Odds and ends

1) We love having some extra help around here! Not only does Rose give Krassi and Reuben the chance to do some leisure things that I just can't (because, really, it's not just moms of many small children who can't spend long chunks of time outside in the late afternoons - with my more typical children, I can pop in and out of the house as needed to float between playing with them and keeping supper moving forward; I can't do that with Reuben or Krassi. Reuben especially, you just don't know where he's going to end up, so the safest thing is just to keep him inside.) But Rose is also a magnet for the little girls, so today isn't the only time I look out the window and see something like this:

Rinnah is just barely visible on the left, and Gloria just out of the photo on the right.

Reuben and Krassimir got to spend the entire time between when they got off their respective buses and had to come in for supper outside yesterday! With a combination of chalk, the sprinkler, and a water-logged shower base pan box, it was a delightful, messy, wet afternoon for everyone.

2) The bathtub showed up while they were out there. Our driveway is beginning to look like a bathroom!! (Though we moved the tub into the house after Daddy got home.)

Yep. That's a bathtub in there!

With the materials for the bathroom being funded by the four kids' grants, we are having to scramble a little bit to purchase enough of the supplies in time to meet the grants' expiration dates - Mira's was 4/30, and Bobbi's is coming up this week on 5/31. The next ones don't expire until September and January, so we'll be able to pick things up more on an as-needed basis after we get through this week! Even with the bathtub, we weren't quite going to use up all of Bobbi's allotment, so were glad to hear from our excavator that he's planning on coming out to dig for the foundation this Wednesday afternoon! That makes for an invoice dated before the end of the month, and it will certainly be enough to use up what's left in Bobbi's grant. ;)

3) Mira, after a very agitated day yesterday, has been much calmer today. I'm not going to go into all of the medical details (partly because they're not all that exciting), but she's still hanging out down there at Gillette, and the hope is to send her home sooner rather than later, but with a bi-pap machine and oxygen so we have the option to use them ourselves rather than have her need to be hospitalized every time she needs a bit of help. I got a chance to go visit her this morning, along with three helpers.

Gloria holding Mira's hand

Staying busy with one of the many toys available in the playroom.