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? :)

Fun with dominoes

Have you ever thought of using dominoes for anything else than playing the game? Uzair doesn't actually enjoy the official 'game of dominoes'. What he loves to do instead is to use dominoes for creating his own special art projects. Take a look at his latest one - a dominoes space ship ready to lounch into space.

Our very own green onions

Sometime at the end of 2009, Uzair noticed that onions in Mamma's kitchen are starting to get some green little shoots. He got very excited, because it meant that Mamma would let him take one for growing his very own green onions. Uzair took from the plates cabinet a small dish, poured into it some water and put the onion into this water in such a manner, that the green shoots were on the top of the onion. He kept on chaning the water of onion daily and taking it outside for some hours of sun every morning (our house is a quite shadowy one).

After a few days, we noticed that the green shoots are starting to grow! Through Uzair's persistent care, in about a month's time, these small shoots developed into beautifully long green onions. What a pleasure it was for both Uzair and Hafsa to eat them!!! Nothing tastes better than onions grown with your own hands! :)

Harvesting potatoes

When the shrubs of the potatoes have become yellow and look quite 'dead', it is time for the big harvesting! In Latvia, it is a serious business, because potatoes form the basis of the diet in the country. If in Muslim countries the basic food items are rice and bread (roti), then in Latvia people eat potatoes, boiled or fried, supplementing them with some gravy and salad. Nearly every family has their very own small piece of land (veggie and fruit garden), where they grow their own potatoes, because the ones grown by your own hands are much tastier than what is available in the shops, plus you can be sure that no pesticides enter your body along with your potatoes.


Vecmamma (grandmother) also had a few rows of potatoes in her garden - only enough for eating through the fall season. When her own potatoes are finished, she usually gets a whole winter supply from mamma's sister Mara, who has a countryside house and grows lots of potatoes in her big fields. Vecmamma keeps this considerable potatoes supply in basement, which is located under the apartment building.

So, thanks to Vecmamma's garden, we had a great opportunity to 'dig the dirt', searching for the potatoes in the soft soil. However, before we got to 'digging the dirt' part, mamma took a big gardening fork and lifted the soil under every shrub for making the soil softer - easier for us to dig.

As buckets were getting full, Uzair and Hafsa took turns taking them off the field and silling on the grass, so that the sun can dry the dirt up a bit.

Once all the potatoes were out of the soil, the sorting work started. The very tiny ones were set aside for eating right away, the middle-sized ones were put in a box for next year planting season, and the big ones were sorted into other boxes for keeping in the cool basement to be eaten over the next few months. Nothing can beat the taste of potatoes grown in Vecmamma's garden and harvested by your own hands!

The higher, the better!

Do you know, what was Uzair's most favourite acivity in vecmamma's garden? It was climbing trees and any possible ladders - the higher, the better! Boys are boys, aren't they? :) In one of the smaller apple-trees, Uzair made his very own 'playplace' by hanging all sorts of things in the tree. Also for eating apples sitting in a tree seemed to be the best.

His most favourite time was the apple harvesting season. Since vecmamma has 8 apple-trees, it took quite many days to pick all the apples, which meant that the ladders were in very frequent use. As soon as mamma or uncle Ralfs was down from the ladder to empty the bucket full of apples, Uzair was on the ladder! Time to time, Hafsa also joined in on his mischiefs. Believe it or not, but not a single accident of falling happened, Alhamdulillah. :) So whenever you need a good strategy for climing a tree, call up Uzair! :)