Our house, Part II: A few more photos

Welcome back! If you missed the last visit, you can check it out here. But I thought this time I would take you through our front door. You can see the back door right through it, but I'll take you to the kitchen, which is the first door on your right.

See, it looks normal enough. It is small by U.S. standards, but it's actually been just right. Uh, with the small (and I do mean small) exception of my sink, which is about the size of two cereal boxes stacked on top of each other. Really not a huge sacrifice. Occasionally the sink handle spins off into the dish water and I have to look for it with the water spraying everywhere, but that's kind of the "quirky" adjective I mentioned earlier.

If you turn around in my kitchen, this is what you'll see. The large silver contraption is our water filter. To your right would be our red-painted pantry, which currently holds our fridge and a very unexpected delight: our microwave.

This is the boys' room. Their toys, on the left there, are all organized in African baskets made by local women, which I love. I also love that they have much fewer toys, which makes pick up a ton easier and play not really any more boring, from what I can tell. And you know, that industrial Wal-Mart-style tile has its benefits.

I found this in our bedroom while I was taking photos and thought I could put her to work. Wonder if her parents would mind if I keep her.

...And one of our bathrooms. Just wanted to put any potential visitors' minds at ease that we do have a couple, and they look very normal. Well, in the spectrum of I-have-four-kids normal and I-live-in-Africa normal.

See, we have two! Actually three, counting the Asian-style in the "quarters", but we won't make you use that one unless we're really desperate for humor.This is our master bath.

We converted our garage to our school room--which is really wonderful to have...and sure beats my laundry room, where we kept all our supplies in Little Rock. We throw the doors open and have school that way, which I really like. We have a six-foot table and benches in the middle here. You can see we painted the back wall with blackboard paint. We're trying to get our big map that everyone signed at our going-away party to stay up on the concrete wall, but no luck yet.

This is our daughter's room (the purple is the big giveaway here). You can see some of the built-ins on the right, which we also have in our room.

This loaner was just set up this weekend, and we can still hardly believe it! It has been a great source of energy release and family/friend craziness. John lets the kids play, too.

Glad you could stop by!