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Richmond, Virginia
August - December 2005

Mishkin worked in Richmond, Virginia for one year.
He had a small apartment which he stayed in for 3-4 days
a week and then would visit us at home in Canada on
the weekends. He then moved into this lovely townhome
and the whole family stayed in Richmond together for
3 months. It was an amazing experience. We brought
very little with us and had the most wonderful time.
We were free from the clutter and time-consuming
maintenance of our material possessions. We led a
simple yet very happy family-centered life.

The exterior of our lovely little townhouse in Richmond.
That's our Honda Odyssey parked in the driveway.
It would never fit in the garage.

As soon as you come in the door, on your right
is what is supposed to be a dining room. But
we used it as our office. The kids would watch movies
here. While I made dinner, they would dance wildly to
their favorite World Playground CD or African Playground CD.

This is another picture of our dining room turned
office. November 2005.

After the dining room, comes the kitchen.
I love this kitchen. It was small enough that
I could reach everything easily. We didn't have a lot
with us so I didn't need a lot of cupboard space.
It was easy to keep clean with few dishes and
little counterspace. I love the view out the back windows
of forest. It is very calming.

The kitchen again. The door on the right is a pantry
that I used to keep the children's homeschooling
materials in. On the left is our "art supplies shelf".
I often had my laptop at the kitchen counter. I could
check email while waiting for oatmeal to cook. I
also had all my recipes on my laptop so it doubles
as my cookbook.

The kitchen is open to the living room, sunroom,
dining room and front office space (actually the whole first floor). I could see the children playing and
doing their school work while I cooked and cleaned.
Mishkin always used the breakfast bar as his office.
He had his laptop up there and stood while working.
I think it was a lot better for his back.

This is the eat-in kitchen part where we had our dining room
table. There is a sunroom behind it which was a big empty
space for the children to play with wooden blocks or a ball.
Again, you can see the beautiful trees out the back.
I just love that view, it was so calming and woud make me
happy every time I looked out the window.

Here's the living room. We had two plastic boxes with a
few toys and books in them and that was about it.
It was always very easy to tidy up every evening.

The living room sofa which we bought at Target for about
$200. And some art we threw into the van when we came
down because a home isn't a home without art!

Here's the backyard. It's not very big but the kids enjoyed it.
It had a small simple deck which I would sometimes do yoga
on or Justice would bring out a small table and chair to do
is school work in the fresh air. Here you can see the
beautiful forest at the back. It's only about 5-10 feet deep
but it's so much nicer to look at than into someone else's
home. The front also had a forest across the street.

This was Verity's room. At first she was in our room. Then
she was with the other kids. But she made too much noise
(she was still nursing) so she got her own room.

This was Justice and Haifa's room. Again, no furniture
and they just slept on the floor but it was so easy to
clean and they didn't mind a bit. There clothes was folded in piles on a shelf in the closet.

This was our room. We LOVED this bed. It's just a foamy
on the floor but honestly it was more comfortable than our
fancy $1000 mattress and box spring at home. We also
loved having our bed right under the window. We would leave it open a crack and have fresh air waft over us. I loved waking
up to the beautiful view of the forest outside the window too.

This was the master bathroom. There was another bathroom on this floor but we never used it (and therefore never had to clean it). There was also a laundry room (I love having the laundry room on the same floor as the bedrooms - no baskets to haul up and down stairs).

And it came with a soaker tub! (which I love) The kids had
so much fun playing with a few plastic cups and some
plastic ocean animals in here.

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