Homegrown and Heartgrown: 04/01/2009

With some trepidation I sent the girls to school today. They were really nervous but excited. Kristina kept saying "I no go." and then almost without taking a breath, "what my teacher?" I drove them (well, everyone) and we started at Anastasia's classroom. She was hesitant but still did everything the teacher asked her to. Then we went to Alina's. She promptly buried her head in my jacket but then let me leave. Kristina had the hardest time. She kept saying "I no go." Her teacher had recorded some Russian off the comptuer to play for her ("welcome to class, we hope you like it here"). I helped her to her desk and she cried a little and asked if I could stay. I asked the teacher and then sat behind her. He had her start a little string picture. I figured I had better get out soon or I was going to have 2 bored little kids on my hands.
When I went to pick them up at 11:10 they were all bursting with stories to tell me. "Funny!" said Alina (meaning *fun*). They want to go back tomorrow and stay all day (they won't stay all day, yet). When we were going to the car we met a friend who offered to take a pciture of them on their first day. Bad me! Didn't even think about it. So I took some more when we got home:

I saw this done on this blog cornishadoptionjourney today and I thought it was a good idea (since I'm not creative enough to come up with this on our own. We get a lot of questions about the adjustments we have had to make adding 4 more children to our lives. This post is about the physical adjustments. You might be surprised at how little we had to "adjust" physically, at least in the general living space. I didn't do any cleaning before this I took these pictures, so this is the real us.

We already had this table and all these chairs, although the chairs were scattered everywhere around the house. And since we moved into this house we have had all the leaves actually in the table. The only difference is I can't store my sewing machine and current sewing project on one end. :)

You might ask why we had this big monstrous doll house when we only had one girl. Now I would answer, "because we had 4 other girls coming." :) For the record, the boys play with it, too.

The chapter, teen and adult books. The blue row is Hardy Boys books. The next row down is Nancy Drew, Series of Unfortunate Events, Little House on the Prairie and others. Ect, ect. Never at a loss for something to read... Unless you are Caleb who has read every one of these books about 5 times.

I would like to use the excuse of getting more children to buy more books, but the truth is WE DON'T HAVE ROOM FOR ANY MORE BOOKS (I have to keep telling myself that).

The younger kid books. I got lucky and the mystery chore person had to sort the books today so it was nice and neat. See, there is some space in there that I could put a few books. NO, NO, NO, no more books. Chant it with me.

The two little boxes on top that you can barely see are full of small board books and coloring books/workbooks.

Muffins for a mob. Truth is I always made this many muffins. Difference is we go through them quicker, now. We do need to build up our food storage for 10 people rather than 6. We are working on that one. However, we have always been ones to use our food storage and buy in bulk so this hasn't been much of an adjustment.

Everyone has a place to put their cup for the day. As you can see we need to work on this. Whose is that orange cup?!?! And where are everyone else's cups?!?! Mom's cup is the one in the back, with it's own coaster. Dad keeps his on top of the fridge where he is sure no one else will drink out of it. :)

Moby the massive mover. Can you see the water spouting from the top!?!?!?!?

The three young kids' bikes. Two in the walkway where people can trip over them and one behind the Moby Mover waiting to be squished. The older kids' bikes are kind of buried in the garage. It is getting summer now, we'll have to dig them out (and, yes, probably add a few more).

Our game closet. What you don't see to the left is a shelf full of buckets of puzzles and card games. To be fair the top shelf is big bandages and other medical supplies, extra toilet paper and shampoo/ conditioner stashes for upstairs bathrooms and the bottom "shelf" (the floor) is food storage candles, and some Chrismas decorations. And there are also a couple of adult games there too, but they are on the bottom of the stacks, evidence that they don't get used much.

Boy toothbrushes.

And girl toothbrushes, have to have 2 holders.

This one hasn't even been touched, yet. This is our photo album shelf. It contains our pre-marriage albums, family albums and kid albums up to the first 4. We'll have to figure out SOMETHING when I get around to actually making albums for the girls. But I like to have them out because they LOVE to look at them.

Short toy shelves with too big toys on top. Each bucket is labelled with what goes in it (theoretically) and a picture for those who can't read yet.

The tall toy shelves. The toys that we are trying to "detach" ourselves from so we can give them away as well as the ones that have their own bucket that doesn't fit on the shelves, are on the top.

The latest hotspot project. We have been trying to figure out what to do with shoes, coats, and backpacks since we brought home the girls. So this is a work in progress. These are the shoe buckets: little "drawers" that fold out and in, from Ikea. Black for boys and white for girls. Everyone's has a label with their name on it... except where Ryah or Elijah pulled them off. They are only about 4 inches deep and work great in holding the shoes. They aren't so great and going out into the family room and getting the shoes to put in them, however. Anyone know of something that will do that?!?!?! ;). Notice the wrapping paper container it is in need of help and a new home, but you can't do everything at once, can you?!?!?!

How we contain markers, pens, pencils, scissors, crayons and glue. This is a rare occurance, usually there is at least one drawer missing because someone is using them to draw, somewhere. And usually there is at least 2 drawers that won't close all the way because there are too many things in it. And you will note the side that is supposed to be nice and neat notebooks. Once in a century it is nice and neat and JUST notebooks. :)

Our medicine shelves. Most of the medicines are kid medicines but there are a couple of them that are for us. Notice Jonas gets his own little box, labelled and everything... he's the pill-er of our family. And don't ask why there is one basket labelled "medicine" and LOTS of medicine not in a basket labelled "medicine..." I won't be able to answer you. I guess this little project has pointed out to me places I need to organize better.

A drawer full of kid cups and school lunch containers. The cups are supposed to be stacked up, kitchen chore person got a little lazy

The biggest changes are in the bedrooms... but that is a post for another day. And I should try to do a post about adjustments in other ways, too, but that is a little bit harder to show in pictures.