This Week at Our House #40

I am soooo tired. This is going to be short.
We schooled. We've now finished 9 weeks of the first semester. We are closer to vacation than not.
We spent a lot of time drawing and writing.
Anya and Joseph. Joshua and Arwen have been making the cutest minihouses. They call them ''little people houses".
About the story of the good Samaritan, Susan said: "So everybody helped the man that died, the man that was killed by the bad guys."
I have two poems ready to be illustrated and published as children's books. Rachel has pencil

drawings ready and is going to spend school this week outlining them and coloring them using a computer program.
In the summer, John wrote a computer program that makes pencil lines darker and white backgrounds whiter. It is exactly what we need to get good pictures from hand drawings.
Gideon can stand himself up without holding onto anything. He can stand without holding on for quite a while, and he is attempting to take steps.
I have been reading more to the youngest kids during school and I like that a lot more.
Sam has a few words that he has made up on his own. One is "cocoa pack" in place of chocolate milk. I have said to him, "Say chocolate", and he says chocolate; "say milk" and he says milk; "say chocolate milk" and he says cocoa pack.
Friday, I ran the errands. Kate and the youngest 4 kids came. The other kids cleaned up.
Saturday and Sunday, we watched General Conference!

little people houses

The Dark Night's Coming Fast

As I have said, I have been writing  a lot of poetry recently. I am trying to get a poetry book out as well as several children's books. I wrote this poem this week based on somethings from the Book of Revelations. While it is darker than I am usually inclined to write, it is my favorite so far.

The Dark Night's Coming Fast

The sun has set upon our age
the dark night's coming fast
masses of all peoples rage
enlightened days have past

The cold night creeps into our minds
beckoning us to follow
caring not that sanity unwinds
leaving souls worn and hollow

A beast then rises from the sea*
covered in leopard's fur
calling, calling, a seductive plea
clasping a golden lure

The beast he comes and takes his seat
he's crowned just like a lion
he stamps out virtue with bears feet
a hunter like Orion

dancing, dancing around the beast
worshipping dark angels' nights
gorging a lustful, bloody feast
stamping out god-given rights

Yes, the sun has set upon our age
now, life plays out on a deathly stage
The world will wonder after the beast
and blood will be our only feast**



*Revelations 13:1-3
**Revelations 16:4

This Week at Our House # 39

Another week has gone by, and we are full into the final season of the year. The grass is not growing so fast anymore. I think we will need one more mowing before the winter.

Monday through Thursday sped by. We finished the 8th week of school. We have 8 more to go before our long holiday break. I focused on teaching lessons, cooking meals, and doing the laundry. Friday, I ran the errands. Saturday, I got the van inspected to renew the tags, and had to pay out an extra $400 to get somethings fixed with the front tires to get the van to pass. Ugh, I hate money surprises. Tomorrow, I will pay the tax and get the new tags. I hate this yearly chore of terror.

John had one job interview and has one more. He has been working on getting some of his own products to market. We have been trying to figure out how to do that well. We may go for it through amazon, but if it does not go, it will cost us. So we are being careful about our choices.

Ruth and Kate split up more this week. I saw Ruth without Kate and Kate without Ruth. That is unusual. They pretty much do everything together.

Johnny works on his own stuff and I don't see him much, but he always brings me a glass of water before he heads to bed.

Adam has been doing so well with everything this school year. He gets his work done and does it well. He plays with the younger kids. He takes care of the babies. He repairs things and has been doing some woodworking and computer programming and historical research on his own time.

Rachel was happier this week

because her schooling included a lot more hands on art projects. She has always been more hands on than scholarly. Homeschool is great because when something isn't working, you can stop and switch things around and find something that does work.

Anya is just an easy going, sweet girl. She had a bit of a struggle with math this week and cried over that, but I never have to tell her twice to finish her school work or do her chores. She just does them. Anya has also made a huge stride forward with learning Japanese. She studies the flashcards for at least an hour everyday.

Joseph has been studying language very hard too. He knows Spanish quite well. At this point, I think he knows it best of everyone in the family.

Joshua and Arwen do their school together, That has been nice for them. They compete with eachother a bit. This year, they have long lists of words that they have to pass off. Arwen is better at reading and Josh is better at math. They kind of accept that as fact. So, Josh gets really excited when he does better than Arwen on reading.

Susan loves her school work for the most part. She goes strong for about two hours and then she asks

to be done. I don't think kindergarten needs more time than that, so that is all she does right now. I am reading Ramona to her and she likes that. She likes that the character Susan has curly hair like she does.

Sam loves electrical cords. It's a bit of a problem because important cords for handheld devices and laptops are often missing. This week, he excitedly brought a picture to me from a coloring book. It had a picture with an electrical cord. He pointed to it and lovingly said, "Look mom, it's a cord." Then he colored only the cord.

Gideon is sleeping through the nights most nights now, but when he can't sleep, the whole family knows it. Not being able to get to sleep distresses him more than anything else.

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Happy Birthday, Johnny

It's hard to believe that 18 years have gone by. Johnny says that he still feels 16. He still looks 16 too. Johnny is as good as a young man gets. I rely on him spiritually more than he relies on me at this point. He will grow to be an excellent man. He has the foundation that he needs. Though, I know that he was simply born with that foundation.

