This Week at Our House # 13 Back to the Beach

We finished the kitchen floor and installed a new dishwasher this week. I finally have my kitchen back and dishes will now only take about a half hour a day instead of about 2 hours a day!!! So I conclude that it was a good week. I also got my small kitchen garden in and much of the weeding done in the front flower beds.

We finally got back to the beach. That happened Friday after our weekly chores. There was some debate about whether or not we should go Friday or Saturday. I said Friday because I had promised to drop everything, and I am glad that I did. We bought the dishwasher on Thursday and found that we needed some parts. There was a Lowes next to the bridge that goes to the beach, we decided to stop there on the way to the beach. Johnny and I spent an hour in the store while everyone else sat in the van waiting for us-- Ruth and Kate were in there with them and they

both drive. We got one part that we thought might work, but we were not sure. The part was right, but we still needed an adapter. John and I went together to the closer Lowes, and we spent another two hours looking around, speaking to the plumbing specialists, and finally trying out different adapters until we found the right part.

Before we left, I argued with nearly all my kids about whether or not they should bring a sweatshirt. I didn't let them in the car without one, and voila, I was right. All the

little kids got to the beach, went swimming immediately, came out of the cold water very chilled, cried a bit, got their sweatshirt on and then were fine. Hmmm... sometimes mom isn't so stupid. But the beach was lovely.

The sky was the bluest we get here, the sun was warm, the sand soft, and the waves big. The older kids, of course, have good tolerance for the cold water, so I took all of the younger kids on a walk. I really enjoyed that as did all those who went with me. The walk warmed up the little ones and gave the older ones more time to swim.

Sam wasn't frightened of the water and the waves for the first time, but Gideon was either crying,

eating, or being walked around. Arwen and Susan loved their little swim and playing in the sand. Josh and Arwen enjoyed collecting shells. Josh brought home a whole pocketful of shells. Arwen picked out a couple special ones.

Joseph swam, got cold, and complained until we went on the walk and he warmed up. Joseph is one of my colder kids. He wears fleece in the summer time.

Anya was the one younger kid that did not go on the walk. She stayed and built a pretty impressive sand castle that I neglected to get a picture of.

Rachel no longer likes her picture taken. She says that I always put the ugly pictures of her on my blog, and tries to dodge the camera now. At the beach, I wanted to get some pictures of her, so I walked all around her snapping photos before she could dodge.

Ruth seemed to love her trip to the beach. This trip was her birthday present. In the past, Ruth did not swim as much. This time she stayed with Kate and Adam in the water the whole time.

Kate swam the longest. Johnny does not go in the water until the end of May when the water has

warmed up substantially, so he helped me carry Gideon around and stayed on the shore with Anya while I went on a walk with the rest of the kids.

Saturday, when we finally had all the parts to the dishwasher, Johnny and Adam spent the day installing it. I think they ran into lots of problems. Johnny says that it is impossible for a house repair to go smoothly, as there are always unforeseen difficulties. I don't take as thoroughly as gloomy of a view on the matter, but I can certainly understand why anyone wealthy enough hires someone else to do the work.

I took a lot of pictures at the beach. They always come out so well there. Ruth, Kate, and Rachel sat with me Saturday night looking at them. Ruth said something I thought was pretty funny. She and Kate said they did not know that Adam was so buff until they saw him in a tight swim shirt. Ruth worriedly said, "I am afraid girls are going to like Adam, and I'm not sure that will be good for him." I laughed. Girls have liked Adam since the 4th grade.

Many More Pictures

Joshua's drawing. I think he is very good for an 8 year old

I might have made a foolish mistake letting the kids get 4 chicks from the tractor supply store

This Week at Our House #12: A birthday and a Visit

This week we finally got the hole in the floor repaired, and tomorrow we will finally get the kitchen floor put all the way in. Johnny has done the most of that work and he will be our saw-man when we finish the floor tomorrow. Adam is Johnny's assistant. When we put in the floor, he will be our muscle-man when the boards are warped and hard to snap in place. I will be more than glad to have my kitchen back.

This week we also celebrated Ruth's 21st birthday and my parents and cousin Sadie came to visit. My mom and dad got to meet Gideon for the first time and hang out with Ruth for the first time in a year and a half.

