This Week at Our House #17 Company Comes to Briarhovel

 We had a huge rainstorm on Monday night through Tuesday afternoon. Our whole yard was flooded. I switched  around school so the kids could go out and play in the rain. They had a blast and I had a lot of laundry the next two days. My mother, sister, and niece came on Friday. My sister brought me a lot of homeschool stuff and old books that she is not using anymore. My kids have really loved looking through the books, building a periodic table puzzle and playing with a human anatomy 3-d model with inside parts. On Saturday, we went with our company to the beach. It was nice to have company come and join us at our little home.

1. John continues to work very hard and through the night. He is also really pushing Johnny and Adam into learning and writing their own computer games.
2. John and I ended our two week diet. I lost 10lbs and he lost 15lbs. Now we are trying to maintain the weight loss. Hopefully we will be able to do that. I spent probably 6 hours getting the lawn mowed. There is a lot to mow and it is a lot slower with a corded mower, but we were pleasantly surprised that we had enough cord to stretch through the majority of the yard. The corded mower made sense when we had a tenth of an acre, but it is terrible on 3 acres. I enjoyed having my mom and sister here. They were only here for about 24 hours, but it was nice to see them and talk to them.
3. Ruth really likes her new companion and seems to be quite happy in her current area. I realized that in two more weeks, I will get to talk to her again. I am so glad about that.
4. Kate loves and protects her 3 little ducklings and they love her. When we came home from church they were real excited to see us and chirped and jumped around excitedly and then they cuddled up on Kate.
5. Johnny's doing well with his little game. One day this week, he said, "Look, I got my bad guy to chase me." The next day, he said, "Now my bad guy can kill me so I actually have a reason to run from him," and the next day after that, he said, "now I can kill my bad guy." His graphics are pretty fun too.
6. Adam is finally reading music. He plays the piano well. He seems to have a natural knack for making music sound good. My piano playing sounds very mechanical, so I love it when my kids preform so naturally.
7. Rachel is the Dominion champion of the family. That's a very interesting card game. Try as I might, I cannot beat her.
8. Anya stayed with me while I mowed collecting all the cut grass as part of the game she was playing. She said that she was pretending there were tiny people collecting wheat that was mowed down for their food and roofs of their houses. In the end, I had a lot of dead grass to put down around my potato plants.
9. Joseph loved the periodic table puzzle my sister brought. He enjoyed putting it together and talking about and thinking about the elements. He's still talking about the elements.
10. Joshua has really liked the model of the body my sister brought. He studied the pamphlet that came with it and worked pretty hard to put all the organs in the right place. Now he is excitedly looking through books about human anatomy that my sister brought. 
11. Arwen still colors everyday and goes through coloring books quickly. 
12. Susan loved playing out in the rain and then the puddles that lasted a couple of days after the fact. She was always trying to sneak out to get wet.
13. Sam continues to get into everything and to climb on everything. He seems to get better at it everyday.

Pictures

Stories from Ruth #33

 

This week was full of miracles! I thank my Heavenly Father for blessing us so greatly! Sister Strate was too sick to do much but the Lord blessed every effort we made. We did a lot of calling all the people on the phone who were interested and setting appointments. On Thursday it was hot so Sister Strate and I went outside to have lunch and do comp study. We had made spring rolls the night before and cooked them before going out. In Chelmsford there is Central Park which is lovely and has a beautiful duck pond in the center so we sat by it. Before we left this guy came and sat nearby. He kept looking at us and I felt inspired to speak to him. We talked to him and at first when we talked to him he said he did not want to meet, but as we talked and testified he felt the spirit and asked us if we could meet him. It was great!

A few weeks ago Sister Georgieva and I met James. He was not religious, but after we talked and

testified to him he said that he was going to say no to meeting with us but was interested to see if God was there. The next day he texted us and told us that he had been thinking a lot about what he said and wanted to know how to pray. We sent him a talk by Elder Holland to listen to and he did. Then this week, three weeks later, he said he would like to meet. Apparently the plan of salvation pamphlet moved him to meet with us. He read the pamphlet and wanted to ask more. First he let us teach then he asked us questions. He asked about the book of Mormon and said he had started reading the bible after the last time that we had met him everyday. We just got a message today saying he read Alma 40-41 and 1 Corinthians 15, but did not fully understand it. Which is fine it is hard to understand the scriptures but he read! And we told him that we would go over it next time! When we met him we answered a lot of his questions about religion. He thought child baptisms were wrong and we showed him Moroni 8 which says that children are innocent and alive in Christ. It was amazing.

