Almost settled in!

We still have over a month to go before our container arrives with most of our worldly belongings, so settling into our new house has sorta been like camping out.

It's gotten better the past week or so. We now have regular chairs! We had been making do with two primitive wood chairs and a table we bought at the rotary market so we could eat on something else other than an overturned appliance box at the bottom of the staircase. (That lasted only about a week and that was a week too long...the furniture box is now doing duty as a nightstand in the master bedroom!) It worked for us but wasn't conducive to having visitors! Anyway, Suzanne ordered some furniture made to complement and supplement the furniture we have coming. We are now proud possessors of six upholstered dining chairs, two rocking chairs (oh, what a blessing they are!), two bar stools and an outdoor coffee table with two sectional love seats. The outdoor furniture is actually sitting right now in our otherwise nearly empty living room as a Mexican chiminea is under construction on the back patio where the set will eventually reside.

In any case we now can actually invite visitors who come knocking to come inside and sit a spell!

Roger's dream of a wine bar is now about 50% complete and our single vanity in the master bath is now torn out and being converted to a double. A bannister is also on its way to be installed in our spiral staircase leading upstairs to the family sala.

We shop almost every chance we get for little things. It's amazing how much joy there is to adding a simple shower caddy to the guest bath (especially since the water is shut down temporarily in the master bathroom). Believe it or not, a big day was the day we installed the garbage pickup holder on our outside wall! We were also excited to add a 7ft potted lady palm underneath the skylight at the top of our staircase. Art loving Suzanne has picked up a couple of pieces of Ecuadorian pottery and an Ecuardorian sculpture to add to the couple of pieces of small Ecuadorian art we had purchased last summer and left with friends for our return.

All these things are exciting works in progress and certainly have been more fun than installing alarms, electric fences and such. We do have to say, however, we spent an entire funfilled day indoors and online after our internet was hooked up! All these events of the past couple of weeks are helping to make our new casa a home. We anxiously await the arrival of our container to make it comfortably complete.

Life is good and the long multi-month process we started back in 2010 to settle in Ecuador is steadily reaching a welcome climax. We certainly have a lot to be thankful for as we look back at the path we've recently traveled: "juntos en el camino de la vida."