The Four Fab: Mon., Aug. 27

We had the opportunity to do another visit today! We went to see Walter & Glenda Brown, who have both had surgery lately. Also, Glenda's mom lives next door to them; Meg has been ill and we haven't seen any of them since we got back from MT. Our visit was very enjoyable and they wanted us to stay longer.

Yesterday at Target we found two extremely timely 'homeschool-ish' (and excellently-priced) books, one for N, one for J, which we 'gifted' to them this morning. N's is a science book - about the human body - with a bunch of different 'interactive' things in it (pull-outs, pop-ups, twirling charts, etc.) That girl spent HOURS in that book today. She's very much into science stuff lately. Justus's is a "Kumon" book, of Japanese style, to give preschoolers good practice with scissors. This is something Justus needs much practice with, and he completed six or eight pages today! Each tear-out page is a new cutting project that, with just a few cuts on wide lines, creates a fun/cute/interesting picture. I'll need to take some pictures of that so you can see what I mean. Tomorrow....

Yardwork. That was the little 'project' of the day. The monsoon delivered a zillion weeds to our yard!!!!!!! Once the temp went down for us a little bit Natasha and I were able to squeeze in two 15-minute sessions of weed pulling (with a 15-minute break in between) before the sun went down. The lesson I learned (AGAIN) is that in Arizona, if you don't want to do WAY more work than necessary to pull up the weeds by the roots (It feels like you're trying to dig the weed out of the sidewalk!!) you HAVE to wet down the ground first. Uggggggghh.

After supper we played a game before Bible Time: Uno.

Here is a picture of Justus and Jeremy moving the Lego table into place in the family room.

This is the view out our front door, which does NOT face the street and is not on the 'front' of the house (interesting). It is on the west side of the house.

There is no good way (that I have found) to shoot pictures of our entryway; this is my best effort. [If you're interested, maybe I could do a video of it and send that in a private e-mail??] First, this is basically what you see when you first walk in. (The standing picture frame thing is Elaine's, and stands against the wall right outside her door.)

If you take three or four steps into the entryway and then turn around and look up, this is what you see (west wall). (The next picture after this one is of this same area, but from upstairs; I REALLY need decorating help with this spot of the house!!!!!!) Also, the stairs take off from right under the small square window beside the door. The first two steps take you northwest, and then the next two turn you around so that walking upstairs you're facing east.... In case you wondered. :)

This picture was taken looking into the entryway from the stairs; that is Elaine's door, which is to your immediate right when you're coming in the front door.

Then, once you get to the top of the stairs, if you're not so fascinated with the laundry room (ha) or too distracted by everything there is to look at upstairs, you might wish to turn around and look back down the stairs. This is what you would see (Awww, I just relized I should have turned on that light above Mom's wall hanging quilt. Oh well....):

Now, on to Elaine's room. Just in the past four weeks she has turned her room black-and-red! Wow, it's striking!! This piece of furniture is a gift from Tad & Deb, who are looking for homes for lots of furniture. This one was made by their x-daughter-in-law, and it houses Elaine's TV, clothes, sheets, books, etc. It was plain brown when she received it. It's not anymore! (The remaining pictures pan around the room to the right.)

If this picture were taken at just a little bit different angle you would be able to see the downstairs half-bath ("Elaine's") from her room.... There are two pictures of it, below.