I love my house. Cardboard shelves, bins for clothes, and all. It’s still bigger than what we need, but it feels more cozy and homey than our last house. It’s not as divided (as is the traditional Arab way) and it has a kitchen that we can live in. It reminds me of our house in Bahrain in all the best ways.
We’ve always been kitchen people. Gathering around the island in this house and actually having room to sit and eat together (well, there are chairs for 3, a step-stool for one, and one can stand) is the biggest change from our last house. There, the kitchen was a closet of cupboards and appliances as it was designed to be a kitchen for household help to work in, not as a family room. 
Here the kids can come down in the morning, actually hungry for breakfast because they aren’t rushing to catch the bus at 7. They eat, argue over whose turn it is to walk the dog and whose turn it is to walk Camille to school, and leave around 7:30. I can even make them go back upstairs to pick wet towels up off the floor — running late now just means they’ll be late, not that they’ll miss the bus. Freedom.
Same with dinner. As kids come and go with play practice, sports, and church activities, we feed them on a rotating schedule at our kitchen island. I’m in there with the food and the baby birds fly in, eat, and fly back out. The play starts tomorrow night and we get to go watch both boys perform — 
in a comedy about a troupe of Shakespearean actors who are a bunch of misfits. At least that’s what I’ve gathered from overhearing rehearsals for the past month — the auditorium is next to the library and I’ve gotten an earful of it every day. 
We are still adjusting, but each week it’s feeling more and more like home.