This Week at Our House #17 Company Comes to Briarhovel

 We had a huge rainstorm on Monday night through Tuesday afternoon. Our whole yard was flooded. I switched  around school so the kids could go out and play in the rain. They had a blast and I had a lot of laundry the next two days. My mother, sister, and niece came on Friday. My sister brought me a lot of homeschool stuff and old books that she is not using anymore. My kids have really loved looking through the books, building a periodic table puzzle and playing with a human anatomy 3-d model with inside parts. On Saturday, we went with our company to the beach. It was nice to have company come and join us at our little home.

1. John continues to work very hard and through the night. He is also really pushing Johnny and Adam into learning and writing their own computer games.
2. John and I ended our two week diet. I lost 10lbs and he lost 15lbs. Now we are trying to maintain the weight loss. Hopefully we will be able to do that. I spent probably 6 hours getting the lawn mowed. There is a lot to mow and it is a lot slower with a corded mower, but we were pleasantly surprised that we had enough cord to stretch through the majority of the yard. The corded mower made sense when we had a tenth of an acre, but it is terrible on 3 acres. I enjoyed having my mom and sister here. They were only here for about 24 hours, but it was nice to see them and talk to them.
3. Ruth really likes her new companion and seems to be quite happy in her current area. I realized that in two more weeks, I will get to talk to her again. I am so glad about that.
4. Kate loves and protects her 3 little ducklings and they love her. When we came home from church they were real excited to see us and chirped and jumped around excitedly and then they cuddled up on Kate.
5. Johnny's doing well with his little game. One day this week, he said, "Look, I got my bad guy to chase me." The next day, he said, "Now my bad guy can kill me so I actually have a reason to run from him," and the next day after that, he said, "now I can kill my bad guy." His graphics are pretty fun too.
6. Adam is finally reading music. He plays the piano well. He seems to have a natural knack for making music sound good. My piano playing sounds very mechanical, so I love it when my kids preform so naturally.
7. Rachel is the Dominion champion of the family. That's a very interesting card game. Try as I might, I cannot beat her.
8. Anya stayed with me while I mowed collecting all the cut grass as part of the game she was playing. She said that she was pretending there were tiny people collecting wheat that was mowed down for their food and roofs of their houses. In the end, I had a lot of dead grass to put down around my potato plants.
9. Joseph loved the periodic table puzzle my sister brought. He enjoyed putting it together and talking about and thinking about the elements. He's still talking about the elements.
10. Joshua has really liked the model of the body my sister brought. He studied the pamphlet that came with it and worked pretty hard to put all the organs in the right place. Now he is excitedly looking through books about human anatomy that my sister brought. 
11. Arwen still colors everyday and goes through coloring books quickly. 
12. Susan loved playing out in the rain and then the puddles that lasted a couple of days after the fact. She was always trying to sneak out to get wet.
13. Sam continues to get into everything and to climb on everything. He seems to get better at it everyday.

Pictures