Grills washing team

If you ever visit Pakistan, you will be amazed by the amount of dust that gets collected in the home in just a single day! Floors need to be washed daily, furniture needs to be dusted daily, and it is necessary at least once in a couple weeks to wash the window grills and nets, which also collect a considerabe amount of dust. And we're talking here about MANY windows and MANY grills, not just a couple. In this first picture, you can see the windows we have in only ONE of our 5 rooms! Just imagine the amount of work that needs to be done!

So whenever mamma sees that the grills are in need of some attention, she calls in her 'grills washing team', which consists of Hafsa+duster, Uzair+duster and a bucket of water. Instead of beating the dust off with dry dusters, which is a usual practice here done by local house-maids, we always wash away the dust with water - this ensures more clean work, and the dust keeps away from our grills for a longer time.

Kids are always happy to help, as they love to hang in the grills, which is part of the fun, while doing the work. Plus, when you're up on the grill, you can look over the boundary wall of the house and see, what is happening on the street. :) Sometimes, Uzair and Hafsa fight over the matter, who will get the most dusty grill to clean, as it is considered to be a special 'treasure', because you 'supposedly' gain more pleasure from turning a really dirty grill into a clean one than not-so-dirty-one into a clean one. Once they've settled on who cleans which grill, the next stage sets in - the race of who'll do it faster.

Mamma has to keep an eye on both of them, as they do tend to get carried away in their race, leaving 'unnoticed' dusty traces here and there. Often, the wall below the window suffers from the excessive flooding the grills receive - this also is NOT a wanted feature.

As we were washing the grills this time, we came upon a quite intricate termites construction. The termites had happened to notice that one of the net windows doesn't colose quite tightly and they used this wonderful opportunity for building their tunnels right on the inner side of the window. As we watched the carefully constructed tunnels, we saw the termites move in and around their 'house'. Would you like to join in with our 'grills washing team' the next time our grills are due to be washed? :)

Cleaning 6 kgs of green peas

On Sunday mornings, our abba (father) goes off for bringing veggies for the entire next week. Last Sunday, he brought home two huge bags of green peas (3 kg each)! When mamma saw them, she said she would die cleaning them. But abba had a solution right there - Uzair and Hafsa were made into a 'peas cleaning team', which was supposed to give mamma at least some relief in working with those 6 kgs. We were happy that we could help! We even competed, who will clean the most and will be the fastest. Just in a matter of a couple days, the 6 kgs were gone and packed neatly into our freezer. We pack our freezer this way with fresh peas of the season, so that all summer long mamma doesn't have to worry about needing peas for her cooking.

As we were working, we were looking out for worms in the peapods. Look at this picture for a 'beautiful' sample of a worm wrapped around a pea. :)

Hafsa learned to read!

Where did you learn to read? Most probably at school, right? Do you know, where Hafsa learned to read? Sitting on a kitchen counter. :):):) One day, she picked her "Maze" reader about Fatima and Abdullah, sat in the kitchen on a counter, while mamma was cooking lunch, and starting from the first page, read through the entire book on her own! Today, she had picked the next level reader and read most of it again in the kitchen, but this time requesting mamma to bring a soft chair for her. Can you guess from the pictures, just which is the most comfortable position to read a book? :)