This Week at Our House # 29 Beach Day and a Birthday

Hmmm... the weeks really seem to fly by. John had had a job interview and I was hoping and hoping this would be it, but it has been 2 weeks now and nothing. Ugh... but other than that, things went well this week. I cannot remember what happened each day. For us personally, all was well. We got the letter form CPS closing our case, and that is a relief.

My dad spent 3 days in the hospital with cellulitis and John's mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, so our parents had rough weeks. I will be heading down to visit my parents this week.

We continue to get the repairs done on the house. The house part of the roof is almost complete, but with the very hot weather, we only made it up one day this week. The shingles burn your hands, never mind the metal hammers and screws, so we have to go early in the morning or just before sunset. With the heat wave, we spent that time on indoor projects. Johnny and Adam did the most of them, as I was running a lot of errands.

I took the van to get new tires and brakes and an oil change. We did not need the brakes. The squealing was because our rotors are rough, but we have lots of pad left. We only needed 2 new tires, because the alignment was the real problem. We got that fixed. The oil change and 32 point check revealed that the van is in excellent shape. The man said that when you take good care of your car, it will take good care of you. and we had done that. I had to laugh. We took very good care of our other cars, but have been too poor to take good care of this one. It is the Lord that has taken good care of our van and it kept it running. It is now 12 years old with over 200,000 miles on it. That is when our other two cars died.

Wednesday, I dropped all work projects and we went to the beach. It has been very hot here and the beach was a welcome break for us all. Gideon was the cutest at the beach. He loved the water washing up over his feet. He got pretty excited about it and laughed and splashed.

I took Joseph out swimming a couple of times. He is much better behaved at the beach now. Sam kept his clothes on this time, even though he got wet. And Sam actually enjoyed the water some.

The waves were very crashing and Rachel did not dare to swim out. I was surprised. She usually likes to get into the deeper, gentler water. It was hard to swim through the break, though.

Johnny swam a lot more than usual. Kate swam a lot less as she was not feeling well. Though Kate was feeling well enough for ice cream. It has become tradition to stop at the grocery store, pick up some ice cream and ice cream cones and eat an ice cream cones on the way home from the beach.

Ruth came out swimming with me for a while. She swims very well. I had forgotten until she was out with me, but Ruth learned to swim younger than all the other kids in our family. She is still a strong swimmer.

I went out further than everyone else, and swam alone for a while because I love to swim and no one wanted to come out as deep as I did. I would not let even Ruth and Kate go out alone, though. I guess it is easier to trust my own strength.

Susan and Arwen and Anya stayed in the water the whole time. They are good at staying where they are safe.

Adam swam with Johnny more than Kate. John came, but he did not want to go out far in the water. He stayed in the shallow end with the little kids, jumping the waves.

Joseph was so excited for his birthday that he woke up at 5am. John got up and hung out with him, and then they both went back to bed. Last year, Joseph spent the whole day playing computer games. We made fun of him for that and even complained about it because he had asked for some tough meals, but wouldn't break from his computer game to eat it. This year, Joseph did not play computer games at all and spent the day doing different activities with other family members. He was very conscientious about it. Joseph asked for chicken pot pie for dinner. I was a little surprised as it is not fancy food. We made three pies and they were gone quickly. The whole family enjoys homemade chicken pot pie.

Our summer vacation is coming to an end. We start school on August 5th, 15 days from today. We have had a nice long break. This year Adam will be in 9th grade, Rachel in 8th, Joseph and Anya in 6th, Josh in 3rd, Arwen in 2nd, and Suzy will be starting kindergarten. I have everything I need. The older kids have all their stuff written out and assigned for the whole year. I still need to write a schedule for the younger kids.

The year is sure flying by!!!!!

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