This Week at Our House # 10 Ruth Returns

What a week!!

Monday we spent hours putting in the floor and only got the laundry room done. The boards do not snap in place well at all. Maybe that is why they were on sale.

Tuesday we woke up to snow. That was unexpected and the only snow we have gotten this winter. It did not last long. But it was cold all week until today. Today got up to 80 degrees. Such is the North Carolina winter.

Ruth flew in after 11pm on Tuesday night. We took the whole family to the airport to meet her. As

passengers were coming down the escalator, an old man stopped me and said, "I know who you are waiting for. Don't worry she is coming."

Kate met Ruth off the escalator. She had the camera, but didn't bother to take any pictures. She ran right up and hugged her.

Adam and Johnny were holding a welcome home banner and Ruth said she wondered who that strange boy was that we brought with us to hold the banner, before she realized that she was actually looking at Adam.

Within the first hour on the way home from the airport things returned to how they always were. Ruth was no stranger and fit in just as she had before and that is how it has been since she got home.

Wednesday morning while I was hanging out laundry, I noticed some water and realized it came from the septic tank. I knew the tank would be getting full, but 4 showers 2 baths, and 3 loads of laundry overwhelmed the little space we had left. I called and made the first appointment I could, which happened to be Friday-- ugh. No one was allowed to bathe before then, and we washed dishes outside. What a welcome to Ruth!

Wednesday afternoon, I took Ruth up to be released and we did all of our weekly errands. Kate, Sam,

Suzy, and Gideon tagged along. Kate got to visit with her old friend and Ruth and Kate got to see their favorite young women's president. That made them both quite happy. John and family at home were very worried about us, but we did come home to a completely cleaned up house and Kate immediately proceeded to make dinner just before 10pm. Kate was very grateful I said that she could stay and visit.

Thursday we held school and Ruth got to see how homeschool works once again. School is hard right now because Gideon grumps most of it, Sam continually sneaks out to get into things he is not supposed to, and Josh needs a lot of help and one on one attention.

Friday, we cleaned the house, as is our norm. It was nice to have Ruth's helping hands with that. Also, Ruth and Kate just keep their room cleaned, so that was one less room to clean up. Later in the afternoon, the septic tank got cleaned up. I watched for a moment, but it was too gross. After that, everyone continually felt guilty every time they turned on a faucet. But by Saturday night, everyone had showered and gotten over the guilt. I had to explain to them how the tank works. Plain water drains out deep underground into a rock and sand filter. Showers are fine, as long as the tank is not so full, it can't drain.

On Tuesday, we found out that our duckling have a duckling nerve disease where 90% die. Saturday,

after spending the whole week carefully caring for our sick ducklings, three more passed away. They came to us with the infection. One died from seizures-- indication of the disease-- the first night they were here. Since then, they have all gotten sick one or two at a time either with seizures or paralysis. It's been awful and hard. We have two more sick ducklings still alive out of ten and one looks really bad. The kids used their Christmas money for these ducklings, and my kids have had so little in the last year and a half. I feel devastated for them.

So this week was both very sad and wonderful. I am so glad to have Ruth home.

Some quick kid stories:
Gideon at 7 weeks is smiling big and beautifully dimply, though, I have not gotten a picture of it yet. He is also huge. His 3 months clothes are getting too small.

When I bought Gideon a pacifier and clip, I bought a new one for Sam. Sam would not go near the one I bought for him. Then this week, he lost all of his pacifiers. I brought out the new one, but he would not touch it, so I clipped it on to me. Later in the day, when Sam was tired, he came to me to suck the pacifier clipped to me. By the end of the day, he claimed it as his own. Since Ruth came home, Sam has been much happier. He is not that willing to hang out with Ruth, but he seems satisfied now that we have another stranger sibling joining the family.

Suzy has been wearing her hair in a ponytail, which is a huge milestone since she is four and a half and can just now fit her hair into a ponytail. I washed her hair this morning, so her curls would look nice for church, but she came to me and said, "But I wanted a ponytail, a big one!" I gave her a ponytail.

Rachel now always tries to dodge pictures.

Adam told a really good joke, Ruth's first day home. He said, "Ruth, you may have brought home a lot of things made in England, but in this house, we have a lot of things made in China!"

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the chickens were hesitant to come out into the snow

That penguin blanket is Rachel hiding from the camera

Is There Ever an End?

Today, we have a torn up kitchen, Ruth is flying home and will be coming home to a mess, two more of the kids ducklings have died, we still have half a roof and a leaking roof and no one to fix it, and the mortgage company called and asked how the repairs are coming. John is still unemployed with no end in sight to that and no money coming in. Kate, Johnny, Adam, and I have been working very hard to get the repairs done, and John keeps getting after me for working too hard and making the kids work too hard. I'm left wondering what else will go wrong, and I don't know how to do it all. I want our whole family to catch a break, and I am not sure we will. Is there ever an end to misery?

This Week at Our House #9 A Conceivable Disaster

What a week!!! We started the week off happily enough with a video chat with Ruth. She has now almost completed the last week of her mission. Today is the last day she will be proselyting. Tomorrow, she goes to the mission home and Tuesday, she leaves London at 1pm.

