We finished week 22 of the school year and 6 of the semester. In 10 more weeks, school will be done. Of course a lot can change in 10 more weeks.
Our pear trees that line the driveway came into a full beautiful snowball bloom this week. I took pictures of the kids near the blossoms. Some of them are great and some are awful. I think I will try portraits again in April.
1. Ruth's still coloring the pictures for her very first children's book. They're very beautiful. She's been working very hard. A few days she worked until 1am.
2. Kate's been reading to Ruth while she works as well as continuing on her own thing. Kate has one more thing that she's working on for her aunt.
3. Johnny keeps talking about when he can go on a mission. He wants that so much, but with our situation with church here, I wonder if it will ever happen. I hope it does for him. He's such a good boy. We're still planning to move out of here when we can for that very reason. In the meantime, Johnny's learning computer programming and animation. He's animating his own game. If I ask him about what he has, he says, "It's hard. You try it."
4. Adam's doing very well with school in all of his subjects. He's also working very hard at some of his own stuff. He draws all the time and his drawing has gotten very good.
5. Rachel did well this week. She finished her school work without as much trouble as she usually likes to give me. I wonder if she is learning any of it, other than math. Math is more measurable. But her math is good. She is in algebra one and understands what she is doing very well. She has the highest math grade out of all of the kids.
6. Anya has been writing and illustrating a little manga book (japanese story board book). Her pictures are as good as Kate could do in 9th and 10th grade. Anya is in 6th grade. I am going to get Anya illustrating for me this week. I will be able to put things out faster with more illustrators.
7. Joseph mostly wants to play computer games. When he is not doing that or school, he hangs out with Anya or plays outside. It was a nice week outdoors and Joseph went outside a lot.
8. Joshua only wants to play computer games too. I let him play Friday morning before we got to work, while I was writing. After we finished all of our work, he asked constantly for more computer time. On the other hand, as much as I say no, he builds with legos or plays outside and that is good.
9. Arwen's a good reader. She pays attention to what she is reading and asks questions when she does not understand it. Math is Arwen's bane. She can do it, but she does not like it, and some days she finishes late. Arwen's been playing legos with Josh. She too has that computer game bug.
10. When I took pictures, Susan was the easiest. Her pictures came out really pretty, and she talked and talked about how she had the best picture of everyone and Arwen did not.
11. Sam likes to sit and learn the alphabet with Susan. I've basically held Susan back a year because she was not ready to read, but Sam, on the other hand has shown so much interest, I am going to put him in preschool next year, and kindergarten a year early.
12. Gideon has been climbing everything and getting as high as he dares to. He's also getting into everything. I like to call him "Getting Giddy". He's dumped out 3 boxes of cereal. I think it's good that we have chickens to eat it all up, or I would feel stressed about wasting food.
