OnePlanet International School

http://www.oneplanetschool.com/index.htm

"Every child is potentially the light of the world"

One planet international school is a new Baha'i based school in Ethiopia.
Our family thinks this is a great thing and the school is sooooo cute!
After we cleaned out Maya's room Elanee and Maya Rae went through the donatable books and filled a flat rate box up. The school had set up a drop point in the US and was asking for donations of books and toys to help get the school stocked up. It was fun and exciting to know that some of our old family favorites will be in the hands of these little Baha'i kids in Ethiotia.
Good stuff :)

Room Renovation- TA-DA!

TA-DA!!!!

Its DONE. It took 5 days as planned. Still needs curtains but we'll get there eventually.

So above you see Maya's craft area. She has a full sized kitchen table centered in the bay windows with a hanging light over it. Behind the table are three 3 drawer bins containing all of her craft supplies by category. There is a place for everything so nothing has to sit out

(in theory;) Her clothes wrack sits over her heater making for fast drying. From the door everything looks so neat.

Here is her 'wall o toys'. This house is so tall that we always have to make the most of the UP space. So we game Maya a wall of shelving. With the help of her little chair she can reach everything except the tippy top. Under the shelves are some of her old bins with big-ish random toys. The bottom shelf has a row of 6 wash tubs. These each contain one type of toy.....Bobble Heads in one, Barbies & Brats in another, B & B accessories and clothing, itty bitty toys/ animals/ cars/ you name it, Leap Frog type hand held games, & finally audio tapes and view master stuff. This took care of the bulk of the tangle. Up from there are the Legos, Linking Logs, small doll houses, some still loved Duplos. Up from there are books (the keepers- we got rid of easily 200),Mr. Potato Head, a train track. Then the rest are big and cute things and fially some decorations.

Her bed is sticking out from one wall with space all around. This allowed space for a chair for the big bed time story reader. That chair was an old SA find from years ago. It had an ugly blue fabric on it. On a whim I decided to peak under the fabric and found that it was originally a mint green vinyl . It too was tattered but way retro and totally cute with the pink paint! Vayda donated her bed spread because it matched Mayas room better than her own. Along side of the bed is "the wall of art". This consists of a new write and wipe board and 3 lines of wire and 60 or so pastel colored clothes pins. We pinned up some of Mayas old favorite 'works' but left lots of room for new creations. Her little table made for a good vanity, all the dress up clothes are at the foot of her bed in a toy chest, and her dresser and giant collection of stuffed toys are all tucked neatly into the closet.

ORGANISATION is a beautiful thing!!!! The cool thing is that Maya really loves being able to find her things. So far she is tidying up every day. Its easy now so she doesnt mind.

Now the inside of our house is nearly finished too.

Room Renovation- COLOR & The big sort!

Finally- COLOR!!!!

Maya Rae chose this wonderful color with no promting or reeling in from mom. Its bright! Especially with the sun on it but I wanted it to be all her. After your retnas melt its really not too bad. After all those days of priming we rejoiced at the vibrant color.

Oh- now for the big sort. Maya Rae is at the receiving end of every little plastic bobble, TP tube, baby Barbie diaper ETC ETC ETC that ever entered this house via her 6 older sibs and my day care days!!!! Though we have hoed out before- the hill O CRAP was overwhelming.
It took us 3 days to sort out this taggled disaster or a toy collection. Maya did really well with the work though. We made a big fat yard sale pile and gave away some baby stuff. I think it all we cut her collection down by a third.

Room Renovation- Still at it

Happy girls back at work.
At the end of this day- mid week- we had managed to tape and plaster everything, finish all the wood work priming and patch, prime and paint the ceiling.

Room Renovation- Prime Prime Prime

Prime- Prime- Prime.....
It took me two days to finish all the taping and plastering.

The girls spent those two days priming.

Room Renovation- On the way

That first day we got going on taping all the millions of cracks. The house had been jacked up before we got it so some of the rooms were very cracked.
I taped. Maya wanted to try her hand at plastering so I let her try. That was smart because- who knew- the kid can plaster! She plastered everthing she could reach. What a great help.
Elanee, Vayda and Maya all worked for hours and hours sanding and putting 2 coats of primer on all the wood work. That includes 4 windows and 2 doors..and of course the baseboards. I totally entrusted this work to them. This was the first time I handed over an entire job like that to them and they did a fantastic job!
On Saterday while the girls and I toiled away upstairs, Jody and Ben went out to get fire wood. We had fun stalking them from the window. Here they are hard at work unloading the slab wood.

Room Renovation- Making a start

The final bedroom! When we bought this house 4 years ago it needed alot of cosmetic work.

I started the renovations with the family room so we could walk into the house and see something pretty. That was mostly about Jody's sanity. I had the vision of what everything would look like in my head and he was just trusting my vision. He couldnt believe I wanted "this house??" So from there I have done just one room at a time. I finished up the down stairs first and then started pecking away at the bed rooms- First Elanee's, then Ben's, Vayda's and now finally Maya's.

