The Fey Family

Today I spent 2 hours crawling around the swimming pool on my knees vacuuming up the dirt that had settled at the bottom. I didn’t want to deal with another sunburn, so I wore a long sleeve shirt and had Jori put sunscreen on my neck. I am guessing by tomorrow morning the pool will look just as dirty, but I gave it my best shot. I’ve managed 2 nights in a row sleeping with the bite guard in! Thanks for all the advice!! I am sure my quality of sleep will keep improving as I get more used to it and maybe I will also magically stop clenching my teeth in the day time! I did a lot of home school planning while the kids were gone. I have a lot of friends here who “un-school”, and while there are times that might be a lot easier, there are certain things I want the kids to learn and know how to do, not only for educational opportunities down the road, but also for life. I took time to go through all the assignments I have planned for the week to weed out “busy work”, which I am not ...

It’s Saturday morning; cool with a slight breeze after some rain last night. Darin has been gone for 2 weeks and we have one week to go until he is back home. We dealt with load shedding (power cuts) the first week he was gone and a car breaking down the second week, so hopefully this last week will be smooth sailing. I picked up my new bite guard on Wednesday. I have managed to sleep with it for one night. If anyone has tips on getting used to sleeping with plastic in your mouth, let me know! I tried to sleep with it in last night and after tossing and turning for a few hours I gave up. I have been trying to find the areas of stress in my life as a bite guard, even one that I keep in my mouth all night, is not the solution to my teeth grinding. I discovered something I need that is often hard to come by; I need time alone. Completely alone. The kids slept over at friends (thank you Oosthuizen family) the weekend Darin left and when I walked into our empty house after droppin...

It is already a week into February and just about time for Darin to head off on another adventure. Tomorrow night he is heading to Ghana for a week and Kenya for a bit longer than that. He has a lot of meetings and conferences and might even have to pack a suit coat for this trip! Tys and Jori have finished one month of home schooling. There are days that go really well, days that are pretty bad and days where I think "we did what we could". I'd say most days are like that. We have moved away from Easy Peasy in several subjects as they just weren't working for us for one reason or another. We are now doing Teaching Textbooks for Pre-Algebra, CK12 for Earth Science and I am throwing together a bit of this and that for US History as our kids do not have the groundwork that most US children get throughout elementary school and we've had to take time to figure out some of the historical figures and events that they *should* know about. Hanging out in the middle ...

It’s Tuesday morning. Darin is in Burundi; his first work trip of the year. Since Darin started traveling out of the country, we have discovered that Darin being away from home = something not so fun for Jonna and the kids to deal with. We have been without water, had lightning strike and destroy our Wi-Fi, and been stuck at home because of riots in the community. Last night a storm came through and knocked out our power. This is not unusual and was not cause for much stress as the kids were both asleep and I had a little charger to run my fan. Then both kids woke up and said they were being eaten by mosquitoes and were too hot to sleep without fans. I set to work hooking up extension cords and fans to our solar generator; problem solved. Only the fans didn’t turn on. I basically told the kids to deal with it as it was very late, very dark and I was very crabby. For the rest of the night, often as I was about to drift off to sleep, one or both children would come into my room to ...

Earlier this week, I told Tyson and Jori that we would be starting school on January 9. This morning, after listening to them complain that there was nothing to do, I moved up the start date to today. We are using a program called Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool and Easy Peasy All-in-One High School . Both kids are taking the same classes, some at the 8th Grade level and some at the 9th Grade level. I am hoping this is going to work out and that they will motivate each other to work hard and do their best. I do have a bit of worry that my overachieving daughter will end up leaving her brother in the dust in a very vocal and not so nice way, but will be praying that does not happen. We are definitely going to go through a bit of trial and error as we figure out which courses are just fine as written and which courses need to be supplemented. Tomorrow will be our first day of US History, which out to be interesting as Jori doesn't have any prior schooling in this area and Ty...

As we prepare to enter a new year in less than a week, we look back with gratitude for the faithfulness of God throughout 2018, and with hope for His new mercies for the year ahead. Tyson completed Grade 8 at Batho Pele Christian High School. It was a different kind of year for all of us. He made some friends, then lost them, then made them again. Socializing continues to be a battle for our boy and we are proud of the way he endured a lot of not so fun stuff this year and came out stronger on the other side. Tyson did well in school this year; he had a lot of projects that he really excelled in and a lot of tests and homework that he didn't do quite so well in. Tyson continues to love Nerf guns, Christian Rap, dancing, and having fun with his sister or his friends. He continues to love doing stuff with his hands, showing a lot more creativity than his parents and making a bit of a mess along the way. Kids swimming in our pond...I mean pool. Jori wrapped up her last y...

So....it has probably seemed like I fell off the face of the earth. I kind of disappeared off the blog for a while as I was busy writing in other places, but I am back with a new report. Since the last time I wrote, we managed to find a few bits of furniture to make the house feel a bit more homey: a kitchen table, a few nightstands and some kitchen cabinets (two of which are being used for bedroom cupboards instead)! The curtains have been hung and the electrical work is 100% complete. Next week the builders will plaster one final outside wall and build a stand for the water tank. Sweet Amo chilling. Lenah cooking in the kitchen Other side of kitchen I honestly cannot say Thank You enough to everyone who has given towards making this dream a reality. We always loved visiting Amo and her family because we love them like family, but to be able to visit them in this house, where we can all find seating, where Jori and Johanna can go off into a bedroom to chat, where we c...