A terrible stink was emanating from the laundry room at Karen’s. Now Karen can tell if it is dead rat, dead mouse or decomposing garbage just by the smell but this one had her stumped. We blamed it on a dead critter and called it Mickey. Thus began a major clean out of said laundry room.  So we pulled all the appliances out, dragged everything off the shelves and some of it had been there since before I was born! By the end of the day we were no closer to finding Mickey but the place was spotless. We decided to let him alone for the night.

Joan cleaning

On Monday morning it only took Roselene 5 minutes to narrow the smell down to the decaying water in the washer and voila, Mickey was gone. Thanks Roselene.

While the laundry room was getting a good going over, Keith was making the depot usable again. He built new shelves, arranged and threw out lots of stuff and if you’re coming to HATS you don’t need to bring paint roller handles with you, there are tons!

Keith cleaning out depot

We have some budding engineers and construction workers. The 3 musketeers and one water girl were busy out back of Karen’s building house walls and roadways for their trucks. I thought it was so cute watching Sandra put water in Ti-Luc’s bucket as he was mixing “cement”. Keith saw how serious the boys were with their building so he made them some forms for the walls. They were thrilled.

Ti-Luc, Dieunel, Judel and Sandra out back.

Sandra the water girl.

There are moments here when everything slows down and Saturday late afternoon was one of those times. All the homework and chores and jobs had been finished and you could see small groups of kids playing a game or reading or doing a puzzle on the front porch at Mama’s. I love those moments when it truly feels like a family enjoying each others company.

Djemema and JJ playing the match up game.

That’s it for now from this family to your family. It’s all about our kids!

~Joan