A Happy Place for Sand

Yesterday afternoon Nathan moved the girls' sand table over under the Magnolia tree and re-filled the sand. I'm hoping that the tree will offer some protection from the rain because even with the lids on, the rain fills the table when it rains hard. The old swing makes a fine shelf for some of the larger sand toys.

This morning Nathan and Dylan left with Don bright and early to work at Radnai's. Don's hoping the boys can work 4-5 hours and that he can last all day long. The weather is finally acting appropriately...no rain in the forecast for the next while, so it's a good time to work outside.

Last night Don, Nathan, the girls, and I went to the last Mexican Farm Worker soccer game/bbq that our church has been doing all summer long. We made it to the first one as well, and then Nathan left for Quadra and Dylan had work conflicts. It was lots of fun and you can see that the farm workers have gotten to know lots of the "gringos" over the course of the summer. Some are even taking English lessons from a woman from our church.

I've spent the morning doing laundry (the story of my life, really, but I want to make sure Dylan and Sean have their full arsenal of clothing for school), cleaning out and turning off the downstairs fridge (we've finally finished the party leftovers), and just generally keeping myself busy tidying up this now-huge house.

Did I tell you all that this winter we'll be hunkering in the bunker? We're going to forego heating the upstairs part of the house at all and do all of our living in the new smaller quarters downstairs. This end is better insulated and has everything we need. We'll still sleep upstairs, but then we'll have to heat only the bedrooms at nighttime instead of trying to keep the entire end heated all day long. We're sure missing the wood stove now that power prices are through the roof. Actually, I'm pretty sure that Don and the boys don't miss it at all...it was a lot of work to get the wood, chop it, stack it, haul it in, build a fire, add wood to the fire, etc. for 6 months out of the year.

I hope everyone is enjoying their Labor Day!

Cheers,
Cathi