haircuts & innovations

This is going to be a bit random because I have nothing great to post about...yet, wanted to give you something entertaining to look at...

Josiah needed a hair cut. We didn't necessarily trust a society of straight hair to cut his curly q's. Michael has some clippers, but not a guard long enough to satisfy me. I didn't want J to have a shaved head!! So we went with the scissors. (They were at least scissors made for cutting hair from the states.) I didn't realize how long the boy's hair was until we picked it out. It doesn't look terrible now, but I keep seeing longer hairs and want to cut them, but I resist.

Cooking and baking have definitely been my biggest struggles here. I was semi-comfortable in the kitchen; now I'm mostly lost. Everything must be made from scratch. Most of the "convenient" items I took for granted are not available...such as tomato sauce, cream of ____ soup, anything canned, etc. Some other common ingredients are available at the foreign store (an hour+ away), but for a hefty price...sometimes even double or triple what it costs the US. ouch. Cheese is definitely the most missed. I had no idea how much I used cheese!!!

But, I'm getting the hang of it..slowly. I've made a few meals and baked a few goodies. Everything will need tweaking, but it's a process. I finally found ground beef (and it's even lean!!) at the market; thank heavens we won't have to live on ground pork. Still, some innovation will be necessary from time to time. Here's an example. I was making cookies. As my 6 were baking (small oven!), I realized I didn't have a cooling rack! I pulled the baking rack out of the oven and thought of this. It worked. :)

Some more innovation, this time from Michael. When we moved in, this "broken" washer was in our sunroom (or whatever this room is..we don't really use it). Michael and I had thrown around the idea about buying a dryer, but they're kind of expensive, so we were going to wait. When he saw this washer, the wheels started churnin'. He came up with this idea to turn it into a dryer. Obviously, the hoses aren't hooked up to any water. It spins. He removed the glass window and cut a hole in a piece of plastic we found lying around. Then attached an extra hair dryer I had. (actually I have 3, but that's another story..)...and voila! We have ourselves a dryer. I had no idea how much of a problem solver he really was until we came here. He did this stuff in the states, but I guess I didn't pay attention until now..when we are dwindled down to so much less and something like this seems like winning the lottery. :) We do actually still hang-dry our clothes for a while, then just put them in to de-crunchify them since it's sort of a process to set it up.

And, finally, a good pic of Josiah and mommy on our bike. He loves it. So far, no crashes. :)

Hopefully the next post will include some pics of our apartment. :)