Arwen Turns 10!

 It has been a decade since I had my 9th baby. Arwen is 10!!!

Arwen is smart and very capable. She takes good care of her younger siblings, and is very reliable for help with almost anything. She may not want to always help, but she always does a really good job. Arwen's love in life are chocolate desserts, playing legos with Susan and Kate, computer games, and talking with people. Arwen dislikes school, almost everything that I make for dinner, and running in the heat. She's a fun girl and I am so glad that we have her. 

Joseph Turns 13!

 Joseph is 13 now. His birthday is July 20th. He is adorable and fun. His sense of humor leans towrd satire and irony and we really enjoy that. He sleeps half the day and stays up half the night. I have tried to curb that, but to no avail, so now I have him do his reading and scriptures post midnight. Now that Joseph is 13, more than half of my kids are teens or older. So Joseph gets that middle child teenager award. He's fun and happy and so good. I think that we will all enjoy Joseph as a teen. 

2022-2023 School Year Begins

 

We started school on Monday, July11th. We're doing school on a trimester schedule this year. July and Agust everyone except Sam and Susan are working completely independently while I keep writing home school curriculum to sell and use for my own kids. 

The first period is July and August. Each kid has 2 courses plus reading. September through Novemeber, each kid will have 3 courses plus reading. Then January through April, again, the kids will have 3 courses plus reading. 

So right now Adam has computer programming and finishing his chemistry course. Rachel has starting her chemistry course and a grammar class. Anya has grammar and painting. Joseph has physics and grammar. Joshua actually has a full math course that he is doubling the amount of lessons, so that is all besides reading. Arwen has math and art. Susan has language arts and math. Sam has language art and math. That will all change in September when I will have completed and published my two course books. 

School is fairy easy right now and it is going well. The kids have been fairly easy going. It really has been a good get back into the swing of things month of schooling. 

Two things that I am doing that I think are going really well are speech therapy for Sam and Gideon. Sam has a lisp and Gideon has had a hard time pronouncing words with more than one syllable. In the month since we began, Gideon is a lot more understandbale. Plus he really enjoys his speech time. The other thing is I started a homeschool seminary. We have not been doing seminary through the church and I had just dropped it, but I felt like Adam and Rachel did not know their scriptures as they should. So we began "early morning seminary" for the high school kids this year and that is probably the most lovely part of the day. Rachel is sucha sweet girl during seminary and she reads willingly and answers all of the questions. I hope to keep this going through all of my kids, especially since I think that we will never do seminary throught the church again. 

Fake Birthday and Fake Christmas and 4th of July at Grandmas

 I am really behind on this blog. 

So, we had a fake birthday for Gideon, sometime at the end of June, after Susan's birthday, so he wasn't even three and a half. We told him that it was his birthday and we had a whole party for him with presents and everything. This was the perfect little surprise for Gideon who says that every birthday is his birthday. However, and surprisingly, Gideon knows his birthday. He comes to me quite often and tells me that his birthday is January 18th. 

 

We went to my parents for 4 days over the 4th of July weekend. I left Anya, Joseph, and Joshua home with John to take care of the eggs in the incubator and the baby ducks and geese. 

We had a nice time. My family particularly seemed to enjoy talking to Johnny and Adam, who rarely take the trip, and are pretty grown up and fun to talk to. 

My dad, Ruth, and I took Arwen, Susan, Sam, Gideon, and Eliza, and my neice, Sadie, to the parade. I thought it was pretty lame, like a really long and hot infomercial. But the kids enjoyed getting candy and advertisements thrown at them. 

In the evening, I took all of my kids and Sadie to a picnic dinner and then about a mile walk to a large park where we watched the fireworks. I really enjoyed that. On the wau back, as we walked in a large crowd to where we parked, I pretended that we were war prisoners on a march, and when I confessed my childishness, it turns out that the two kids who were holding my hands, Arwen and Susan, were imagining the same thing. 

The day we left, my Dad took Ruth, Kate, Johnny, Adam, Rachel, Anya, and Arwen out to an antique store and out to lunch. That was a huge treat. My kids rarely are invited to do anything with their grandparents. 

When we got back, we started school again on the following Monday, and so that has been going for a month. 

A week after that, we had a fake Christmas all designed planned and carried out by Kate. Susan and Sam got little Christmas presents and we watched "A Christmas Story". 

Sams says again

 Sam asked to play with the "commote troll car."

Sam Says More

 Me: Sam, when are you going to stop peeing the bed? You are going to be 6 this year. Do you think that you can stop by 7,

Sam: Ummm, I think I will stop peeing the bed when I am 23. 

Sam Says

 After seeing fireworks for the first time:
"I saw fireworks! It's a dream come true! I can't believe it! This is a dream come true!"

While sitting on the toilet:
"Mom, did you know that I always fart some when I go poop?"

Sam: "So you are saying that I can go to church with you if I want to?"
Me: "Yes."
Sam: "Let me think about that... Um, no! I don't like church."