Funeral Pictures I Stole From Facebook

Great Grandma and Great Grandpa

Great Grandma days before she died

the grandchildren at the funeral

Ruth and her cousin Lizzy who is just 12 days older

great grandchildren at the funeral. They currently have 106 with 4 more on the way.

Ruth with cousins Lizzy, and Emma

This Week at Our House #10

1. John left Thursday for Utah to attend his grandmother's funeral. Once he met Ruth and his brother Jay at the airport, his other brother picked them up. The funeral was Saturday. He has been spending time with Ruth, 7 of his 8 siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews. I expect he will come home tired. We miss him and look forward to his return late Monday night.
2. We had a very busy week with school, church activities, getting John to the airport, drivers ed, as well as all of the regular things we need to do. Because of all of the extras, I was unable to get in as much as exercise as I would like. Hopefully, I will be able to get a swift walk in every day this next week.
3. Ruth spent the week catching up on classes from her dental surgery illness, and then at the funeral. Now she will have missed two days of classes for the funeral that she will need to make up. I haven't talked to her or John much, but I am seeing them tagged in pictures all over facebook. I think Ruth is having a nice time. Her two favorite cousins were there. I liked seeing pictures of the them grown up together. I remember how much they loved playing with each other when they were just 4 and 6.
4. Kate complained for 3 hours on Friday night about how unjust and unconstitutional it is that the DMV can make laws to force her to go to drivers ed, when they aren't even elected officials. Kate hates bureaucracy. The class is pretty horrible, though. They have it for 6 hours for 5 Saturdays. The book is awful. There were about 5 steps on how to get into a car and #4 was opening the door and they have to take tests on it. There is also a whole chapter on emotional responses. Johnny wondered how so many people could have so little control over their emotions. 
5. I took Johnny to get a state id that he will need for taking the ACT. It was when they asked Johnny how tall he was, that I looked over at him and realized that he is now taller than me. I am 5'9" and Johnny is probably two inches taller, making him about 5'11". I am certain, he is going to be 6 feet tall. John is only 5'7" and Ruth and Kate are both quite short. I think Ruth is actually 5'3" now, but Kate is still just around 5'1".
6. Adam and Rachel have fought so much this week. It is driving me crazy!
7. Rachel would not lay off Adam. She yelled and screamed at him all day Friday. This needs to get fixed. On the flip side, Rachel sang in the mini achievement day girl's talent show and did a really nice job. She is planning to sing for the ward in the ward talent show this coming Saturday.
8. Anya had a good week. She is easy going and kind and happy, and usually willing to do her share of the work.
9. I bought the kids a disk swing for the swing set. Joseph wanted to play on it a lot, but kept getting hurt. It turned out that Adam was pushing it too hard and too crooked. Joseph has a couple of good bruises from it. I told him that he can no longer play on it, and Adam can no longer push the little kids.
10. Joshua started reading Dr. Suess books this week. He was pretty excited about it. I didn't have as much time as I wanted to spend with him on it. Hopefully, I will have more this week. We had a little bit of snow this morning and Josh said, "snow looks like boric acid." Boric acid is a white powder that we use to kill ants and roaches.
11. Arwen just quietly and happily played all week.
12. Suzy still throws screaming tantrums whenever something doesn't go exactly her way. When I tried to put her church dress on this morning, she just sat down and started to cry. Then she went to Kate for comfort.
13. I was looking at Sam and stroking his face, he babbled something and then softly stroked my face. He is such a sweet, sweet baby. He is currently lying beside me and holding my hand as I type. He is four months today too and rolling a lot. He rolled four times in a row yesterday. That seemed to please him.

Tender Mercies

1. When my parents came last weekend, they left my sister and her son who had a bad stomach flu. My mother was sick before she left, but no one in my family got it, which I would normally be very grateful for, but am even more so when I would have had to deal with it alone  or John having to deal with it while traveling and visiting.
2. John and Ruth traveling safely.
3. Things being generally easy at home without John, even as we are very busy.

