News and such.

I'm doing homework with R. She's in kindergarten. My mind is a little bit blown, not only that she has homework, but by the amount of it.

I think it stands to reason that if my generation and the ones previous did not have homework in kindergarten, and that the generations are getting progressively dumber (they are) that this homework overload has got to be part of the problem.

I'm against homework at any level, aside from studying and paper writing. But kindergarten? Really?

She's five and she's already in school until 3 o'clock.

I find this to be mindbogglingly annoying.

Anyway, today's bout of renovation went well. So did yesterday's.

The kitchen looks twice as large with that one dividing wall missing. And today they put plywood down on the floor where there is no tile, so the rain of dust and debris in my room should ease up. The walls and ceiling are primed and look ready to go.

Old fridge is gone. A plumber came to stop the water line for an ice maker that continued to drip after the fridge was out and we couldn't find a valve to stop it. Much was accomplished.

And then E thought it would be convenient to have this crew take a look at a rotting support beam for the second floor porch. It turned out that not only was that one pole rotten, but the entire right side of the porch was on the verge of collapsing.

That needed some attention, so while we set up our coolers in the living room and stuffed all the cheese into the mini fridge in the basement, I took several vitamin C's to combat the cold the kids gave me and drank my body weight in tea and ginger, the crew got to work replacing beams outside.

They ran long, so we cooked some stuff from the freezer in the Foreman grill on a chair in the foyer and talked about our days.

So much has come up that E and T didn't plan for, but it's coming along nicely.

T missed a doctor's appointment for the baby yesterday in all the chaos and forgot to tell me the most wonderful news I have ever heard.

Because of my obsession with aiding Africa, all the kids have an obsession with it too. They talk about Africa and the children there who need help to go to school and get vaccines. They pretend they are going to Africa when they play games. They ask me when I am going again and if they can come. They want to send all their old clothes to African children who are smaller than them and can still wear all their favorite pieces.

So, T has started an African aid program at the school here.

I don't know what it entails yet; I'm not sure T does either. But YAY.

I love seeing things like that happen, and I love that my presence here is being used. God is amazing.

And wise.

Because every time I start to get restless about being here so long, He does something awesome like that to make me stay.