Happy Dance!

That's right! I'm doin' a little happy dance here. Yesterday was full of good news. We found out that, thanks to some friends in the states, we now have a nice townhouse to rent near a big park and close to shopping and we have a van waiting for us. Not only that, but DH's brother came back from India for a suprise visit to spend a few more days with him before we head back. The kids all wanted to see him again but we didn't think he'd be back since he was just here in April. And I got a wee bit of shopping done last night and am hoping to finish it this morning. Wish me luck. This will be my last post before we head back since I still have a bit more packing to do as well as lots of purging. I've gotten rid of about 8 lbs. of stash since I'm working under my present rule of "If a lb. of stuff goes in, then a lb. of stuff must come out." It works for helping me decide what I really want to keep.

I'll post again as soon as I can once we're back in VA.

Update

Well, we’re down to only about a week before we head back to the states and of course, life is quite busy. This week’s main task is trying to sell as much stuff as we can before giving away the rest. I didn’t factor in any money for selling our stuff in our budget so anything we make will be a nice little bonus and if we don’t sell it, big deal! It will go to help those who have far less resources than we do.

We finally got our final shipment of books from the US just in time for me to sort through and pull out the homeschooling books we’ll need this year before sending them right back to the post office to go back the other way. In case you’re wondering, it took three months for the books to get here and we decided to go back about two months ago. C’est le vie!

We’ve done a bit of sight seeing and hope to do at least a little more before we leave but that depends on how long it takes to get everything else pulled together. I think I’ll have to wait until after we return before I post any pictures since I’m still busy with packing and because we sold our computer table, the computer is not as easily accessible during the day as it was before. Gotta keep Reza away. We haven’t done any exit shopping yet, and I have no idea when we’ll be able to fit that in but I’ve already promised to get some things so it’ll get done soon I hope.

I’ll likely be without a computer starting within the next few days and lasting who knows how long. So, in the mean time I leave you with some wonderful blogs to check out in case you haven’t yet. Except for Patty’s blog, I’ve only recently discovered these blogs that are rich in knowledge, insight and a fresh perspective on life. You may not agree with everything that is written on each site but, please, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. There’s plenty to be gained by looking around.

Patty http://www.morningramble.blogspot.com/

Amy at http://amidchaos.blogspot.com

http://www.homeliving.blogspot.com/

Mrs. Plain and Simple at http://echofromthegreenhills.blogspot.com/

Lisa http://www.crazycowcountryfarm.com/blog.html

Peggy http://www.hiddenhavenhomestead.blogspot.com/ 

Moms for Modesty

There is an internet petition that I can really agree with. It is called Moms and Dads for Modesty. The goal is to get retailers and children’s clothing manufactures to offer clothing for little girls that is not suggestive or rude but modest and actually looks like little girls’ clothes and not just sized down teenage girls’ clothes.

If you don’t have daughters or your daughters are grown you might not realize how very hard it is to find decent, well priced clothes for girls. Girls’ clothes are now full of attitude and sexual innuendos. What’s up with printing messages across the butt of a child’s pair of jeans? Before coming to Iran, I tried finding pants that were not skin tight and/or designed to accentuate the rear end for both my girls. You would think that since they were just 3 and 5 that it wouldn’t be a problem, right? WRONG! I went through some many different pairs of pants for each girl from several different stores and ended up buying the boys’ pants! How sad is that?

Another problem with what’s called fashion in the US is that those styles get copied all over the world. When we went to Dubai I had just as much difficultly finding girls’ pants. Worse still, we were in a pediatric dentist’s office a couple of weeks ago and one 7 or 8 year old girl came out wearing a shirt that was completely bare across the middle in front except for a few strips of fabric holding the two halves together. I never, ever would have thought I’d see something like that here!
http://www.everydaymommy.net/everyday-mommy/2006/9/5/moms-for-modesty.html