This Week at Our House #33 Getting Used to a New School Schedule

 I am sitting here wondering what I should write because I cannot think of much. It rained a lot this week, so we spent a lot of time indoors and almost no time on house repairs. School went well enough. We are getting used to the schedule and getting better at getting in all of our work at a faster pace.

Ruth and Kate help out where they can with meals and such, but they are busy with their own work. John finished writing software that makes the photos of Kate's drawings look like the background is perfectly white and there are no odd color or light changes caused by the drawing being photographed. I think Kate will have her little book ready to self-publish soon.

Johnny was sick all week. He missed his dentist appointment, so I had to reschedule that for him. He seemed to be doing better Saturday, but is still not all well.

Adam surprised me. He realized that since his entire 9th grade course is online, he can read and write and complete all of his assignments early if he wants more time off. The only thing he cannot do that with is math, because I give him a lesson. Adam doubled up his work on Wednesday and took Thursday off. He plans to work ahead a lot more now that he knows he could possibly finish the semester or year early.

Rachel is slowly learning the art of sarcasm. She is a quiet teen, which surprises me since she was our most talkative child. But when she does say something, it is pretty clever. Rachel sat and stared at her science book for a couple of hours on Tuesday. On Wednesday, when I found out that she had not done her assignment, I sat down with her and helped her get it done.

Anya seems to have gotten into the groove of her schooling with no hiccups. She is reading the Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt and enjoying it a lot. I think that is the one book that has prompted her to say that her school stuff is interesting.

Joseph has begun to read ahead in history. He realized that if he reads as much as he can each day, instead of just the assigned pages, he will be finished with history for the school year sooner. When I went with my sister to the used home school supply store, I picked up a bunch of books that I loved reading or that are historical fiction and said that if they read them on their own time, they could get a treat. Joseph is the first to take me up on this. I hope others will follow.

Joshua seems to like the new curriculum. Although, it is hard for him, he likes the timed word lists because it is competitive. Up until now, I would not have said that Josh has a competitive bone in his body. I think that has changed, and I think it is good to a point too, because it pushes him to work hard.

Arwen is doing very well for the most part. Unlike last year, she finishes her math quickly. Arwen's hang up this year seems to be writing. She took an hour and a half to copy 4 sentences, and she took two hours to write a two sentence story for our story club. She lost the page she wrote the story on, so no one ever read it. I did see that she had completed it, though.

Suzy is enjoying kindergarten. She loves the little drawing videos, our little paper feed the elephant alphabet game and using a computer to do alphabet games. When she woke up Monday morning she said, "Is today school?" I said it was. She hopped out of bed and said, "Oh good. I like school."

I think Samuel is doing less damage on the whole. It seems that fewer things are missing and fewer things

are turning up broken. He is also talking a lot more. He speaks in complete sentences and has for a while now. Sometimes he is hard to understand because of his pacifier, but there is no point in me taking that away, until I take Gideon's away.

Gideon is a big, strong, baby boy. He is 7 months today. He has been scooting around on his belly for 8 weeks, and now he is crawling on his hands and knees. He stands up to things. He has been sitting himself up for 6 to 7 weeks. He is eating some solid foods. He loves food, but he will not swallow anything chunky yet. I bought him some gogo fruits and vegetables to assist me with having something soft for him, but apparently all the other kids loved them and ate them for snacks. When Gideon sees something he likes, he bounces up and down and coos. When Gideon does not know where I am, he crawls through the house crying. Today, he crawled through a a mass of legos and into the 4 oldest girls' room, saw everyone, stopped crying and said, "Oh, Hi." Not quite that clearly, but we all understood him and all cooed back because it was soooo cute.

The week was fine, and all of the rain will mean a lower electric bill and that is good. July's utilities were quite high. Speaking of utilities, I went in to pay the water bill because I had to go to the county office for another reason and their website didn't work when I went to pay earlier in the month. We talked about the fact that my water bill was higher. They were sending someone to come out and check our street because we were not the only one's on this street with a surprising jump in water usage. They asked how many people live in the home. When I told them, they immediately said, "You do really well!" They said our water usage is average. That made me feel good. I try to keep our utilities low.

More Pictures sent from my sister in law

Playing a Game

A rare picture of me at the beach