This Week at Our House #38

I have a list of funny things the kids said this week. I am going to start with that:

• Out of the blue, Joshua asked this question: "What's your favorite natural disaster?" How does one answer that?
• Susan tell me how you are today.

Ummm dad.
Dad, my name is Susan.

Susan what are your favorite things?

Purple and ramen noodles


and chicken and cats and ducks and chickens



Susan what do you hate?
soup
• And the next day: Susan what are your favorite things?
  
  purple, and ramen noodles, and popcorn
• Arwen in the car: "I like big words, because they are so interesting."
• Joseph to Josh: I'm going to scoop out your insides with a spoon.
  Josh: ew, that was too realistic.
• Sam wore a pink, red, and white striped stocking hat to nursery. When we left nursery, Sam said, "I want to go back". He got out of Kate's arms and ran back. Sam has never been to nursery alone before today. John asked what Sam had that made him want to stay in nursery. He was sitting on the floor, reading a board book.
• At 1 am, Susan yelled from her open bedroom door, "Turn off the light, so I can go to sleep!"

We completed our 7th week of school. After this next week, we will be half way through our first semester. We are slightly behind schedule. We will have to do a bit of math during Christmas break. Joseph and Anya are doubling up on some lessons to finish on time and Adam and Rachel are so behind on their assigned book reading, that I will either have to drop some of the books I have assigned for them or make them read them over vacation. 

Rachel is not thriving with school. She has been very unhappy and mopey and sometimes even rebellious about getting the work done. I talked to an online friend of mine whose homeschooled teens work long hours on their own chosen projects. I messaged back and forth about what she does and how Rachel is doing.

Afterwards, I talked to Rachel about what she wants to change. I told her that language and math had to stay, but she could change other things up. We decided to drop science for her and art history. She will instead be spending more time on copying impressionist artwork. She said that she wanted to keep history and keep reading the Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt. That surprised me because she struggles to get that done. 

I told Adam that after this school year, he can start choosing his own course except that he has to continue with math through calculus, and he has to read an american history book series. John said he would still like him to get in a physics course. Adam readily agreed. This year's tough curriculum has really helped him to speed up his reading. I am sure by the end of the school year, he will be ready to take off on his own. Adam said that he is very interested in spending a lot more time on

wood working and computer programming. I am wondering if there is some way he can use the programming to earn money to buy wood and tools.

Joseph said that he would like to start writing a book. I know that, and I plan to give him that time in the coming years, but he needs to learn the language better to be successful.

Anya has not asked for any changes. She is happy enough with what she is doing for school. She may think some of it is hard, but Anya likes to read and tends to find things interesting like Kate and Johnny did.

Gideon hit the 8 month mark this week. He can now stand up without holding on to anything and he can stand himself up in the middle of the floor. He is a strong little boy, and such a delight.

Thursday, we ended the school  early and went to the beach. Hurricane Humberto was about 1000 miles east of our coast and the waves were the tallest ever. There really was no shallow end. I walked in about 3 paces and the water would be at my neck. A wave would come, and it would lift me about 5 more feet. Fortunately, there were two large tide pools and the little kids loved playing in those. When they got tired of that, they rolled down the sand to the ocean. 

Saturday, Johnny had his 18th birthday. I am still surprised that he is 18! He was supposed to be going

on a mission now, but with our strange situation at church and our low finances, he won't be going yet. Hopefully, Kate and Johnny will both get out on a mission this year. 

I have been writing a lot of poetry. I am working pretty hard to get a book out. I don't think it will make much money, though I hope it will make some. I write either religious and political or family, kid, and nature. I think that means that I am really  going for two books.

Kate made a giant whoopie pie cake for Johnny's birthday. It looked like a giant whoopie pie and it tasted like a whoopie pie. It was really good and there was only one piece left.

Ruth and Kate and Johnny are still doing their own work stuff. This has basically estranged them from their grandparents, and I think it will continue to get worse. I am sure that in time they will be successful with their efforts. Ruth has been working on writing and drawing and church history. Kate has finished, though not published, a book, and she is cooking a lot. Johnny does church history and computer programming. I am not sure what the future holds, but I do know that a college education is barely an education anymore. It is a lot of indoctrination, including at BYU. And a college degree is not worth what it once was either. In addition to that, a lot of college degrees are more and more forcing people into careers where they will have to do things that, I

personally find immoral. Ruth was going to college as an english education major with an idea to teach high school english. But things have turned in education. Teachers are required to teach teach very objectionable things, such as girls can be boys and boys can be girls, and comprehensive sexual education even in subjects like math. That does not even touch all of the anti-freedom indoctrination.  I personally do not believe that someone can save their soul while destroying the souls of children for an income. I recognize that other people feel the very differently. I think about the early the Christians, and how they were forced to live in caves or

quit believing. In some ways, I think we are there now. Hard decisions have to be made. We are not planning to waste money on "getting an education" for a job that destroys faith in God. To illustrate what I said about BYU, a friend of my wrote this:


“How to get asked by the BYU administration to leave campus: Hand out pocket Constitutions on Constitution Day.

How not to get asked by the BYU administration to leave: Hand out rainbow bracelets and rainbow stickers on campus for "Rainbow Day" to protest the prophet.

Shows you where BYU is at right now.”

Anyway, our week went fairly well. I am pleased with my family. John is doing well. He has some products up for sale and he has had some job interviews. Something will come up at some point, Right now, though, things are not too bad. Our overhead and our debts are very low.

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