Conversation with Rachel

I washed Adam's stinky feet with antibacterial handsoap and then rubbed lavendar oil on them to help them smell better. Rachel wanted me to do the same for her.

As I began washing Rachel's feet, I exclaimed, "Rachel, you have my long, thin feet. They are almost as long as Adam's!"

Rachel replied, "Does that mean I will be tall like you?"

"ummm.... I doubt it," I said.

"Well then, does that mean I will at least be normal size?" Rachel asked.

"Yes, that is possible."

Then Rachel said accusingly, "Why did you and Dad have so many little kids."

I thought for a moment and the responded, "We decided that we didn't want to have humans, so we had a bunch of little Hobbits instead."

Rachel is the smallest of my small kids. She is 7 years old, weighs about 33 pounds, and is 41 inches tall.

This Week at Our House # 15

1. The Job we thought John would have by now has not come through yet. The vacation feeling of unemployment is wearing off and the urgency feeling is taking its place.
2. Ugh long week. I am really hoping the weather will warm up so I can do more outdoor things with my kids.I just want to get out of the house.
3. Ruth had another friend birthday party this weekend. She went to the Festival of Colors in Salt Lake. I thought that had something to do with tulips. Boy, was I wrong! She called and said that basically she and her friends threw chalk at each other the whole time. I was alarmed and asked if that was okay and if she was in trouble. Ruth seemed confused by my question. Apparently, The Festival of Colors is colored chalk throwing. Ruth came home covered in chalk! She had a hard time washing it off her skin. Alll of her clothes were dyed. She had a wonderful time.
4. Kate along with all of my 4 oldest children got to meet Brandon Mull, author of the Fablehaven series at the Bountiful library on Tuesday.
5. Johnny's been making some amazing lego creations. He has gone well beyond putting together a kit and is actually thinking about and making his own amazing ships and robots and things.
6. The rule I made about no video games except on Friday and Saturdays is sticking pretty well. The kids have learned to obey the rule well. Adam usually wakes up on Friday and says, "Guess what? It is half day of school and wii day." This Friday, he didn't mention it, and when I reminded him, he said that he was too busy playing.
7. Rachel sang and danced at her classroom talent show. She came home all glowy with stories of making the kids all laugh. I am guessing it went well. Rachel says she has a crush on Riley again and that Riley has a crush on her. I wonder what that means now? In the past, Rachel had said that she could not live with Riley every single day so she did not want to marry him.
8. Anya's been my little snuggle buddy this week. She's hung around and about me a lot, and I am glad. I have been trying for a long time to get Anya to just hang out with me.
9. I had Joseph wash the walls with me. For the first bit, Joseph  would point to things that he had drawn, tell me wht they are and tell me to wash them. By the end, Joseph was pretty tired and asked what was for dinner. I told him that I did not know. He suggested doritos. I said no. He said, "If you don't give me doritos for dinner, I won't get you a birthday present."
10. Josh LOVES milk. He wants to drink about 4 glasses of milk a day. He throws sippy cups at me and demands milk. As soon as he sees me in the mornings, he asks for milk. If I leave and come home, he will greet me at the door with a demand for milk. He is as obsessed with milk as he is with things that go. I wonder what this sort of 2 year old personality will turn into when he's older.
11. Arwen's finally getting around a little more. She will follow me into other rooms now. Arwen smiles for me all of the time. If I am feeling weary and worn out, I can always rely on Arwen for a sweet, happy smile. I'm glad I have my sweet number 9. I never planned on having more than 8 kids.

Thoughts

A good family with a married mother and father who honor marital vows is the safest place on earth that Heavenly Father could send His children. It is the most likely place Heavenly Father's children will learn about Him. That is why Satan attacks the family. Satan's really good at it too. He attacks and breaks down the family specifically by separating sex from children.  Satan then accuses the good people supporting the natural family as being mean, bigoted, and unfair. These arguments are very persuasive. When enough people believe that and change their minds in order to be "kind", he attacks the rest with worry-- worry that their views on the family will be known and they will be attacked or lose a job or friends over it. Satan is very clever.

A friend of mine, wrote this excellent essay on birth control and gay marriage. It is well worth the read.

