Still Stranded

And we wait.  For our car that is.  The next promised deadline is tomorrow noon.  We can only hope.  We have all gone well beyond stir crazy.  I am creating an elaborate life with imaginary friends and talking dolls.  We are somehow still managing to get by on the kindness of friends and still have a full fridge and socialized children.  Didn't mean to go so long between posts.  The last 13 days have been blurring together.

FYI... the medical note in the last post did not work after all.  She had to get one on proper paper.  Guess life is changing around here.

Our power cuts continue to be terrible.  Unpredictably either morning or evening 6 days a week minimum. I am SO glad we invested in the phone connection to supplement our internet and that Uncle Dave brought us a battery for the laptop.  We were also just promised a half-gas stove by the school.  That will make a huge difference... getting up at 6am to cook dinner was NO fun!!

I have been doing loads of work in the garden since the car died.  I think Moses wants our car fixed even more than we do just so he can have a break from me.  I have discovered he has been quite lazy about keeping the garden and feel like I am cleaning a jungle.  Yesterday I emptied out what has been accumulating in a banana patch... all the stuffing and springs from the chairs we refurbished, buckets, paint cans, piles of batteries, more than a dozen alcohol bottles, a pile of wood and tree stumps large enough to make a large bonfire, not to mention the banana vegetation accumulation.  Each day feels like more of the same. 

We do find plenty of interesting wildlife.  This moth was beautiful and since he lost a wing Kaia was more than happy to take care of him.  I also did some major damage to a snail that made his way under my foot.  Kaia moved him out of the work zone and made him a nice shaded house.  Thankfully she forgot to check on him today because I don't think it would have been a pretty site.

When we moved the moth from the wall to get a better look he started peeing!!!  Even Moses had never seen a moth pee before!  And he had a LOT of urine in him!

Sorry Uncle Dave... We tried your granola bar recipe.  A bit 'healthy' for me but after a few I got used to them.  Kids and Carl loved them.  

Until.  Peer.  Pressure.  

We had her friends over for a play date and the boy didn't like them.  Ever since then Kaia won't eat them either.  Live and Learn.

The fridge has been getting pretty packed with Kaia's artwork and she really wanted a venue to display her work.  So she made a book and bound her  various masterpieces of crayon, marker, glitter, and fingerpaint.

So to conserve energy we boil a pot of hot water for baths rather than heating the whole tank.  Sometimes the power goes off unexpectedly as it is heating and the water is only lukewarm.  So I had the shi-shi idea of a sponge bath.  Kaia was thrilled because sponge baths sound totally girly!!  But still couldn't resist jumping in.

On Saturday I went out to work in the garden and left Carl alone with the children.  Enough said. 
We promised each other that we would never photograph such extravaganzas but now that the photo was taken, might as well post in up on the blog.  Grandma, I know you have been dying to see Theo in his purple ballerina dress.