Looking Up

Our home school kids are helping their parents learn a great deal about astronomy this year. We've spent more time looking up at the sky in the past month than I can ever remember. Now we don't live out in the country where we can see thousands and thousands of stars every night, but when the planets are shining this brightly, they show up even in a brightly-lit, dusty, smoky city sky! We've been watching Venus and Jupiter move across the evening sky for the past several weeks. Beth took this pic a few weeks ago, on the first night that we spotted them.

Tonight, while we were having dinner outside at Chili's, we could see the moon, Venus and Jupiter, all just before sunset even! It's probably easier for us to spot the planets, since we don't have any other stars in the sky to compete with them.

And this sticky bubbly mess in my kitchen is a representation of the biggest volcano in the solar system. It's called Olympus Mons, and the real one is on Mars.

Tonight, after supper, we were walking down the street to yet another American establishment for dessert when Lee Anna asked where Jupiter was. Beth said, "It's behind that building." So I joked that it was going to smash the building if it was right behind it. But Lee Anna said, "No, it won't smash anything! Jupiter is made of gasses!"

Why didn't I think of that?

Around the House

About six months ago, we moved to a new apartment (read that story here, if you haven't already). We were able to get mostly unpacked and settled pretty quickly, but with all the traveling we did last fall, there wasn't a lot of time to focus on decorating. The last few months have been a bit calmer for us, and I've had fun adding some little (and some not-so-little) homey touches to our new place. So let's go on a little tour of some of my favorite spots around our house. 

The first--and biggest--project was our "Reading Room." This flat has a cool little cubby area located between our school room and kitchen, and I knew as soon as I saw it that I wanted to make it a fun little reading area. We had the cushions made first, and then I painted some of the big designs from the pillows onto the walls. I love how it turned out, and how much time my kids spend reading in there!   

Here it is in action! 

This was another fun, and much less time-consuming project. We made little button bouquets like this for my sister's wedding rehearsal in January, and I wanted to make one for Sarah Claire's room. I think those little button flowers are so sweet.

(Yes, that's a really big canvas print of my baby. No, I didn't realize it would be quite that big. But she sure was cute!) 

Also, thanks to google, I recently recovered this lampshade for Sarah Claire's room. I was really excited to find this little lamp a while back, since finding non-tacky lamps here can be a tremendous challenge. I liked the lamp base, but the shade was black and white--not going to work in my princess's pink and brown bedroom. But I found a great little tutorial online and was able to recover it one night using an old crib sheet.

And finally, making one last stop in Sarah Claire's room, I put together this collage of her First Year Month by Month Monkey Pictures. It's not a great photo, but it looks good in person. Custom framing is much, much cheaper here than it is in the states, and the guys in the frame store know us well by now!

Okay, and here's one last little project--another lampshade. I needed a lamp for my desk, and, again, finding something decent (meaning it's not gold-plated or covered in tassels or some funky design) can be a challenge. But we finally found this plain red one, and I used some leftover fabric from the reading room pillows to make it a little more festive.

That same fabric also covers the bulletin board right behind the lamp, so it all ties nicely together.

Okay, thanks for letting me share! I promise the next post will have more pics of the kids!

My Little Helpers

These kiddos have been really sweet about their mom being so sick this week. Sawyer has told me several times a day that he's sorry I'm sick and hopes I get better soon. Lee Anna has been extra helpful and cooperative. And Sarah Claire keeps running up to me to ask, "You better?"

Even with our excellent substitute filling in, it's been a slack school week so far. Today, Daddy had his own class to go to, so I was on my own with the kids, but I just wasn't quite up to it yet. Not only was I not up to doing school, I wasn't even up to staying awake! So I sat them down on the couch with a clipboard and a pencil, and gave them an assignment that I could sleep through. I put in our Disney Oceans DVD, and told them to write about or draw some of the things they saw in the movie. Then I went to my bedroom and crashed.

A while later, I came back out to check on them, expecting the movie to be over and their assignment to be forgotten. What I found, though, was the movie far from over, and this little girl hard at work. Lee Anna told me it wasn't over yet because she kept pausing it so that she could draw all the different animals without missing any. She didn't just draw one or two fish--she drew 27 different sea creatures AND labeled them AND even wrote comments about some of them.

