Christmas in September

Hi everyone!

Our air shipment came a couple of days ago! This is all the stuff that Bill's company shipped over for us. Usually it takes about 2 months for it to get here, but again, we lucked out, and ours came in less than a month!

We had 59 boxes in our shipment. We have only opened 15 of them so far. I'm reluctant to open any more because we have no space to put anything. Remember--we have no closets in this house! We have a few little dressers, but they are already completely full. I just don't know where to put anything. We also don't have a pantry, though we do have a few cupboards in the kitchen, but again, pretty much everything is full already.

The kids were so excited to open boxes--it really seemed like Christmas! We all would choose one box each, and then each person would open theirs, one at a time. Jensen wanted to open books first; Dustin wanted to open his sports equipment (balls, etc) first; and I wanted to open toiletries and cleaning supplies. The boxes had been grossly marked, so we were sort of able to tell what was inside. Dustin was so excited to see his basketball again that he slept with it! Bill is not included in this discussion because he was at the mine site when the shipment came, so we opened boxes without him.

The next thing the kids wanted to open was food. They were so excited to find all their favorite cereals and macaroni and cheese. That's what we had for dinner that night. You'd never know someone could get so excited about something so basic. The kids thought it tasted so good! I thought it tasted a little funky, as we had to use powdered milk, but the kids were in heaven!

We brought Dustin's basketball hoop, so it will be interesting to find a place to put it up. We have not yet located the Wii, though I did see the Guitar Hero. We have to count each box as we open it to make sure they all made it here. And we need to check for damage. We have already found one damaged item--Jensen's American Girl Bitty Baby trunk--one side got smashed. I guess we can probably put a claim in for it.

On the school front, I thought things were going better, and I had decided to leave the kids in school. But then yesterday, during PE (they call it Sports) kids in Dustin's class tackled him and threw him in a gutter. The teacher apparently did nothing but take the ball away from Dustin. It was so sad. When I got to the school, Dustin was scraped up and crying. I think they pick on him because he is the new kid, one of the only Americans there, and small. They tease him about his long hair, and his name (Dust=Dirt). Anyway, I still don't know what to do, but I think at this time I just want to give it a bit more time. My kids are pretty resilient, and although I know they don't like the school, they are not always saying they feel sick, and they are not asking to stay home. When I drop them off, they willingly say goodbye to me, and seem relatively happy. So, we'll hang in there a little longer.

On the cleaning front, I am spending an inordinate amount of my day doing it. I know I should try a house cleaner again, but I just don't want to deal with it. It is really incredible how filthy the house gets in just one day--dust just covers everything! Once the rainy season starts, the dust will be better, but then it will be mud everywhere! I literally have to vacuum, and mop the floors everyday, in addition to dusting. If not, the dust will be inches thick! I have never been so thrilled to have a vacuum and a mop! I was able to find a mop at one of the stores, and it works so much better than the squeegee and cloth!

Guess that's all for now! I'm going to try to post a picture. This is a picture of all the stuff the company shipped for us (this is a picture of it in our AZ house--before they packed it all up and put it on a plane). This picture does not show everything that was shipped, but it gives you a sample of what our house looks like now, here in Africa.

Laurie

P.S. For all of you who gave me advice about re-sizing my pictures before trying to add them into my blog--thank you! This worked much quicker!