My parents stayed in a hotel about 30 minutes from us, but where we grocery shop. I scheduled my weekly shopping trip to meet them when they got to their hotel. When we met up with them, they took all of us to a steak house next to their hotel. I had Ruth, Kate, Anya, Rachel, Susan, Sam, and Gideon with me. Arwen did not come because she did not want to change into matching clothes. I was sitting with my littlest kids, my mom, and Rachel. When the waitress came she offered a kids menu to Rachel. Rachel looked disgruntled and I explained that while Rachel is tiny and looks young, she will be 13 in about two weeks. At the end of the meal, the waitress brought Rachel a free ice cream sundae with birthday trimmings. We thought it ironic that Ruth's birthday was the next day, but Rachel got all the notice for her birthday instead.

Rachel was really cute in the restaurant. She was excited to be there and kept saying, "I don't know

what to order. I don't know what to do. I have not been to a restaurant in such a long time." And Rachel was very pleasant and grateful for everything.

Sam too was particularly cute in the restaurant. He just sat there calmly enjoying all the food we gave him. He didn't try to climb down or run around or anything, and when cousin Sadie fed him a jalepino, he just looked surprised and quietly drank some water.

Anya sat with Ruth and Kate. She ordered the kid's steak and sweet potato. She was very quiet about her order. The waitress told me that she thought Anya was sweet and so soft spoken. Anya ate all of her food and had no room left for cake, just like me.

When it was time for me to go so I could get to Sam's Club before closing, Kate and Ruth, who were enjoying themselves immensely, said they were not leaving without a togo box. They were enjoying a large piece of tuxedo cake. I said they could stay and get that while I walked the little ones to the car and buckled them in.

As I left, I felt a bit of shock as I realized that I was at a restaurant with a 4 yr old, 2 yr old, and 2 month old and had a quiet, nice, and enjoyable time. None of them ran around; no one cried or whined or complained; nothing was spilt and no food ended up on the floor. It did not feel like I was there with a bunch of little kids.

The next day was Ruth's birthday. It really ended up being more of a spend time with grandparents day as we did not go to the beach like Ruth wanted. But my mom brought this really cute fairy craft. Ruth, Kate, Rachel, Anya, Joshua, Arwen, and Susan all made them with my mom. They are adorable and the kids love them and have been playing with them. I think it was good time spent with their grandma.

Joseph and Adam and Sam went on a walk with my Dad around some of the woods and farmland 

Adam and Johnny and I introduced my dad to one of our favorite games, Dominion. My dad might learn to like it if he had people to play with him.

here. My dad said that Joseph ran back and forth the whole time.

My mom, loves to shop, and she onlined shopped with all of us. She got some needed items for us like shoes for Josh and Anya and baby clothes for the growing Gideon. My mom bought Arwen a plain creme colored skirt, so she will have a favorite skirt that will actually match with her clothes. That will fix Arwen's dilemma of having nothing to match her favorite skirt.

Saturday, we planned to go to the beach for Ruth, but it was cold and John asked us not to go. I promised that the first hot day, we will 

drop everything and get Ruth to the beach. We actually haven't been back as a family since the hurricane. We usually go for a Christmas trip, but didn't this year. I will have to keep my promise and drop everything for a beach trip real soon. Especially, since we did not get Ruth a present this year.

John and I took a walk around our property today. It's so beautiful and peaceful and quiet out here. We will really miss this land and fully expect to come back at some point in our lifetime.

John has been working a lot harder on his programming and gaming. He has also spent a lot of time teaching us the gospel. Sometimes John stays up half the night reading and pondering the scriptures. We learn a lot from him. I think John's dedication to the teachings in the scriptures has had a lot of power to convert our kids and keep them safe from the common temptations of our day.

We have nothing but home repairs, school, and garden work planned for this next week with a possible drop everything and get to the beach trip. Next week won't be so exciting.

And to end this week's news, John emailed these cute kid stories to me that we will want to remember and enjoy reading again in the future:

Samuel went to our room and opened the blinds and your parents were
driving off and watched them saying
Bye
Bye grama and gra
Bye
He said it like he fully expected they could hear him as their
taillights drove off between our trees.

Joshua brought two cups of orange juice (the little Christmas cups)
and asked me which one I wanted. One was full, the other was half
full. I said they were not even kind of equal. Without the least hint
of irony, Joshua lifted the full one and drank it down to being half
full, said "There" and again asked me which one I wanted.

More Pictures

Happy Birthday, Ruth!