This Week at Our House #14

1. John may have a job by the end of this week. A company has contacted him and have told him they are planning on making him an offer. But he has to go in for one more interview. So I am hoping, this will be the job. John has done a fabulous job of looking for the roses among the thorns during this period of unemployment. He has really enjoyed his time off and has spent much of his time just hanging out with me and the kids. He's also napped a lot. We will miss him when he goes back to work. 
2. My week was quiet and easy going. Hurray! It is nice to have a normal/no extras week every once in a while. We did a crazy thing this week. We got a dog. The dog was a really good dog. Really, she was my perfect dream dog. But the night we got her, John and I just felt like we had done something crazy. So we sold her off to someone else the very next day. My kids got to have the perfect dog for one day. She was a 1.5 year old boxer who was house trained and let the kids wrestle and snuggle her as much as they wanted.She only cost $50 too. She wanted people around her constantly and that was not a problem. The idea of keeping her scared John and I too much. So we didn't. Maybe we will try again when I know I am done having babies. I just couldn't imagine myself walking a dog pregnant in the middle of winter. I doubt we'll find such a perfect deal again. 
3. Ruth cried and complained Friday afternoon because she had a bad day at school and it took me a long time to find the address of the birthday party Ruth and Kate were invited to. As a child, Ruth did not like rambunctious boys. She still doesn't. Ruth has a bad day if the boys at school are obnoxious.
4. Kate cried about John teaching her how to figure out sine and cosine without a calculator. I still need him to show me that. Kate came to me with the same math problem and I told her to use the Pythagorean theorem. Math problems is a huge plus to having John home.
5. When I told Johnny to take his math test, he yelled at me and said that it was not fair because I was not making myself take the math test. Huh, I already did all that math stuff years ago. Later in the week, however, Johnny helped me a ton in cleaning up our very dirty garage. I am so glad that he did. His help was invaluable and it was fun to have him hanging out with me.
6. Adam love, loved , loved and actually did an incredible job training the dog the 24 hours we had her. I am still second guessing the not keeping her. Adam actually got her leashed trained before we handed her off to a new owner. When we got her, she would only be dragged on the leash. Adam spent about 4 hours walking her around until she just did it completely. 
7. Rachel begged and begged me to keep the dog. I told her we weren't. She said, "will you at least pray about it?" I told her I was sure that Dad had prayed a lot about it. She then said, "Oh good. Now we will keep her."
8. Okay, Anya is a very emotional 5 year old. She had her best friend Gracie over to play the day we had the dog. Gracie wanted to play with the dog. Anya did not want to. Anya grabbed onto Gracie bawling and telling her what to do. I put Anya in time out until "She could be a good friend". Gracie went upstairs to play with her sister, Hannah, and Rachel. When Anya was ready to go and be a good friend she went up to play. Gracie kept telling Anya she was boring and didn't like to play with her. So Anya pretended to go to sleep and told Gracie that whenever she said a mean thing, it just made her sleep. Rachel and Hannah left because they said, "our sisters are annoying," and went to Hannah's house. Anya and Gracie continued to fight for a while until they decided they needed a snack. I got them a snack and suddenly they were happy and best friends once again.
9. This week, I made a huge effort to read and play with Joseph everyday. And guess what? He didn't wet his pants and he didn't destroy anything. He still wrote on the walls some. But at least now, I know what he needs. He needs me. I had just decided that I wasn't doing house work until I played with Joseph and Anya. Joseph has requested the dinosaur museum this week, and we have a family pass! So tomorrow morning, we will pack a lunch and head off to the museum before I do my usual 8 loads of Monday laundry.
10. Josh came crying to me asking for cars. It took a minute, but I realized that he wanted to watch race cars on TV. Everyone else was already watching Dr. Who. I said, "Just go watch Dr. Who." Josh replied, "Who poop!" He's so funny!
11. There's not much to say about Arwen this week. She did eat guacamole which surprised me because she will not eat avocados. I guess she just needed a little salt, lime, and garlic added to them.

