This Week at Our House #10

1. John left Thursday for Utah to attend his grandmother's funeral. Once he met Ruth and his brother Jay at the airport, his other brother picked them up. The funeral was Saturday. He has been spending time with Ruth, 7 of his 8 siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews. I expect he will come home tired. We miss him and look forward to his return late Monday night.
2. We had a very busy week with school, church activities, getting John to the airport, drivers ed, as well as all of the regular things we need to do. Because of all of the extras, I was unable to get in as much as exercise as I would like. Hopefully, I will be able to get a swift walk in every day this next week.
3. Ruth spent the week catching up on classes from her dental surgery illness, and then at the funeral. Now she will have missed two days of classes for the funeral that she will need to make up. I haven't talked to her or John much, but I am seeing them tagged in pictures all over facebook. I think Ruth is having a nice time. Her two favorite cousins were there. I liked seeing pictures of the them grown up together. I remember how much they loved playing with each other when they were just 4 and 6.
4. Kate complained for 3 hours on Friday night about how unjust and unconstitutional it is that the DMV can make laws to force her to go to drivers ed, when they aren't even elected officials. Kate hates bureaucracy. The class is pretty horrible, though. They have it for 6 hours for 5 Saturdays. The book is awful. There were about 5 steps on how to get into a car and #4 was opening the door and they have to take tests on it. There is also a whole chapter on emotional responses. Johnny wondered how so many people could have so little control over their emotions. 
5. I took Johnny to get a state id that he will need for taking the ACT. It was when they asked Johnny how tall he was, that I looked over at him and realized that he is now taller than me. I am 5'9" and Johnny is probably two inches taller, making him about 5'11". I am certain, he is going to be 6 feet tall. John is only 5'7" and Ruth and Kate are both quite short. I think Ruth is actually 5'3" now, but Kate is still just around 5'1".
6. Adam and Rachel have fought so much this week. It is driving me crazy!
7. Rachel would not lay off Adam. She yelled and screamed at him all day Friday. This needs to get fixed. On the flip side, Rachel sang in the mini achievement day girl's talent show and did a really nice job. She is planning to sing for the ward in the ward talent show this coming Saturday.
8. Anya had a good week. She is easy going and kind and happy, and usually willing to do her share of the work.
9. I bought the kids a disk swing for the swing set. Joseph wanted to play on it a lot, but kept getting hurt. It turned out that Adam was pushing it too hard and too crooked. Joseph has a couple of good bruises from it. I told him that he can no longer play on it, and Adam can no longer push the little kids.
10. Joshua started reading Dr. Suess books this week. He was pretty excited about it. I didn't have as much time as I wanted to spend with him on it. Hopefully, I will have more this week. We had a little bit of snow this morning and Josh said, "snow looks like boric acid." Boric acid is a white powder that we use to kill ants and roaches.
11. Arwen just quietly and happily played all week.
12. Suzy still throws screaming tantrums whenever something doesn't go exactly her way. When I tried to put her church dress on this morning, she just sat down and started to cry. Then she went to Kate for comfort.
13. I was looking at Sam and stroking his face, he babbled something and then softly stroked my face. He is such a sweet, sweet baby. He is currently lying beside me and holding my hand as I type. He is four months today too and rolling a lot. He rolled four times in a row yesterday. That seemed to please him.

Tender Mercies

1. When my parents came last weekend, they left my sister and her son who had a bad stomach flu. My mother was sick before she left, but no one in my family got it, which I would normally be very grateful for, but am even more so when I would have had to deal with it alone  or John having to deal with it while traveling and visiting.
2. John and Ruth traveling safely.
3. Things being generally easy at home without John, even as we are very busy.

Pictures