This Week at Our House # 20

Because we are continuing school to a lesser extent through the summer, we decided to start our summer schedule this week. It was nice to have less to do. I wanted to get my garden finished this week, but the rain prevented that. I did however, get the second set of corn in and the rows ready for a third set that I will plant in two weeks.

1. John continues to work hard to start his business. Kate helped him a lot with art work for his website and then did a lot of the designing of it on Saturday. I think he will have his first game up on the app store this week. I may be saying so too early though. He continues to apply for jobs daily as well.
2. Sometimes I am in love with my life and my big happy family and sometimes I feel so discouraged about life. Sometimes, it just feels like more than I can handle. We have had to rely on family and church to help us and now our car is having trouble and again, we will have to rely on other people to help us get that fixed. It wouldn't start when we got out of church today and we live an hour drive away. We prayed together and the car started. We made it home and then it would not start again. It looks like this week will be car repair week and hopefully no towing.
3. Ruth was very excited to be staying in Chelmsford. She has investigators that she loves and she fits in well with the ward members. It is unusual for her mission president to keep someone in an area for more than 2 transfers, so she feels quite blessed.
4. Kate has become a really good gourmet cook. I think I am a good cook, but Kate has helped bring our meals up a step or 2 in the past year. She now makes really good Chicago style deep dish pizza.
5. Johnny's computer has been having trouble, so he has not gotten as much work in on his game as he would like. But, when he can, he really works hard, and often 10 hours or more in a day. John will tell him it is okay to quit.
6. Adam is still working on math for the summer. Our algebra one math book is really more algebra one and two, but I have found that having more of the algebra two stuff down helps a lot with understanding geometry. So while Adam is well past anything he would have been taught in public school math for 7th grade, I am continuing him on through the summer.
7. I allowed Rachel to lie next to me in bed this week after the little kids have gone to bed and watch Forensic Files. She is starting to get some older kid privileges and I know she loves it.
8. Anya loves Beatrix Potter. She read all of her books to Arwen when they went to bed at night, and now she is coming to me and reading her favorite ones. 
9. As soon as I asked Joseph to help in the garden, he took off at a fast sprint. I made him come back and help. Once he gets started, he seems to like it quite well. Joseph planted all of our corn this time around. I put the holes in, but he put the seeds in and covered them up. 
10. Whenever I go to work in my garden, Josh comes out with his chicken. The chicken forages for worms and bugs and Josh talks to me a lot. I really love that my kids come out with me and spend time with me while I work.
11. Arwen loves the chickens and ducks. She wants to hold them and snuggle them all day long. Then she prayers for them to survive her love.
12. John told Arwen to say her prayers. Susan then started telling Arwen what to say and Arwen said exactly what Susan said. Susan began Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and then continued to name all of our chickens and then requested that they do not die. (We have 7 chicks).
13. Sam has been carrying around a duplo golden treasure chest, 3 pencils, and a little cardboard box for two days. The treasure chest, he just seems to like. The little box seems to be his personal laptop. He uses the three pencils to write on his little box. It is pretty cute. He sits up like anyone with a laptop and looks like he is working. John asked him if he was holding his laptop and Sam closed it in just the same way people close a laptop, and then looked important.

Pictures