This Weeks Pictures

This Week at Our House #13

1.  John is very thoroughly enjoying his unemployment vacation. As long as it doesn't last too long, I am sure he will look back on it as a happy time with the family. He had a job interview that went really well. We will see if it turns into anything. We stayed in Provo at John's parent's house for the conference weekend. I know that John really enjoyed with time playing late night games with his brother and chatting with his parents.
2. I LOVE General Conference, almost as much as Christmas! I came in with some questions and left having them all answered. I intend to spend some time writing my thoughts on some of the talks. My favorites were Boyd K Packer, L Tom Perry, Elaine S Dalton, Jeffery R Holland, and President Monson's arson story. It always amazes me how bold and kind the apostles can be in just a few statements. 
3. Ruth had spring break. She slept a lot and hung out with Kate a lot. Ruth payed close attention and took careful notes all through conference. She has grown up since those first few years struggling to get her to sit through any of conference. Friday morning, Ruth pretended to be a "weeping angel" from Dr. Who, held her hand out toward the light and ordered the lights to go off just as our electricity went out. That was a fun way to lose our electricity. Apparently, the whole west side of our area was without electricity for about 4 hours.
4. Kate LOVED having Ruth all week. She spent every moment she could hanging out with Ruth. 
5. Nothing interesting happened for Johnny this week. He took spring break off from home school and just hung out. Johnny is just a good kid and fairly easy to please.
6. Adam had a pretty good week too. He had a lot of fun at Rachel's birthday party-- a little too much fun. I had to keep telling him to settle down. Because Adam and Rachel are just a grade apart, they know each other's friends well. Adam listened to all 4 sessions of conference, albeit very wiggly.
7. Rachel turned 7! She had an awesome week filled with Easter stuff, birthday stuff, cousins, and sleeping over at Grandma's.
8. Anya had a ton of fun at Rachel's birthday party too. During the day, Anya hangs out with Joseph, and during the evening Anya hangs out with either Adam or Rachel. Adam seems to quite like Anya and is always asking her to play with him. Things like that just melt my heart. I love watching my kids play together.
9. I am trying with Joseph, and Joseph is "trying". This week, Joseph drew all over the walls and laughed about it. He punched me and told me that he was going to break all of my things, he pooped his pants and laughed that John had to clean up the mess. I hope that we can survive this stage. I am trying to clap and get real excited every time Joseph obeys me. I think he needs more attention. He doesn't respond much to punishment. He's a tough kid right now. He doesn't throw fits, he just terrorizes property.
10. Josh is just adorable. He makes us laugh and smile everyday! He loves his cars, and trucks, and trains, he loves to look at books and draw, he loves to cuddle and be held. I'll miss these sweet days with little Josh.
11. I cannot get Arwen to eat much solid food. I am not sure if it is taste or texture issues. She will eat small pieces of bread, but nothing else. I tried giving her some banana and avocado and she just gagged and spat it out. I know she can swallow fine because she eats bread and paper. I think I will just set her with safe finger foods and let her figure this out by herself.

This Week's Pictures

Josh watching Grandpa's trains

 

Easter To Do's

On Easter Sunday, we had our usual and very nice Easter lesson. This is the best illustrative lesson about the Savior, His atonement and the true meaning of Easter. The kids really learn from it and it is set up in a way that even the littlest kids pay attention. After that we watched The Lamb of God. We finished our Easter celebration, with a wonderful lamb dinner. I had bought a huge lamb roast in January for a third of the cost of what it is around Easter. The kids ate and ate and ate. Kate made apple crisp for dessert. I would have said we had a perfect Easter day based upon the teachings of the Savior if Joseph hadn't drawn all over the walls before church and we continued to discover more drawings as the day progressed.

We didn't get to any candy and egg stuff until Friday. Friday morning the kids woke up to filled Easter baskets. I filled the Easter baskets for 8 children on $25. I am pleased!

 On Saturday, at Grandma's house with the cousins, we dyed eggs. A few of my kids even dyed their hands. It's a good thing the weather was nice and we did the egg dying outdoors.

 Finally, we hid our eggs and the kids got to hunt for them. Grandma had a lot of candy for all of the kids. I'd have to say that with unemployment and all, our kids had some pretty great Easter celebrations.

7 Years Old

 Little Rachel turned 7! I can hardly believe this little one is already 7.  She is just 33 pounds. Rachel is easy to please on her birthday because she LOVES birthdays. This year, we brought treats to her class. John came this year. Rachel, jumped onto John's lap, patted his belly, and announced, "This is my Dad, Santa Claus."

 In the evening, I made her dinner request of cream of broccoli soup in bread bowls, which she surprised me and ate. Then we opened her presents. I bought her presents well ahead of time and Anya had already told Rachel what they were. I think Rachel was still happy. For dessert we had pie, which Rachel did not eat and I was not surprised.

On their birthdays, I let the kids stay up and hang out with me a while. Rachel requested painting. We ended her day with some painting. Rachel painted a picture of Merida

 Rachel's birthday was over, but the celebration was not. Two days later on Friday, Rachel had a birthday party with her friends from school. She had a ton of fun, and since I kept the party to one hour, I survived a house full of 6 and 7 year olds.We made crowns, decorated cupcakes, played pin the crown on the bear, and went on a bear hunt. Success!