Company Girl Coffee- Visit from the Ambassador

Our excitement this week was a visit from the US ambassador to the Republic of Congo. He met with various officials, had lunch at the Harvey's house, and did a tour of the hospital. After that he (and the group with him) came to our house for a drink and snack before heading back to the plane to Brazzaville.

The picture above shows the group beginning the tour. The picture below is most of the group posing for a picture in front of our chapel.

It was at some point this week that I realized our kids are not having a normal childhood. I don't know why I had not thought about that before. Maybe it is just that we do so many things that seem normal, like school, eating, hanging out together. However, they seem to be enjoying themselves.

What do you do with the laundry when it rains?

You hang it up inside, of course! We have clotheslines in all of the bedrooms, but there was too many clothes. We had them hanging everywhere. After it stopped raining, I put them back outside, brought them in the evening, then put them back out the next morning. Fortunately, there was no rain the second day, and everything dried.

Making Your Home a Haven

This week the focus was on chores. I've been working on building them into our routine. The main bulk of the housekeeping work is done by Melanie, who cleans two days a week and does laundry two days a week.
Things here get dirty very fast. All surfaces have to be washed every week. This includes windows, doors, door frames, shelves, desks, and everything else. The walls even have to be swept. I'm very glad to have Melanie's help or I would never be able to keep up with it myself!
The smaller things the kids and I take care of ourselves. I do some things before they are up in the morning. Then we all have morning clean-up right before breakfast. They pick up toys, books, clothes, and shoes. Sometimes they sweep or put away laundry. I wash breakfast dishes, and make sure the kitchen is clean.
Before lunch and after supper, we have similar pick up times for the kids. I also have them help me bring in the laundry in the evening on laundry days. If it is dry, we will fold it and put it away. Other times, we put it on the indoor lines to dry. The next morning, it goes back outside if still wet, or folded and put away if dry.
When I think a little extra motivation is needed, I will set the timer and we race to see who can finish first. Suddenly, what was a boring task becomes a fun game as we try to be the first one done.
Having everything written on our schedule has helped so much. It helps the kids know what is coming at certain times, and it helps to keep me on track, too.

I didn't have any pictures of us doing chores, but this one was too cute to resist.

We went for a bike ride on Wednesday. Dash did not want to be left behind. At first, he was sitting on my bicycle tire. After I made him get down, he tried to climb in the bike trailer with Isabelle and Caleb.

When we returned from our ride, this is where we found him. I had to take a picture.

I seem to have a talent for closing my eyes in almost every picture. This was the only one that I got of us in our aprons together, though. I made my apron on Monday and Tuesday, and Isabelle's today. Here we are wearing them for the first time, just before we mixed up bread together.

Bike Ride

School Outside

Ian was studying capacity for math, so we decided to test it out. Even Dash wanted to see what was going on.

Making Your Home a Haven: Planning

This week we were focusing on planning. I have been working on a daily schedule since mid-December. I started with a school schedule, and took a few weeks to make adjustments to make things flow more smoothly. Then I put it on the chart pictured below, and slowly added from there. I've had to make various adjustments as things changed, but overall it has been working for us.
Part of the reason that I did the schedule on a chart is that the kids do better when they know what to expect at certain times (especially Ian.) When there is something they want to do, I can say, "I can't do that right now, but we will do it at this certain time." Then I know we probably won't forget, since we are following the schedule.
Things rarely go completely as planned. We tend to have a lot of interruptions throughout the day, and sometimes unexpected things come up. But having a schedule does help me remember to bring the laundry in at 5:00, and start supper after that.
I am still trying to get in the habit of checking my dayplanner each night before I go to bed. I usually remember to write things in it, but I don't always remember to look at it everyday. It doesn't help to have things written down if I don't check to see what's there.

The papers with columns are our daily schedule (Monday-Friday). There is a color for each of us (except Stephen.) The cork board has specific school assignments for Ian and Isabelle. I'm working on teaching Ian to be more independent in a few of his subjects.
My idea for the calendar was to make things more simple for me, but the kids have really enjoyed having it. Isabelle has everyone's schedule memorized.
For more of the Making Your Home a Haven Series visit The Homespun Heart.

This Week

This week we spent time with our new kitten...

... saw this spider on our porch...

...had school outside every day...
(Ian's learning about capacity.)

...had lots of visitors...

... and went for several bike rides.

What did you do this week?

For more Company Girl Coffee see Home Sanctuary.

Warm Weather

Time for another Company Girl Coffee.
It's been fun to see everyone's pictures of snow and ice. Personally, I think that snow is pretty, but I'm not a fan of cold weather. I was definitely tired of snow by the time we left Quebec. It has nice to see it from a distance this time.
The weather here is extremely different. We are in the dry season. I call it the slightly less rainy season. It still rains a couple times a week on average, instead of every day. The temperatures are climbing higher, but the occasional rain does cool things down. The good thing is that most of our laundry will now dry in 24 hours instead of 48.
One of the nice things is that we are able to enjoy the outdoors. The kids can play outside everyday, we go for bike rides, and we have school outside frequently.

One day this past week, the gardeners were trimming the bushes behind our house with a machete. Caleb was fascinated by what they were doing, and decided to help out. He's swinging a stick at the bushes to "help" trim them. He wants to have a real machete, but we don't think that's a good idea (for some reason).