This Week at Our House #6: Back to School

This was a busy and kind of a hard week as we got back to homeschooling and trying to make it work with a newborn. All of the kids did fairly well except for Joshua. Joshua had a hard week. He cried every time we began school and every time I gave him another subject to work on. He did terribly with reading and math and everything we had him do. I am pretty sure that it had more to do with desire than ability. Hopefully, Josh will have a better week of school this coming week.

Arwen did well and I would say that she has surpassed Josh in reading now. Kate did Josh and Arwen's reading on Wednesday and mentioned how great Arwen did and how she thought Arwen is now reading better than Josh. Arwen is also getting the flashcards faster than Josh now too. The only day Arwen had trouble was Thursday. She sat in the same place with the same math worksheet for 5 hours not getting it done. Finally, I had her sit by me and pointed to each problem and made her do them and it only took about 3 minutes to get it done.

Rachel had a little trouble in math. She acts like she has no ability, but when I look at what she is doing I know it has more to do with being lazy. She won't do all the steps to solve a problem or she doesn't pay attention to whether she needs to add, subtract, multiply, or divide to find a solution. She is also getting all the harder problems right. I am trying to convince her that she is not stupid in math. She doesn't like the title of lazy any better, though.

Joseph had trouble sleeping a few nights and the days after that, he definitely had some emotional moments in school. But on the whole, Joseph did well.

Anya and Adam just got back into the swing of things without any trouble.

Anya always does her work without complaint and then she comes and helps me with the laundry. Rachel will just go and do a load of dishes when she sees the need. And, Adam became my right hand man most days always doing little chores or helping with the youngest kids and keeping Sam in check.

Johnny and Kate mostly stayed away from the family during school hours to work on their own projects. But Kate still helped a lot with the cooking and laundry.

We've finally hired out re-roofing our house and that got started this week. For safety sake, we don't allow the kids to play outside without a teen sibling or parent. This was particularly hard on Susan and Sam. We had 70 degree weather all week and all they wanted to do was to play outside.

While outside hanging laundry, I heard a helicopter quite loud and said, "Sam do you see the helicopter?" He was feeling rather cross and yelled, "NO!" Well then the helicopter got closer and I said, "Sam do you hear the helicopter now?" Again Sam yelled, "NO!" The helicopter was loud enough that he really needed to yell to be heard. At that point the helicopter was right over our property. I was about to ask Sam if he heard it then, but when I looked up, I noticed him running. He was obviously afraid of the helicopter. He ran fast and got all the way under the far side of the deck where the chickens hide. When the helicopter was gone, Sam came back out, no longer grumpy. I think the helicopter scared the grump out of him. The next day, Anya was outside with Sam when another helicopter circled our house. Sam looked at at it and followed it with his finger saying, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa."

Gideon is growing fast. His newborn onsies are getting tighter and he weighs 10 lbs. He is not sleeping well most nights, so I have been struggling with little sleep. I have to keep reminding myself that this time is short and to just enjoy it.

Kate is very excited for Ruth's eventual homecoming. Ruth will be home sometime at the beginning of March, though, I have not heard anything from the mission office yet about her flight home. Kate tried to get a lot of math learning in this week, but said that every time she tried to concentrate, she would think, "Ruth is coming home." We are going to start painting the bedrooms in preparation for Ruth's homecoming next Saturday. Hopefully, I will be able to handle that well with a new baby.

Saturday night, John went out with the boys to play soccer. When they came in, John and Joseph both

had injuries. John's ankle was hurting, and Joseph might have a couple of broken toes. Joseph injured himself by kicking Adam in the shin. Joseph has been saying that Adam's legs have super strength.

Mostly, the week was okay. We are doing fine. We are still waiting for John to get a job, but the Lord has helped us financially right now and things have been a little easier that way. For that and for our dear new little son and brother, we are all very grateful.