This Week at Our House # 43

1. John took Kate and Johnny to the Temple on Saturday and lost his glasses. Now he wants to get contact lenses. He sees that I wear them always, but I doubt he would be as comfortable and as determined as I am about contact lenses. It's an expensive experiment. I suspect he will do it anyway.
2. John and I were reading back in my blog in 2008. Ruth was 10 to 10.5 at the time. We lived in Wichita, KS in a nice home. We had never really gone through anything harder than a car repair we couldn't afford without credit. I was young and pretty energetic, and worked quite hard to keep our house spick and span clean. The kids had never had to deal with anything hard. It was interesting to read how light hearted we all were. I think we laughed a lot more. Since then, we have become more serious and much, much busier. I do not have to time to keep the house so perfectly clean. The kids help a lot more around the house-- both the older kids and the younger kids. Our understanding of life and the gospel has increased as we have experienced a lot of personal difficulties. The world around us has changed substantially. I am more involved in things other than motherhood. I had no worries about sending my kids to public schools. It really is amazing to see how much our family has changed. I think it would be better if we joked more again. But I know we can never go back to those easy going, light-hearted days. Even if we hadn't experienced so much difficulty, the changes in the world, our nation, and society have been too substantial. The easy days of American life are over. With the exception of bloodshed, I am sure we will never again be as free as we were in 2008.
3. Ruth seems to be doing well. Kate and I had the opportunity to help her personally by doing some editing for her history class. She had a date, so she did not have time. We were glad to help.
4. Kate spent time working on her BYU and BYU I applications. She has seen the Bishop for her first half of her ecclesiastical endorsement. I suspect after another two more weeks, everything will be completed and it will be time to wait. Kate is not too excited about the whole application process, but I know she looks forward to college.
5. Johnny has started computer programming as part of his schooling. I think he likes it because he has been diligent about it. 
6. Adam is excited for his birthday. He will be 12 in less than two weeks and he has been counting down since August. He is still wearing broken glasses. We hope his gets his new glasses this week. 
7. Rachel is excited for Halloween and was quite good about picking out an affordable costume.
8. Anya was very excited for computer day this week because she is ungrounded and could play for the first time in months.
9. It's primary program time again. Joseph has a long part, but apparently memorized it all on his own just during the practice last Sunday. 
10. Joshua played Super Smash Brothers with Anya and won. Anya thought that was awesome and amazing.
11. Josh scratched Arwen on the nose and while John was looking at her, Arwen said, "Don't take it off."
12. Susan is talking a lot more. She has been behind in language skills and I have been mildly worried. But she seems to be saying more and more sentences. I keep doing double takes and looking who said that.

Tender Mercies

1. There really isn't much to report. Things are going really well for all of us and no one really needs anything. That is a huge tender mercy.

This Week's Pictures