This beautiful daughter of mine has reached the age of 21!!! I have always said that Ruth was a perfect daughter and I stand by that. She is gentle, kind, good and righteous. She is now and always has been a shepherd to her younger siblings. She has tried always to be a good friend and to love and serve all that she meets. She was an excellent missionary. She studied hard, kept the commandments and shared the gospel with everyone who would listen. We are all very happy to have her home. And I look forward to what changes this year will bring to her life.

Joseph's Poem

Satin the manly cat the manly cat is gone

Simon the friendly cay the friendly cat is here

Scrappy the creepy cat is sneaking on the lawn

Lisa the lazy cat the lazy cat is sleeping

Felicity the slinky cat the slinky is sneaking

Scrappy the creepy cat the creepy cat is creeping

Satin our manly cat our manly cat is gone

Simon the friendly cat the friendly cat is here

Scrappy the creepy the creepy cat has come

Simon the friendly cat is being a lazy bum

Lisa the lazy cat the lazy cat is running

Simon the friendly isn’t even cunning

Scrappy the creepy cat has caught Felice

Simon the friendly cat does not even hiss

O satin our manly our manly cat is gone

And Simon won’t even fight scrappy for his wife

Satin our manly cat is gone

Scrappy steals Felice while Simon sings a song

Simon our friendly cat our friendly cat is here

Why can’t satin our manly be here

Scrappy the creepy cat is creeping

So, Simon our runs in fear

This unfortunate life about our cats.

This Week at Our House #11

The last two ducklings died on Monday. The kids were  devastated. Our house was draped in sadness. I felt bad for my children. They spent their own money on these ducklings, and they rarely get money to spend. But by Thursday, we found our duck from last year sitting on a nest of eggs. She has since moved and hid them. We don't know where she is at this point, but if all is well with her and her eggs, we will have ducklings again by the end of the month.

Tuesday, John and I and Ruth went to an endowment at the temple and Kate came along to babysit Sam and Gideon. The drive was 5 hours each way for an hour and a half

at the temple. Johnny and Adam babysat the kids at home. We left home at about 11am and got home after midnight. It was a long day. I miss having a temple within a couple hours drive.

 

Wednesday we continued with school and all the things we normally do in a week. School went well this week. In fact, I really can't think of anything that went wrong or anyone that had a particularly rough time. I have been making Josh read a lot more because I need him to get more independent for the upcoming school year. I've instructed everyone older than Anya to have Josh read them one verse of scripture a day, but no one has done it yet.

Arwen is definitely becoming more

independent. I am sure I will be able to sit her down with independent work at the start of the school year and she will be able to do it. I need Josh and Arwen to take off on their own because Susan will be starting kindergarten and will need a lot of one on one attention. Since I began homeschooling, I quit pre-schooling because of time. I will give the preschool kids some letters to trace, but I have postponed flash cards and serious work until kindergarten. Susan has been a little slower to pick up talking and drawing, so I think she will need a lot of attention like Josh and Kate and Rachel did.

Ruth has joined Johnny, Adam, and Kate in transcribing the Joseph Smith papers and all other journals from the early Latter-day Saints that we can get copies of. There are thousands of pages. Ruth is also following Kate and reading the seven volume History of the Church. These documents and histories have converted our family much more firmly to the gospel. I have decided to make all of my kids read History of the Church for homeschool in high school. Adam will start next year. I am hoping by then, he will have learned to like reading.

Rachel will be turning 13 in two and a half weeks. When we mentioned it to John, he looked at

Rachel and said, "Only technically. She's still 8." Rachel responded that indeed she will be 13 because no matter how small she is, she has been on earth for 13 years and size cannot change that. Rachel is still very tiny. I am sure she will be very thin and petite when she matures just like Kate.

Anya is just a little taller than Rachel and she quite likes that. Everyone thinks Anya will develop first.

Joseph wrote a really cute poem Tuesday and has asked me to read it to everyone every couple of nights. I will have to put it on here. It's a cute kids poem about our cats and the neighbor's cat.

Sam was unhappy much of the week. He is such a two year old. He is either tearing things apart while singing happily at the top of his lungs, or he is lying on the floor crying or screaming.

Gideon is 2 months tomorrow. He is smiling and rolling over. He likes to be held all day and all night, which gets rough at times, but we are managing and enjoying him.

One beautiful sunset