Here's a closer shot of her paper:

I was quite proud.

And while Sawyer didn't go quite as crazy with the Oceans project (though he did draw a few pictures), he found his own way to be helpful this morning. This is what I found when I had finally gotten up and left the bedroom for a few minutes. 

He snuck in and made my bed (in his own special way) and left this sweet note:

Isn't that precious? I'm so grateful for my precious kiddos. I'm also thrilled to report that I'm feeling much better, and school should be back on track in a day or two.

Back to School

We have a new student in our family this week, but thankfully I'm not the one having to teach him. Daddy has gone back to school--to learn to read and write!

One of the (many!) challenging things about Arabic is that the written and spoken languages are not the same. We speak colloquial Arabic just fine, meaning we can communicate with our friends and neighbors and understand your average person on the street. However, the classical Arabic language is a different animal altogether. That means that when we pick up a newspaper or book, or try to watch the news on TV, we're basically clueless. We can usually pick out a word here and there, but can't come close to understanding it all. We have often compared it to the difference between English and Spanish--that's how far apart the spoken and written Arabic languages are!

So, Jason is taking a course this month that's going to help him learn to read the newspaper. In the photo above, he's eating his lunch on the "special plate" since it was his first day of class.

In addition to the "student" hat he's wearing now, he's also been wearing some other hats this week, like the "nurse" hat and the "home school substitute teacher" hat. I have been very sick with a throat infection, so he's pretty much handling everything! He took me to the doctor today, and when the doctor saw my throat, he just said, "Wooooow." I'm so grateful to be taken care of, and for all the hats my amazing husband wears. 

They're Playing Where?!

We have written in previous posts about some of the ways our kids' childhood differs from our own. Well, "playing on the roof" certainly belongs on that list. Since our city is nothing but rows and rows and rows (and rows!) of apartment buildings, there are few green spaces, and even fewer yards. But there are plenty of roofs. And we were so excited last fall when we found an apartment we liked that also had roof access!    

It may not look like much to you, but what I saw when we first laid eyes on that big concrete slab was an occasional fifteen minutes of peace and quiet. This roof is not really private, since it's accessed from the main stairwell of our building, but our flat is directly under it, and no one else in the building uses it at all. So, practically speaking, it's ours.

Shortly after we moved in last August, we brought the kids' bikes and scooters up here, and they have had fun riding them around. We also got Lee Anna some sidewalk chalk, and she's spent a good bit of time up there beautifying the concrete. We even used her chalk to draw a big Earth during a science lesson, and they all three jumped back and forth between the Earth's layers.

So we've already been enjoying "our" roof, but this week, it got even better. We got a swingset! I've been eyeing one for a while, and we finally had a chance to go by and check it out last weekend. They delivered it on Wednesday, and would have assembled it themselves, but there was a lovely windy dust storm going on, so Jason mercifully offered to put it together on his own when the sun came back out.

We all got in on the assembling fun, although some members of the family were more helpful than others.  

 Lee Anna definitely did her share.

 Sarah Claire...well, at least she looked cute!

Here's it is almost completely assembled. There's a third swing made of a barrel with a hole cut out of the top that I unfortunately didn't get a picture of.

 Of course they didn't waste any time testing it out.

We also got this nifty umbrella and plastic table. As soon as we set up the table, Sawyer started begging me to bring him a snack. 

Hooray for swings! And roofs! And fifteen minutes of peace!

From the Passenger Seat

Riding as a passenger in a vehicle here is definitely more of an adventure than it is in the states. You just never know what you might see! These are all photos I've snapped recently while we were out and about around the city, and while they're all just average, everyday sights here, I know there was a time when I would have done a double take at any of these.

Just your average garbage collection truck.

Just your average pickup truck hauling cardboard...in the rain
(ok, so the rain part is NOT an everyday sight).

Just your average truck load of animal skins.

Just your average truck load of, um, food scraps.

Just your average truck full of cabbage. Yes, cabbage.

Just your average donkey cart riding down a major highway.

Just your average guy sitting 12 feet off the ground on top of a large, fast-moving vehicle.

Just your average Google snacks delivery truck. What? Google doesn't
make snacks where you live? I guess we're just ahead of the times!