Changes, Changes...

The last few weeks have been ones of incredible changes. We've been blessed to be able to purchase a house! For eight years we've been living in rented spaces, and for 6 years at the Willow road apartment. If you saw our apartment, you'd know how small it was. None the less, we were thankful and tried to use the place to the best of our ability. 

More of less for the last year we've been looking at houses, trying to take advantage of the down market. About 6 months ago we looked at a house on Saratoga Ave in East Palo Alto. It sort of a duplex with a two bedroom apartment upstairs that could be used as a rental. Months ago we contacted the owner about a sale - but he laughed at our offer and sent us away. The market has continued to drop in the mean time, and we ended up picking the place up for just short of $40k lower than our last offer! I have some thoughts about the market and my conflicted thoughts about reaping the benefits of heartache - more on that in the near future. We picked up the keys a week ago. Since then we've been cleaning, packing and moving. We also painted Sam's room with a Yankee blue accented wall and proudly pasted a Fathead Yankee 'NY'.

This morning we moved in. I want to say a big thanks to Steve and Amy Joh, Pastor Bains, Katie Fantin, Stu Hyland, Cherokee and Justin Dickey and Bro. Keith for helping us move. One good thing about an small apartment is having less things to move. We had everything loaded into our new place in about two hours! I'll post more pictures in the near future. 

After eight years of serving and loving East Palo Alto and living in east Menlo Park, we're thrilled to be living in EPA! However, we have 'much luv for eMP'! 

Not that that isn't enough alone - we also adopted a dog, Ralph. We've wanted a dog since we had to give our beloved Max away (not to be confused with our wonderful friend and Sam's uncle Max Torres) when we left Modesto. With the small apartment we just couldn't swing it. Ralph came to us via Grateful Dogs Rescue in San Francisco. He's a six year old German Shepherd (like Max was, but again, not Torres). No one knows what happened to him - other than that he came off the street and into a  'high kill shelter' where GDR saved him before he was put to sleep. He's been in foster care with the rescue for about a year, just waiting for the Liotti's to come get him! He's housebroken and completely lovable. We've been joking that he's slightly like each of us. He was to be right in the middle of things like Samuel, he's slightly melancholy like me and has a touch of anxiousness like Melissa.

So - all in all it's fair to say life has been slightly nuts. No wonder that the blog posts have been slow coming! Please pray for the Liotti's - including Ralph...