Pictures of the House

I have had several people ask me to post pictures of our house. So, here they are, and there are a bunch of them! Ready?............

First floor is an entry way which is not interesting at all, so I didn't bother with pictures of that. That leads up a flight of stairs to an elevator (yes, inside the house) This is our Isralift elevator that goes up to between the 2nd and 3rd floor. We only use it for groceries and such. Can you imagine the kids playing on this thing?!

The second floor has our bedrooms.

This is the master bedroom and bathroom. Keep in mind that you'll never get the whole view since I have to stand somewhere to take the picture. The bathroom actually has a huge bathtub/shower on the left that I just couldn't get in the picture. All of the tile is marble- which I'm finding very easy to clean. All of the furniture, appliances, and linens you see in the pictures are government furnishings. We'll keep the furniture and appliances while we're here, but we'll give the linens back once our household shipments arrive. (maybe 2-4 months from now)

One more thing about our bedroom that we love is this walk-in closet. It does have more shelves on the other side, but again, bad camera angle.

Next are the kids' bedrooms and bathroom. This is my son's first big boy bed and he has taken to it like he's always had one. Both of the kids are handling this transition very well. Their bathroom also has a big tub and there's also a shower and toilet out of view.

There's a large storage system in the hallway of this floor, but it's not really picture worthy.

The 3rd floor is where most of the day-to-day action happens. Let's start in the kitchen.

Again, all of the appliances, furniture, and dishes are supplied by the State Department. If you'll notice, there is an electric range/oven, a gas range, and a hot air convection oven. Most Israeli & Palestinian homes have the hot air oven, but we were told that some high-ranking American had lived here in the past and wanted an American style stove; it's remained here ever since. I'm glad to have it. I like the gas range better than electric, but that hot air oven is so tiny -- I don't think that my baking pans would even fit inside. There's quite a bit of storage space for the size of the kitchen. We're really enjoying all of the pull-out pantries like the ones pictured. The kids and I eat breakfast and lunch at this little breakfast bar.

This floor is all open and connected to each other, which helps it to feel bigger. Off from the kitchen area is the dining "room" and living room.

This massive table seats 12, which will be good when we have lots of people over. It has custom table pads for the top that we're using because of the kids; but I've moved some of them out of the way for the picture's sake. This will be very nice when we get all of those wonderful dishes that so many of my friends bought for me as a going away present. Thanks again to everyone who got those for us -- it means a lot!! The living room furniture is suede and leather, which is a different experience for us. We always thought we would like leather and suede furniture. Well, now we get to live with it for a while and make up our mind for sure before we buy some of our own.

Between the kitchen and living areas, at the top of the stairs is a big open space in front of the balcony.
Again, I couldn't get the whole thing in this shot. It's around 10' X 40' (just my guess, I didn't measure) The previous tenants left us some tomato and pepper plants that look like they might start producing something soon. There's also a barbecue grill that's part of the government furnishings.

Off of the kitchen is a half-bath, and then our laundry room, which also has a full size freezer in it. The next room is what we are using as a computer room. I don't know who chose this horrible orange color; we'll have to find out if we can change that. Off of this room is a spare bedroom with a full (but small) bathroom. We'll probably use this as my husband's work room for all of his hobbies.

One floor left to go! The top floor is a converted attic space and it's pretty big. We're going to be using it for the kids' playroom.

You can already see the kids' mess on the floor -- which they did come and clean up right after I discovered this. These two pictures are of this same room; it's really big. I'm not sure if we'll keep the furniture up here, I can already envision broken lamps and couches used as trampolines. Wait --not my children! :)

I hope you've enjoyed this little tour. We are so thankful that the Lord has blessed us with this house to live in. I look out of our balcony at the neighboring homes and notice that ours is the nicest and biggest on the block. It makes me feel guilty because these other people work so hard for their homes, and yet, we were just handed ours. I know that it's not because of anything we've done to deserve it, but we are grateful for God's grace in our lives. He is SO GOOD!