Here are some before shots. She has the master bedroom so it is very large and sunny. We took an hour and shoved everything she owned into one huge heap in the center.
Elanee started with removing brackets from the windows and nails from the walls.
We draped a huge plastic sheet over the heap and made a start. Not sure what motivated this project. I just remember waking Maya up one morning telling her I wanted to work on her room. The big girls groaned when I said, " For the next 5 days your life is MINE!"

Successful Sleep Over

Sleep over success!

Maya Rae has had 4 sleep overs. The first 3 were big fat flops. Lots of fun playing with the friend but then lots of tears as the friend goes home late at night.
This weekend Maya dared try again. This time Saige came. They spent the eve coloring, playing and hanging out in their PJs. They were tucked in with bed time stories at 10:30pm and chatted till after 12 midnight.
Finally they fell asleep and in the morning they laid around being silly. Happy little campers! Yippee! I am hoping this is the beginning of many many more fun sleep overs.

A day at the Lake

Walking at the lake.

The other day we had a break in the weather. All the girls and I were c-r-a-n-k-y!

We have been borred and suffering from a case of cabin fever...

Therefore there has been limited tollerence and lots of bickering...

So when I saw the chance I announced to the bickering gaggle that we were all to suck up our issues (mom included) and go out to get some exercise and sunshine for the sake of our...

individual mental well being. Shockingly, they agreed. So we headed down to Seneca Lake where we parked the van...
and got out for a long cold walk. It was beautiful. Half spring, half winter. The geese were back!
Hundreds of gulls were hanging with the geese. Maya skootered to the play ground and...
Emma was grateful for the outing....
The girls all had fun on the playground then we made it back to the van and to Mother Earth store to pick out new organic deodorant ;) Good afternoon. Everyone felt much better afterwards. Later Elanee timidly admitted that my idea as a 'good one'.

Rock Candy

Rock Candy

Elanee and Vayda gave Maya her first cook book for Ayyam-i-Ha. On Friday (Science Day) we found a recipe for Rock Candy.

Maya read the directions, did all the measuring and cooking, ladled the hot sugar water into the jars and dyed them 3 different colors- red for her, purple for Saige and green for Vayda.

I dont have a pic of the finished project because they ended up in the belly before I got that far.

Ayyam-i-Ha PARTY!

For the final day of Ayyam-i-Ha we had a family party. It was great. We had a simple dinner and lots of deserts ;)
Aaron and Shelley came from Syracuse...
Lynde came from Ithaca...
Dan flew in from Virginia and he brought his friend Becky from Ithaca...
Emma got all dressed up for the occation.

Lynde brought gifts for everyone. I gave Aaron & Shelley 4 cloth shopping bags that I bought on Etsy. They were made of recycled fabric. I bought two denum bags for Dan but they were too girly for him so I gave them to Becky. I made Dan 3 nice sturdy black bags and 3 brown butterfly cammo bags for Lynde. Now- I just hope they use them. ;)

Ayyam-i-Ha presents!!!

Happy Ayyam-i-Ha!

2008

This Ayyam-i-Ha rocked! Around Dec Jody and I decided that it was high time to real in the Xmas thing here and to place our focus on Ayyam-i-Ha and Naw Ruz. So we made a plan. I just wanted to make sure that we didnt transfer that over stressed, over spending, crazy making Xmas thing onto another day. We did really well.
For starters we decorated a little. We made a list of people to give modest gifts to. It was kind of our theme. In a Yahoo group of mine a woman wrote about how her family kept their gifts "modest". I really like this. So did the kids.
We gave small gifts to some friends but not everyone we know. Jody and I went to dinner alone as a gift to one another. The kids each got 4 gifts. This year Ayyam-i-Ha was actually 5 days but just did 4 nights of gifts. The first night they got random things like....Maya got a book and a Leap frog game, Ben got long wanted slippers and Elanee and Vayda got a CD of very hip n happenin Baha'i music to share.Another night was a theme night. Books for all. Then there was a second theme day.....food. I know thats wierd but these kids dont see much that isnt home made and organic so Ben got peanut butter crunch cereal, Elanee got pringles, Vayda got Kraft mac n cheese and Maya got Teddy grahms. They were thrilled!!!! Beyond thrilled when they heard that no one was to mooch and no one had to share!
On the final night Ben got a write and wipe board, Maya got a Bop it game and Leap frog game and Elanee and Vayda got custom necklaces with their names in stainless steal.

Oh- one cool thing is that all of Mayas toys were recycled....Ebay and hand me downs. Cool.

Sand Critter

One of Maya's birthday gifts was a sand critter kit. A few days after she got it she had fun building them then taking them into the dark bathroom to see them glow.

Maya turns 8 !

Maya turned 8!!!

We just wanted to have a quiet family party so we didnt ivite anyone but Maya asked if Saige could come so she did. I told Maya that if she wanted to have a cake she needed to read the directions and bake it herself....can you say home school? Sugar is a great motivator! So she and Saige -with the help of Elanee- baked and decorated a nice little cake.
Saige went home for the afternoon then came back for pizza...
and cake.....lots of dancing and dress up.....
music and finally ....
presents!
We all had lots of fun!
I happened to hit a bunch of clearance sales at Walmart so Maya made out like a bandit. Happy little camper she was!