We have a floor!

I know these pictures are pretty mundane but to me they are progress! Today we poured the concrete for the basement floor which means the next step is framing. We needed some extra help for the concrete so Brian asked a few of our neighbors (offering to pay them of course.) They came out at 5:30am to help and then wouldn't take the money. People amaze me with there generosity sometimes! Tomorrow we are having are Thursday night dinner group with some new friends we have made including some of our neighbors. We look forward to the opportunity to get together and get to know them better. We also have a couple coming that heard about our church through some marketing we did. That should be fun to meet them as well. On Friday, we are heading back to Lewiston to pack up the stuff we left at our house and meet some prospective renters. We have not sold the house yet and think this is the direction God is leading us...we appreciate any prayers to help is make the right decision! We look forward to seeing all of our friends in Lewiston!

Nacho night!

Our great friends, Jamie and Eric had started the search for the best nachos in Missoula before we got here and invited us to join them and another couple last week to try a new restaurant, Sean Kelly's. They do have nachos sometimes but didn't the night we went. The food was still fabulous and the dessert was even better. For those of you that know Jamie she is a dessert connoisseur. And that's ok because she works out for a living (personal trainer and aerobics teacher)! We had a great time visiting with them and the other couple. Since moving we have met so many great people! We are still missing our Lewiston friends and keep trying to bribe them to come visit! I thought maybe this little post about all of the fabulous restaurants might entice some! Speaking of eating dessert and nachos, today we are going to check out the YMCA. They have a pretty large facility here and so we thought we might join! They have lots of activities for the kids as well as a great workout facility for adults.

Splash Montana

We celebrated the end of our 2 weeks of swim lessons by staying at Splash Montana for the day. It was torture on the kids having to have lessons and then packing up to leave...longingly looking at the waterslides wishing they could stay and play! I had mentioned in an earlier post how the waterpark is only $2.75 for kids which is a great deal. I did however find our they you can't bring in your own food and that is where they get the $ back that they lose on admission. Oh well, you can't put a price on fun, can you? The kids loved all parts of the waterpark, the slides, the lazy river and especially the log walk. There are no pictures of Brock because I took him to the daycare before we went. The idea of taking 4 children by myself to the waterpark was a little much :o)

Basement Walls are up!

Our future basement ~ Abby's bedroom and the boy's bedroom.

The front of the basement. This will all eventually be buried by fill dirt...lots and lots of fill dirt.

Our concrete walls have been poured. Next we will have basement plumbing and the basement floor. Things are moving along and we are excited for the framing to begin! I'll continue to post pictures as the house progresses!

The footings are poured!

Brian and Dave (our builder) hard at work!

Our firm foundation!

I know this isn't very exciting stuff for some people but for us it is progress! And yes Jesus is our foundation but next to that our house will be on the firmest foundation in Missoula! Truly! For some reason the county required us to jump through all sorts of hoops and make the footings extra wide and deeper than usual. When the inspector showed up, she was blown away that they had required that. She said the only place she had seen this kind of foundation requirement was in Seattle on very steep hills. We are trying to see this as a positive instead of thinking that we just spent thousands unnecessarily :o) At least we know our house is staying put and not sliding anywhere!

Swim lessons begin!

We just started swim lessons today. The kids are taking lessons at Splash Montana, our local outdoor water park for the next two weeks. They were a little hesitant to go, especially Riley, as you can tell by the look in his picture. But once we got there and they started lessons they really enjoyed it. They class format was great. They moved the kids to different areas to swim which included swimming around the lazy river. Jordan thought that was pretty cool. I enjoyed the some semi-quiet time while they were in the water from 10:00-10:45 (I dropped Brock off at busy hands, a local drop off daycare that he loves!) I might even take a book and get to read the next few days! That would be a treat! We are also planning on staying at the park after lessons a couple days so the kids could play.

The new house begins!

Before the digging started! We had waited so long to get our building permits for this house, I felt like I had to document every step of the building process so here is the lot when we were mapping out where the house would sit. I also took a picture of the view from the lot. Missoula sits in a valley so we pretty much have a 360° view of the mountains around our house.


The kids on the big tractor! I think they played they would have played on it for the whole day if we would have let them.


Brock was so excited to sit in the tractor. I couldn't quite get a smile out of him, he just sat there with a blank look on his face...I think he was in shock!


