Batches Business: Fall - Weekly Fun Times

Wow, I am finally sitting down to upload some pictures... turns out there are about 600+ backlogged since October!

Fall of 2011 flew by - it seemed like if we weren't traveling, recovering from traveling or sick, we were preparing for the next trip! Still, we managed to create some fun routines at home, and we are glad to be back to doing them after all of our travel!

Often on our way to Lily's ballet/gymnastics class I take the girls to the park, to help the little girls get their wiggles/giggles out before they have to be patient and relatively still while we watch Lily dance and jump.

After 20 minutes in the chilly wind at the park they are happy to play indoor games for a few minutes!

On Thursday mornings we have Bible Study Fellowship - all four of us girls go to class and learn about the same part of the Bible! BSF is awesome in many ways, but for us as a nomadic family, it is particularly great because BSF is the same all over the world: classes are all studying the same passage, the same week, and almost always in English. Because of the consistency, we are planning to do BSF (if possible) in every new home-town. Already the girls (and I) are learning a lot, and we have not only attended class in Omaha, but also in Albuquerque, Dallas, and I even went in San Francisco!

I do find it a little challenging to get all of us out to West Omaha in time for 9:10am class (a 35 minute drive for us), so part of our weekly routine is to eat bagels at Breuggers out there first... so I just toss kids and clothes in the car, and we're off! We have lots of fun watching them make bagels and drinking coffee for a few minutes before hopping back into the car to get dressed and drive 5 minutes over to class - mostly on time!

Another big part of our weekly routine is LAUNDRY. It is definitely my least favorite task... so maybe that's why it always seems to be piling up. At any rate - between 2 adults, 2 toddlers, and now only 1 baby in cloth diapers, we tend to put our Washer-and-Dryer-Women to the test. Several times this fall I ended up packing up the whole crew to the laundromat while we waited for the repairman to fix out home machines!

The girls think coin-operated laundry is a blast! I do admit sometimes I love the efficiency of doing 10 loads at the same time (no exaggeration here, I'm serious. I counted.). But then the 25th of 55 minutes on the dryers hit and these cheerful helpers have more difficulty being cheerful...