Pictures

This Week at Our House # 9

1. Work continues to go well for John as we continue to pray that it will. John's grandma died Friday, about six months after her husband. We bought John a plane ticket last night and he will join Ruth in Utah for the funeral next Saturday. She was 97 and lived a full life. I think we are little sad around here. Ruth, Kate, and Rachel had a good relationship with her.
2. We finally had Sam's baby blessing today. My parents came for the weekend and left right after Sacrament meeting. I was glad to see them and show off little Sam. 
3. Ruth's mouth and face slowly healed. Her teacher's were good to her and gave her extra time for her exams. 
4. Kate had the worst week of all. Within 24 hours Kate's great grandmother died, she started drivers ed with a horrible teacher, she got rejected from BYU, her seminary teacher is unhappy with her for the faithful and scriptural comments she's made in class, and when we went to take her to the local dairy farm for their delicious ice cream they were closed because of winter hours. Kate did have a blessing at the beginning of the school year that told her to trust in the Lord when it comes to her schooling. It said that if she got into BYU, it was the Lord's will and if she didn't, it was the Lord's will for her to go to BYUI and that she needed to trust in that. Kate has also felt like there are other things since that blessing that prepared her for this. At the end of the day, Kate did the work to save her spot at BYUI. She was assigned to the fall/spring track, which she was not happy with either, but again, she felt like she needed to trust the Lord's hand in these things. She will be rooming with her old friend from home school, years ago, and she will be staying in the same apartment complex that Ruth lives in now. In the fall, I will have another trip out to BYUI. I am beginning to think that BYUI will be the right school for our children.
5. Johnny is doing well with his school work. He is reading the 7 volume History of the Church and a history of Napoleon. His math is going well too. He started drivers ed with Kate. I am glad that they are getting to do it together as it is 30 hours of useless class time with information that could be taught and tested on in about 5 hours. Johnny and Kate now have 24 hours to go. 
6. I had to do state testing with my kids for home school. I did it this week. They all did pretty well. Adam seemed happy to have his grandpa over. He played several games including tennis with him. Adam has been enjoying gardening.
7. Rachel sat and cried during her state testing because she said it was too hard. The test was timed, so that obviously hurt her performance, but she still scored in the 78% for all 5th graders that take the California state tests.
8. Anya inherited some pretty dresses from her cousin that she is quite happy about. 
9. Joseph did the best on his state testing. He was overall in the 93rd percentile.
10. Joshua did a better job at beginning his school work when I tell him too. I bought him a new math book. He is moving into 2nd grade math as he has nearly completed the first grade math curriculum. His reading is coming along. I suspect it will be another year before he reads fluently, but he can read the books I give him, he is good at memorizing his site words, and he is getting better at sounding out small words.
11. Arwen still just quietly goes about her days. She is slowly learning her alphabet to prepare for kindergarten next year.
12. Whenever I start to worry about Susan's talking, she says something impressive. Adam was the same way. I brought him in to be tested for speech at 35 months and he tested at 34 months, but I was so worried. I think Susan is following Adam on that, including on pronunciation.
13. Sam had his baby blessing today, and he got to meet his Grandparents for the first time. He is mostly happy and sweet. But I think he will be sleeping in bed with me for some time to come. Usually by this age, I have my babies in their own bed half the night or more. Sam will not sleep in his own bed and he does not cry himself to sleep. He tenses up instead. I think Heavenly Father knew what he was doing putting Sam last. This would have been really hard if it was the 4th, 5th, or 6th baby. Sam is now playing with his little toys and grabbing things. They change so quickly at this age.

Pictures

Rachel designed this lego house for a lego building contest

Sam on his blessing day. This is the suit all of my boys got blessed in.

Sam meets his grandparents

Dinner Pleasures

One of the nice things about young children is that simple things please them.

This past week for our dinner menu, we made it alliteration week. We had French Toast and Fruit Salad Friday, Salmon Saturday, Sub Sandwich Sunday, Macaroni Monday, Taco Tuesday, and Waffle Wednesday. The kids loved it.

Each week, I write a dinner menu and hang it on the fridge. The kids like it there and like knowing what they will be having.