 

That day we both felt prompted to get Chris water, who is our homeless investigator, I thought to ask after we teach him, but Sister Strate asked then and there and then we bought him four bottles of water in a six pack we bought for a pound. That night when we saw him he told us that he had drunk three of them after we left him. We also felt inspired to make him food and give him some water which will also help him overcome his smoking since he will have something to eat. On the way home after we had two former investigators on the phone who called us and asked if we could meet them.

My favorite miracle is that Chandra came to church, not only her, but Christina and her whole family. Christina is our self-referral who is seeking for truth. She loves the Book of Mormon and has asked us why other Christians do not believe in it since it testifies of Christ. Her and her husband read the bible every night together and pray often. It truly is wonderful to see. Her daughter who is around 16 was even taking notes during the meeting, and Christina said there were many things she heard that were true and she wants to come back to church. I am grateful to have even seen this miracles.

This Week at Our House #16 It's Getting Warm

We had warm weather all week. With warm weather comes summer fever. We are all anxious to be finished with the school year, but we have until the end of May to go. It's hard when all the kids want to do is to be outside and I agree with them. We did do some schooling outside, though, and that is nice.
     

1. John continues to work day and night on building his own game software. He is having Johnny and Adam working along with him during the day. Johnny is even learning some things on his own and then he and John share what they have learned so that they can get more information in faster. He has not heard back from the job he interviewed at last week. Usually after two interviews they get back to you either way, but only time will tell.
2. I spent a lot of time in my garden and mowing our giantic lawn. After about 5 hours of mowing, I still have a huge amount to do. We only have a small corded mower and since you are constantly having to move the cord out of the way, it takes a lot longer. I look forward to the time when we can buy a gas powered mower. I am doing the mowing because I need the exercise and I would much rather stay home and push a lawn mower while doing something for our home than go off and run. Plus Sam follows me around and makes lawn mower noises and that is just adorable. 
3. Ruth got to shake hands with President Nelson, and she is loving her new companion. 
4. Kate's put her mission papers on hold until we get settled in a ward permanently. She is still reading and studying the gospel a lot as well as doing advanced math with John.
5. John has Johnny pretty busy, yet Johnny is my one child that looks at what needs to be done and does it for me. This week, he let me go outside and play basketball while he did the entire dinner cleanup himself.
6. Adam is really enjoying the stuff that John is having him do and learn. He even does it during his free time.
7. Rachel was telling me that she has three times a day that she goes off and reads. I thought she was mostly playing her lego game. Now I know how she gets 7 books read every two weeks.
8. My quiet little Anya loves the ducks and chicks and always wants to touch them and hold them, even though we tell her she can't so much. This frustrates Kate who has an easier time keeping Susan out of their breeder.
9. Joseph is reading about world war two and he hates it. He says he likes his science and other things fine enough, and he comprehends his science concepts better than anyone else, but he can spend two hours reading about world war two and come away having no idea what he read.
10. Joshua has been building bionicles and carrying them around. He keeps taking them to family scripture study and making John mad by making quiet shooting noises the whole time.
11. Arwen's reading is coming along well. But she does not get adding and subtracting. She's been the opposite of Josh who is in beginning 3rd grade math, but has struggled all through learning to read.
12. Susan still insists her name is Lila. I didn't expect it to last this long. 
13. Sam loves John. Every time John gets up, Sam runs up to him, puts his little arms around John's legs and says, "Hi, da." Recently, Sam has decided that a good way to wake up John is to take John's big shoes and throw them at him. We know it is because John puts Sam on his shoulders to take him on a walk and Sam loves that. Sam will also bring me my shoes when he wants me to take him outside.

Pictures

Kate puts the ducks for a swim in the bathroom sink

Johnny mowed a portion of the lawn for me

We discovered that this tree is a pecan tree. It does not have very many pecans, so we will fertilize it and start pruning it and hope to get some good fruit from it in the future.

She has loved playing in the dirt and just gets covered in it.

Arwen built this house for fairies.

I love Arwen's rubber boots in the picture

He's grown up so much, I feel like I can hardly recognize his face.