The first tragedy of this week revolved around more house issues. Our kitchen floor had been warping and feeling quite wet. Because some water came in the front door during the hurricane, we have money to replace the whole floor. I thought given the kitchen floor always feeling damp and beginning to warp it was time to start that and to

Where the dish washer used to be and where the subfloor will be replaced

upgrade to a waterproof laminate floor. We lucked out and got flooring that was 50 cents cheaper per square foot because of a sale. The morning I planned on shopping and picking up the new boards for the kitchen floor, I decided to investigate and found water underneath the broken dishwasher. I dried it up, and went to run my errands. When I got back, it was wet again. The next day, we pulled out the dishwasher and the floor. There was water under the floor boards and under the moisture barrier because the broken dish washer has been leaking slowly, probably for about 2 months. I could be wrong, but it seems like the drain from the kitchen sink was pushing water into the dishwasher from the drain hose that went from the dishwasher to the drain connected to the sink. We pulled up a lot of flooring from the kitchen and into the dining room and have been drying the floor with fans. We watched videos and we are getting prepared to replace the subflooring in front of the dishwasher. I have primed the dry subflooring and painted all the kitchen cabinets.

The waterproof wood laminate

John and Johnny pulled out the dishwasher and John and Adam were the main kids helping to take care of the floor. Kate seemed generally annoyed that we would be doing more house projects. I  can't help that, though. We are doing it out of necessity, not out of desire.

Tomorrow, we will get the new floor in the laundry room and half the kitchen. Then Thursday or Friday we will replace the portion of subfloor that needs replacing and put in the rest of the new floor.

I am so glad that we already had money from the insurance company to take care of this, and we had

Kate made a cake for her half birthday per tradition  

already decided to get the highest quality floor and underlayment for the kitchen and laundry room. Because the water proof floor is expensive, we plan to put in a divider, and put the cheap laminate back in the living room and dining room. It's not ideal, but the kitchen really needed a better floor and we don't have enough money to put the best flooring throughout. But, oh, not a good time for another big project. The floor project has put the painting of the bedrooms on hold, and the mess was bad enough that I told my parents and my sisters to postpone their trip to meet the baby and see Ruth one more week to give us more time to get things repaired.

two seasons of ducks

The second tragedy was the death of one more duckling with another getting injured and another falling ill. Kate and Rachel cried for hours over that little duckling that died. Kate had been feeding her by hand and doing all she could to keep her alive. The afternoon she died, she was running around and acting very healthy, so her death came as a surprise. We still have a living injured duckling, a living sickly duckly, and five healthy ducklings. The kids have spent lots and lots of time praying for these baby ducks.

The rest of the week was fairly normal. School went well. The kids are definitely back on track

We are expecting nature to get us more ducklings too

knowing that they have to get up and do their work. Arwen and Josh did their work without complaints and without taking the whole day. Both Arwen and Josh have begun to finish off some of their curriculum, so school will be getting shorter and shorter for them until we end the year at the beginning of May. The kids are all doing a lot better with their Spanish. They are starting to use Spanish phrases daily. Adam and Joseph are learning computer programming. They have begun to like enough that they are doing it without being reminded.

Gideon started going to sleep closer to midnight, rather than 2am, and while some nights he wanted to nurse all night, I was able to sleep feed him. Gideon has been much happier too. This morning, he smiled at me again and again. He is also starting to answer us with coos. He has a very deep baby voice, which is cute.

By the end of the week, I noticed that my energy has begun to come back up. I am doing more in a day now and on less sleep than I did the whole pregnancy. I am really grateful for that.

Our cute kid stories are:

I recorded a fit Sam was having and then showed him the video of him rolling around crying and saying, "no, no, no." He thought that was funny. He quit crying and started laughing at himself. When I recorded him some more, he cried again, though this time it was performance for the camera.
"Mom, I do not think hens say, 'cluck'. It does NOT sound like, 'cluck'".

Suzy sat on my lap while I was playing skipbo with Kate. She counted the cards in my hand, "1,2,3, 100! Mom you have 100 cards." Everyone paused and looked at her confused. I said, "No, Susan, there are only 4." She looked down, and carefully counted, "1,2,3,4" and then continued to count her fingers over and over again.

Outside with Arwen, we heard a rooster crow. Arwen said, "I don't think that is a rooster. It is not saying cock--- a--- doodle-- doo. It just sounds like a weird bird." I told her that it indeed was a rooster and cock-a-doodle-doo is just the words we use to describe the sounds roosters make, like hens say, 'cluck'. She looked at me and said, "Mom, I don't think the sound hens make sounds like 'cluck'!"

While Kate and Rachel were sitting in my room with John, holding the dead duckling and crying, Arwen came and sat next to me. I asked her if Kate was crying and she said, "Yes. I looked at Kate and she is crying quietly. Rachel is crying and making all the noise. I don't like it. I am going outside." Then she got up and went outside.

Anya holds Gideon more than anyone else, and when I am holding him, she comes up and kisses him and coos at him and tells him how cute he is.

That's our week. I am astonished that we are already to March. Ruth comes home on Tuesday. The year is moving swiftly by!

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I love this little dimple