Sunday, August 15, 2010

Our Latest Projects

What a few weeks it's been! B"H Amirah's fever was fast and furious and by Saturday afternoon she was completely fine. DH and Eli are still coughing the nights away, however, poor guys. :(

Slowly but surely, a few more boxes are getting emptied. For some reason, that last 10% of unpacking always takes forever! Several little boxes full of little pieces of this and that. Not the most exciting part of unpacking, and I've been dragging my heels.

There are a couple of things we need to do with the house... add a fence for the side yard, replace the kitchen sink, and the learning room and music room (not the playroom any more!) really need a new floor. I read a bunch about installing a tile floor, and it's really not hard so I may tackle that. I've done lots of mosaics, and this is just as simple so I think we could handle it. Assuming the subfloor is in good shape, of course! The worn-out carpet in both rooms is really full of cat urine smells. BLEAH.

Other things we're doing... I set up our worm composting bin and now we're waiting for the arrival of our worms. All of our kitchen scraps will get fed to the worms, and the castings will make really great compost!

I also just re-ordered kefir grains. I did that for a year or so in Portland, and it's delicious. Ran into the opportunity to order some more for just a few dollars, so I did that. It's a delicious drink and I'm looking forward to restarting it. The grains grow, so if anyone in Savannah wants to try it I can share in a few months!

I just finished up the last of our orders for learning materials for the coming year. Got some art supplies... the usual suspects: black construction paper, metallic markers, oil pastels, black sharpies, large set of colored pencils... A lot of other supplies we still have left from last year like watercolor paper, crayons, craft materials, etc. I also got a few things to spice up our learning time like One-Minute Mysteries (you get the clues and have to solve the mystery). I also got some tangram, geoboard, and pattern block challenge puzzle books, some new (to us) Draw Write Now books, a few books on the middle ages, and a kit to build a medieval castle. I may have a couple more things to order for kodesh studies then that should do it.

We did a little learning today, mostly history and math. We're also excitedly tearing through several Nancy Drew mysteries. Mysteries are definitely Amirah and Eli's favorite genre. Non-fiction science is high up there too.

So that's some of the latest around here. We'll be doing learning in the mornings only this week, and hopefully unpacking the last of the boxes and playing with friends in the afternoons. I got the pantry cleared out of boxes today. All that's left in that room is to remove 50-60 (!) cans of paint to an outside storage area. Then we can put all of our games and cleaning supplies there right below the PESACH CUPBOARDS! I can't believe we have pesach cupboards, but then I really can't believe we have this house at all...

So there you have it! Life goes on and Hashem is good!

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