Our new home….pictures included

I've been promising pictures of our dental clinic home.

And...I haven't posted them.

All I can say is, "I'm sorry!"

Life gets busy.

Unpacking, settling in, cooking, schoolwork, life….

Blogging is the first thing to be pushed aside!

But guess what?!?

I have pictures now!!

This is a view from our front door.  The door straight ahead leads to the kitchen.  The door to the left leads to the West Wing, aka The Kids' Room. Yes, our map of Africa and our stockings are being held up by strips of duct tape.  Some may mock…but others are so proud they can't stand it!

This is a view from the kids' bedroom door looking into the front room.  We have 3 sets of shelves that hold dishes, pots/pans, etc.  The drawers in the bottom of the black shelves hold the little kids' clothes.  The door straight ahead looks into the East Wing…our room :)

The next pictures are of the kids' room: 

This is a view from the door.  You can see Benji's and Nate's bunk bed on the right, Garrett's bed is straight ahead (with Nate sitting on the bed), and Laura's and Annie's bunk on the left.  In the lower left corner of the picture you can just barely see the chair where I sit each night and read to the kiddos.  So where does Melissa sleep?

Melissa has her own little cubby in the kids' room.  To give you perspective, in the bottom left corner of the picture is Garrett's bed and on the right is the Benji/Nate bunk.  Melissa has her bed and book shelf in her little corner of the room.  To the right of the book shelf is a door leading into their bathroom (pictured further down in this post).

This is a view from Garrett's bed into the other corner of the room.  The older kids store their clothes in trunks to keep them from getting dusty (and to hopefully keep the creepy crawlies out!).  There's my reading chair, too (although I now have cushions on it so it's a little more comfy!).

Here's the kids' bathroom.  That green bucket is our bathtub!  Believe it or not, it's big enough for the little kids to bathe in (one at a time, of course!).  We usually take baths/showers in the afternoon when it's about 104° F (40° C) outside.

Each room also has a closet.  This is the closet in the kids' room.  We use shelves to store school books, extra bathroom items, linens, etc.  We also have shelves designated for each child to keep special things on (toys, bags, personal items, books, whatever).


Now on to the kitchen:

This is a view from the front room looking in to our kitchen.  On the right side of the picture is one of my 2 sets of shelves that holds buckets full of "pantry-type" supplies.  Straight ahead (under the calendar) is the table-turned-into-a-countertop area.  On the left side of the picture is the sink.  Scott made it by taking our old kitchen table and cutting a hole for the sink basin in (pretty smart, I think!)

This is still from the door, but looking towards the left.  You can see the other set of shelves and you have a better view of our kitchen sink.  The trunks underneath the sink are used to store things that little mice would like to nibble on.  The section of table to the left of the sink is where we have our dishes drying rack.  That space is pretty much unusable for anything else because of where the stove is…but we can't move the stove or when nice breezes blow through, it blows the gas flame around like crazy. Since we love the breeze, we're fine with where the stove is!  

This is a view from the table/counter under the calendar.  You can see our sweet little kitchen in all it's glory. :) We love our solar fridge because it allows us to keep Annie's medicine cool.  Oh, and provides us MUCH NEEDED cold water!!  There's just something about cold water that makes life a little more bearable!

Finally, the master bedroom!  

Here's a view from the doorway. You can see a black shelf on the right that holds our movies,  books, keys, and other miscellaneous stuff.  Straight ahead is a little couch where I'm sitting now as I type this!

As you walk in you see our bed on the right.

To the left is a cement counter where we store things (clothing and tools in trunks), and the kids sit by the windows and work on schoolwork.  The breeze in here is pretty amazing!

Our lovely, no-frills bathroom...

Our closet is used for storage….toys the kids pull out every once-in-a-while, books we'll need later for school, etc.  I keep my THM foods on the black shelf.

I'll end this post with a picture of our favorite place in the house…our front porch. We love to sit out on the couches and plastic chairs and just visit. We eat most meals out here.  It's cool, shady, and there's usually a nice breeze.  We are in planning on buying a new kitchen table to be our "front porch table" where we can eat and do schoolwork outside!