Now we are really living rural!

Life has gotten extremely harder and busy since moving to San Fransisco.  This is definitely rural Paraguay.  Between not having a kitchen sink or cabinets (8 more days and they'll be done!), making three meals a day from scratch, setting up our home, again, taking care of five busy children, needing to wash everything that sat in storage for two years because it all smells like moth balls (I am so thankful for my washer and this term, my dryer!), sweeping, sweeping and more sweeping.  We lived on a corner of dirt roads before but Dan reminded me we were up on a hill slightly and boy, did that make a difference.  We are on the same level as the road and I can just see the dust clouds pour in. 

I have been washing dishes in the laundry room, using hot water from the kids' bathroom but at night the light won't stay on in their b/c the local carnival across the street takes all the electricity so either I've been saying oh well, wait till tomorrow or taking my basins to the kitchen table.  I have so many clothes to sort through for five different sized children, also needing to separate what will be our "city" clothes, ones to put aside and keep clean because with all the dirt here things are getting stained pretty quickly.  I had purposed in my mind not to get house help but now I'm not sure.  I know we are still setting up home so that is taking extra time so I'm giving myself a month once all the boxes are put away.  We've also been working on Silas sleeping in a big boy bed now so Judah can have the crib, but JJ is not sleeping through the night. 

Our floors are concrete and it was amazing how my body hurt the first week after just walking around back and forth.  Guess I might not be wearing just flip flops all the time now!  After we had a guest for a couple days, right after we just moved in, on the last day of his visit we realized we hadn't opened the valve to the town water.  We wondered why we were getting hardly any water but wow, we have great pressure now!  Sorry Sean that you had to take a "cup" shower while you were here. 

During the move something happened to my fridge so that wasn't working either.  Finally this past Sunday night the guy came at 9 pm with a couple of tools in his pockets (must have been assuming we would have whatever else he needed and thankfully my husband has built up a good supply of tools over the years) and he fixed it!  So now I have water, my fridge is working and Dan has been changing out all our flourescent lights to a different kind so we have better lighting too.  Can't wait to get my kitchen put all together and when I do, I'll post some pics!  It has been fun though unpacking boxes and seeing what is in them and it is so nice to have a home to set up again.  I love to decorate!  Next week we jump back into home schooling (we are way behind with all the moving!) and we start going out to meet our neighbors.  I am both excited and nervous. 

Well, back to the dishes.  I have lots of inner monologues while I'm doing stuff like that and this time I needed to sit and write one of them out!  Next time I'll take the time to post pictures too!!  Thanks for your prayers and encouragement and sticking with us while we are getting settled.  So needed and appreciated!