do you like that 14.5 inch round sink! It's interesting doing dishes in this sink. :-)



But, we have a dishwasher that came with the apartment! Yeah! It's small, but works great.


All along the ceiling of the hallway to the kitchen are shelves. Glorious shelves!

The first bathroom, along with a toilet (amazing!), shower and laundry. It's tight, but it works. We are so thankful to have 2 toilets! Makes life much easier with a family of 5.


The hallway which is holding bookshelves with the kids' books.


The boys' room. It's triangle shaped and pretty small, but works great for them.


Then, our room.


We're thankful for the big closets, too!

The hallway to the 2nd bathroom and Lena's room.


The toilet room (or W.C. as they say here). The flusher is in the back of the toilet as a button. And, we got one of those really fun tiny sinks, too! Great fun!

The shower room. The shower needs some work (re-grouting and re-caulking), so we haven't put up a shower curtain yet, but we will soon.

And, there's a towel warmer behind the door, too. These are "big" here, we're told.

Finally, Lena's room. I just love this room! We found the quilt at the open air market by the metro stop here in Issy. It was waving in the breeze and we all jumped when we saw it! We knew it would look great with these very yellow walls!

Here's an interesting thing about the apartment. Above each window is one of these white boxes, with a vent. The box holds a metal shade the rolls down and covers the window completely on the outside. (Very handy when you haven't gotten curtains yet!) The vent is actually outside air just flowing into the rooms. We're told they cover the vent with paper for the winter. Amazingly, there are hardly any bugs here, and it just doesn't get that crazy cold, so it works. I just cannot imagine such a thing in the MN/IL/IA area. Too funny!

And, lastly, the terrace. It's huge! Here are Mark and the kids waving on the terrace!


So, there you have it, a short tour of our new home. We are just praising God for his loving provision for us! Please feel free to come and visit us anytime! :-)