This Week at Our House # 40

1. John had his 46th birthday!!!! He is now onto the second half of the 40's decade. I think that even comes as a bit of a shock to John. In 4 years time, he will be 50. But we do not feel old. John is fat, but he is strong and exercises daily. I don't think we have slowed down in our physical activity much at all.
2. On Monday, I got to take the sister missionaries in our area to the beach. The daughter of a sister missionary that I spent a lot of time with during my senior year of high school is here in the ward that meets after ours. I am sure it is a tender mercy to be able to spoil the daughter of a friend who did a lot of good in my life. We still have not closed on the house. This week, I realized that I had to be on the phone every day with the loan agents and making sure they were putting things through. It's been a very frustrating process, but they finally got everything submitted and approved us for the loan. We sign papers on Monday and the closing is supposed to be officially scheduled for Friday.
3. What I heard about Ruth, I put in her own post. I think she is following the Spirit and working hard as we directed. 
4. Poor Kate hates bugs and there are these terrifying giant red roaches here. I heard her go into my bathroom, yell, "A roach!" Then I heard bang, crash, slam, and then, "Oh please stop moving, your head is cut off."
5. Johnny's online seminary class has been so good. It is great to have more sleep. Johnny helps a lot with home school. He teaches piano and grades math and will do the afternoon classes when I have to run errands, and all that is in addition to his own work which often takes him until 4 or 5 o'clock. Johnny became the cleanup champ this week. I have not had anyone just go and wash the dishes and clean up after dinner since Ruth left without being told to do so. Johnny did that three times this week.
6. Adam is getting faster at reading. He is making his 50 pages earlier in the day now. Becoming a very good reader and learning to love to read is his goal for this school year.
7. Rachel took a pretty good spill off of her bike and could not go to the beach with the sister missionaries. I think she would have really enjoyed that. But Rachel is mostly pretty happy with life.
8. Anya has been working on her drawing. I noticed in church today that she started a picture of a face by drawing the guide lines.
9. Joseph came with me to the beach with the sister missionaries and went on a walk with me this week, and  for the first time in his life, stayed close to me, did not run when I told him he couldn't, and came when he was called. 
10. Joshua told the sister missionaries that he loved them several times when we were on our trip.
11. Our beach trip was a non-swimming trip because we had the sister missionaries, but the water was warm and everything was perfectly beautiful and Arwen went right into the water and had a lovely time. She did end up with a lot of sand in her hair, so Kate helped her to hold her head  in the water to rinse it out. Arwen continues to say the cutest things. One evening, Arwen came inside, grabbed my hand and said, "You have to see the sky. It is beautiful. The colors are so different!"
12. Susan woke Kate and Rachel up at 1 am by having a tea party on their bedroom floor. And that is very Susan. That girl will not go to bed at night. When we move, she will only have to share a room with Samuel and we are all glad about that.
13. Sam is still taking 2 to 3 steps at a time and then dropping down to crawl. He says mama and uh oh. While I was changing his diaper, he heard some kids arguing over a clean up in the other room, looked toward the door and said, "Uh, oh" and then some baby talk. Sam loves to play peek a boo. He will come up to me and put my hands over my face. 

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