Update from Chapel Hill Crescent

Wow! It’s been over a month since I last posted anything here. 

The last post was outlining the incredible (dare I say, divine) timing of how things unfolded through July and August for the Stade family. This righteous needle threading allowed me to spend over a week in Tijuana, Mexico with the TJ19 crew! Those were some great days. Many tacos were eaten and great times were spent with some of the most important people in my life!  

Let me give a bit of an update to where we’re at now!

A few days before Labour Day weekend we came up to the Welland area from Windsor. We got the boys registered in school and tried to get ourselves prepared for moving into our new home. 

Right around 4pm on Friday August 30th we got the keys to our new home, 16 Chapel Hill Crescent in Welland, Ontario. 

With the help of some incredible family, we got unpacked in a hurry! I opened our Big Steele Box at about 5:15pm on Friday night and by 10:30am on Saturday it was empty! By no means were we set up at the point, but at least everything was in. We spent the rest of the weekend putting beds and other furniture together and trying to find new homes for everything.

Tuesday came, which meant first day of school at a new school for the boys and first day of work on site for Care. The boys came home excited about great teachers and some friends and Care powered through the week like it was nothing. 

I’ve been keeping busy around the house. The previous owners had installed an IKEA kitchen, but had done so very unintuitvely, at least from our perspective. So I spent the first week redesigning and installing some kitchen stuff. I’ve got quite the to-do list of random things around the house. 

We’re pretty sure that once the “small” jobs are done I’m going to fully gut and refinish the basement. There is not much down there to gut, and updating the space will significantly add to the useful space that we’ll have access to. 

The main thing I’m trying to sort out these days is buying a car! Gah! Turns out the process is a bit more complicated and the market a bit more expensive in Ontario! Add to that the fact that I hate buying cars and I guess you could say I’ve been stressing about it the last few days! So if you think of me, you can join me in asking Jesus to help me find the right car and have peace about making it happen!

I guess you could say we’re settling in pretty well. I don’t remember much from grammar classes, but I’m pretty sure I just used the progressive tense for the word, “SETTLING.” This place doesn’t not yet really feel like home. It’s getting there, but there are many times for each of us that we very much feel like strangers in a foreign land. Today I began to build a trampoline for the boys. I felt some sadness when the instructions were so clear about needing 2 adults to do that job and all the people I can think to ask to come help live 3000kms away. 

That said, we’ve been SO encouraged by some of the people we have been meeting. We’ve checked out a church called Southridge Community Church. Turns out the campus pastor lives just around the corner from us and there’s a handful of other awesome, very kind and welcoming people that live near by too. Our first Sunday there the boys saw a bunch of people the recognized from their school and Corbyn has already been able to participate in a few of the youth activities. We’re feeling super blessed and encouraged by all of that. 

Well, this doesn’t feel like it comes close to how meaningful it would be to sit down with coffee in hand and share these things face-to-face with many of you, but for now it will have to do!

As for connecting with us, neither Care or I will be changing our phone numbers anytime soon, so feel free to call, text or FaceTime anytime. I’ll also try to toss some things on Instagram more often so you can see what’s up in the Stade world! And if you want to send any home warming gifts, the address is above! 

Although many of you reading this are far away, we continue to feel super blessed by the richness of the relationships we have with many of you!

Give me call sometime and we can chat more! Also, I'm not going to post a bunch of photos of our house, I feel like that'd be weird, but if you want the "tour," FaceTime sometime!

js