A tour of our house

We want to take some time in the next few posts to share a little more of the day-to-day life here at Rift Valley Academy.  We've already been here over a month, so I think it's time to share some pictures of our home!

This is our yard from the playhouse corner.  It is quite large.  And a hedge goes around most of it, so it is such a great place for the kids.  In another post, we'll give you a tour of the other surroundings.

Here's the front door, which enters into the dining room.  The cards in the window are thanks to many of you... mail is so special to get here!  We just bought some yellow paint, so soon this will be a bright cheery room.  

When you enter, on the right is the living room.  We just purchased the bookcase from another family, which has been fun to have.  The couches and rug are all rental (and all the other furniture you will see in this post) so we'll work on replacing those, slowly but surely.  That's our cozy fireplace, which we are grateful to have.  We miss the efficiency of our wood stove in Colorado, but this at least adds a few degrees of warmth! 

We brought a few pictures from home which are so nice to have.  These grace the fireplace wall.  The students get a pretty good kick out of the one of Jim and Joel on the tractor!

Through the door on the other side of the living room is the hallway which leads to the two bedrooms, the upstairs and the back room.  You can see the kids' beds are just platforms for the matresses.  Poor Joel has fallen out of bed a number of times, but seems to be getting the hang of it now.  Their window looks out to the front of the house, and is so nice and sunny in the afternoon.

This is the closet in their room.  The door goes to the bathroom that is shared with the master bedroom.  

Down the hall is our room.  It faces the backyard, and beyond that is the Titchie basketball court.  It can be loud when there are evening activities, so it is nice the kids are toward the front of the house.  Our walls are just painted stone.  I think we have the coldest room in the house as well.  Something I know we'll be thankful for when it warms up.  But lately it's been downright chilly!

This is our bathroom.  We've never had such a big bathroom!  Or even our own.  It's been very nice.  Much easier to keep clean when there's a place to put things.  The walls are a nice brown that match the shower curtain we brought!

Back out in the hallway, you can go upstairs.  We are using it as a play area (something else we've never had before!) and a guest bedroom (aka. YOUR room)!  It's a nice space.

Here's where the kids play.

This is the guest room, you can see the railing for the stairs out the door.  If our kiddos were older, it would make a fun bedroom.

This is our second bathroom, the "kids bathroom".  It's the size we were more accustomed to!

On around the back of the house is the "green room".  We are enjoying the paint colors that were already here, and thankful that we only have a few more rooms to paint if we want something other than white.  This might be Faith's room, but for now the kids are quite set on still sharing a room, which is fine with us.  So in the meantime, it can be an office or sewing room.

And on through that room is the kitchen, which is just off the dining room.  That window looks out to the side of the house.  Another fun paint match was in here.  The curtains in this window I made out of a tablecloth that I brought which I just loved.  The blues match perfectly!  You can see we have a microwave, oven and refrigerator.  The oven is full sized, the refrigerator is not.  

Not pictured, through a door to the right is our laundry/utility room.  It has a freezer which we purchased to cope with the less than full-size fridge, and our washing machine.  It's nice to have a freezer so that I can cook ahead a little more, and have the flexibility to make Africa-style cooking a little simpler.  For example, I cook up a whole kilo of dried beans at once and freeze them in "can-sized" portions for recipes.  Or I make large batches of pizza and spaghetti sauce.  That are painstakingly made from fresh tomatoes.  Delicious, but time consuming.  

Well, that's our house here.  We are looking forward to making it our home over the next two years!