Once the house was a mapped out, the digging started. Most of the digging is done now and they are starting to build forms to pour concrete. It is so exciting to watch the process! Hopefully I will be better about updating this blog and I will keep you posted on the process!

Finally some pictures of our rental by request. It is a great little house...little being the key word! It is definitely less space then our family of 6 is used too. But we do feel blessed to finally find a rental that was in the right school district, a 6 month lease and we have great neighbors! I have done very little decorating so it feels a little plain but before I know it we will be packing up to move into the new house and I want to have to unpack and pack the least amount possible. We also left our living room and dining room set in Lewiston to stage that house until it sells...which will hopefully be soon! I did not post any bedroom pictures primarily because they are really not exciting...2 kids in each room...very crammed. And our room is the dumping place for everything. So it hasn't been clean enough to take a picture yet. Maybe sometime this week. During our preview service we had 17 people in all stay with us which included the Ranstrom's in our camp trailer in front of our house. We love having guests but were relieved to have our house back after all of our guests left. This week we had overnight guests on Thursday and Friday evening and have Corey and Elizabeth coming tonight so they can look for a house here tomorrow. Our front door should be a "revolving" door! We love it really! So please consider this your invitation to come visit our cozy little home!

Our first River City Church service!

The front of the City Life Community Center, the Youth for Christ building that we are using to have our services in. It is currently under construction as you can tell by the pictures and should be done by September, just in time for our launch! It is a great building and we are so excited God has blessed us with the opportunity to use it for our temporary church home.


Another River City Church banner. We had 14 banners made in all to use in and around the building to help make it feel like our own church home!


Some of the Helena boys praying for Brian before the service. I think we had 10 or so people come from the Helena church to help. What a blessing...it took a lot of work to pull off the service. But we did...and without any major problems.


Pastor Brian sharing...oh that sounds so weird! He does look natural up there I have to say!


Our temporary set up. We will be meeting in the basement for the preview services until the upstairs is finished. It actually worked out great because it was almost 100° out that day and the basement was nice and cool!


My project...Tiny Town ~ our church nursery. It turned out so cute! We covered the concrete floor with almost 250 sq. ft. of multi colored foam flooring. We also used a few pop up tents and a fold down picnic table to make it easier to transport. We will be setting up and breaking down every Sunday. Hopefully as the church grows it will go faster and faster!

Grandma Betty, Maurin and another Helena helper in the nursery.


Our temporary Kid Way room which will move to the basement once we move upstairs.


The Lewiston worship team and Eric B., our worship leader leading worship for our first service!


Our first service in full swing. We had over 50 people in attendance. Of course a lot of those people were helpers but we did have new people as well and the service went great!


Some of our team helping us set up the service! We couldn't have done it without all of the great help!
Another great helper from Helena! Duct Tape comes in so handy when setting up church...who would have thought!


Looking a little tired after the service at the BBQ! A lot of work...but so worth it!


The Moser family at the post service BBQ! I think Brock was on his 3rd bag of Cheetos and Abby looks like she was asleep!


We had such a great time at the BBQ! It gave us a chance to relax and talk to the new people about the vision of River City Church!


Our church in 5 vehicles! On Sunday we went back to the building to pack up the church and we managed to fit it all into our 5 vehicles. Quite a caravan going through Missoula!

We are getting closer to our 2nd preview service, July 26. After that we will have one more preview service Aug. 23 and then it is our launch Sunday, Sept. 7th. Our services will be every Sunday from there on out. We are so excited to see what God has planned for this church and this city! We would love to have you come visit and check us out! Our door is always open!

Thursday night at the park!

Moser kids sharing a gigantic snow cone!

JD, Maurin and the 2nd gigantic snow cone!

Dave and Leona and the 3rd gigantic snow cone!

Corey and Elizabeth

There are so many activities to do in Missoula it could literally keep you going every day and night. We had heard a lot about the Wednesday lunch and Thursday dinners at a local park. Basically June-August every Wednesday at lunch and every Thursday at dinner they have a big gathering in a park in downtown Missoula. They have live music, lots of food vendors and free kid's activities. We thougth we would try it out when the team was here to help with the service so we all ventured down there. It was a lot of fun...but a little chaotic with 4 kids in tow. We decided to make it a date night the next time we go. This park is also home to a "A Carousel for Missoula" which is a great carousel that we have yet to take the kids on. However, it is on our summer to-do list!