This Week at Our House # 41 Another Birthday

John had his birthday on Monday. He is 48 now and for the first time feeling annoyed with the ticking clock. He carefully spent some time with each member of the family on his birthday. All of the kids love and adore him, more than me really. It surprises me that people would accuse him of abusing his own family because that is very far from the truth. We all love and adore him.

I taught school, and did a lot of writing, and a lot of chores and laundry and dishes. It was an ordinary week. The weather finally cooled and that has been a big relief.

Kate is working on some illustrations for two children's books for me. Rachel and Adam are working on illustrations for another children's book for me. Rachel drew all of the pictures and Adam is helping her learn the program to color them. They spent half their week of school and will probably spend the whole next week of school getting that finished.

I have another story that Anya started the illustrations for. Ruth has started illustrations for a Christmas Story in Rhyme book that I have started writing but have not quite finished.

To keep Adam and Rachel up with their other reading and work, Anya has been reading history and science to them while they work on illustrating. It was a good week of school. Adam and Rachel enjoyed the art and illustration, and I loved how Anya and Joseph helped to keep them up on their other work.

Kate finally took some time on her book that she has both illustrated and wrote. I suspect we will put it up when we get my first one up.

I have enough poems now I can put them in a book. I will need some simple illustrations. I am thinking I will stick to plants and do them myself. I am not as good as an artist as my kids.

I grabbedTom Sawyer off the shelf for Joseph to read and he is loving it and probably getting some ideas from it too.

Josh wrote a little rhyming poem and said that it's like rhyming with sentences.

Arwen's hair is very very long now and she is patient about getting it brushed. It's looking very pretty and she is finally not complaining that her hair is neither blond nor curly. She did have curly baby hair, though.

Suzy is doing well with kindergarten. I am still taking it slow and stopping when she gets tired out. On Wednesday and Thursday I read Ramona books to her. She is enjoying that and talks about the story, so I know she is paying attention.

Samuel walks around with 3 to 4 pacifiers hooked to his shirt. I was watching him play a bit during the Sacrament meeting at church today and thought it may be getting time to take those off, at least when we go to church. I wonder if he will do it.

We did not stay the second hour in church because when we got there and took Gideon out of his carseat we noticed that he had a leaky poopy diaper. I changed him, but had no clothes to put him in, so we went home early. Gideon then had 3 more leaky poopy diapers through the day.

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This Week at Our House #40

I am soooo tired. This is going to be short.
We schooled. We've now finished 9 weeks of the first semester. We are closer to vacation than not.
We spent a lot of time drawing and writing.
Anya and Joseph. Joshua and Arwen have been making the cutest minihouses. They call them ''little people houses".
About the story of the good Samaritan, Susan said: "So everybody helped the man that died, the man that was killed by the bad guys."
I have two poems ready to be illustrated and published as children's books. Rachel has pencil

drawings ready and is going to spend school this week outlining them and coloring them using a computer program.
In the summer, John wrote a computer program that makes pencil lines darker and white backgrounds whiter. It is exactly what we need to get good pictures from hand drawings.
Gideon can stand himself up without holding onto anything. He can stand without holding on for quite a while, and he is attempting to take steps.
I have been reading more to the youngest kids during school and I like that a lot more.
Sam has a few words that he has made up on his own. One is "cocoa pack" in place of chocolate milk. I have said to him, "Say chocolate", and he says chocolate; "say milk" and he says milk; "say chocolate milk" and he says cocoa pack.
Friday, I ran the errands. Kate and the youngest 4 kids came. The other kids cleaned up.
Saturday and Sunday, we watched General Conference!

little people houses

The Dark Night's Coming Fast

As I have said, I have been writing  a lot of poetry recently. I am trying to get a poetry book out as well as several children's books. I wrote this poem this week based on somethings from the Book of Revelations. While it is darker than I am usually inclined to write, it is my favorite so far.

The Dark Night's Coming Fast

The sun has set upon our age
the dark night's coming fast
masses of all peoples rage
enlightened days have past

The cold night creeps into our minds
beckoning us to follow
caring not that sanity unwinds
leaving souls worn and hollow

A beast then rises from the sea*
covered in leopard's fur
calling, calling, a seductive plea
clasping a golden lure

The beast he comes and takes his seat
he's crowned just like a lion
he stamps out virtue with bears feet
a hunter like Orion

dancing, dancing around the beast
worshipping dark angels' nights
gorging a lustful, bloody feast
stamping out god-given rights

Yes, the sun has set upon our age
now, life plays out on a deathly stage
The world will wonder after the beast
and blood will be our only feast**



*Revelations 13:1-3
**Revelations 16:4

This Week at Our House # 39

Another week has gone by, and we are full into the final season of the year. The grass is not growing so fast anymore. I think we will need one more mowing before the winter.

Monday through Thursday sped by. We finished the 8th week of school. We have 8 more to go before our long holiday break. I focused on teaching lessons, cooking meals, and doing the laundry. Friday, I ran the errands. Saturday, I got the van inspected to renew the tags, and had to pay out an extra $400 to get somethings fixed with the front tires to get the van to pass. Ugh, I hate money surprises. Tomorrow, I will pay the tax and get the new tags. I hate this yearly chore of terror.

John had one job interview and has one more. He has been working on getting some of his own products to market. We have been trying to figure out how to do that well. We may go for it through amazon, but if it does not go, it will cost us. So we are being careful about our choices.

Ruth and Kate split up more this week. I saw Ruth without Kate and Kate without Ruth. That is unusual. They pretty much do everything together.

Johnny works on his own stuff and I don't see him much, but he always brings me a glass of water before he heads to bed.

Adam has been doing so well with everything this school year. He gets his work done and does it well. He plays with the younger kids. He takes care of the babies. He repairs things and has been doing some woodworking and computer programming and historical research on his own time.

Rachel was happier this week

because her schooling included a lot more hands on art projects. She has always been more hands on than scholarly. Homeschool is great because when something isn't working, you can stop and switch things around and find something that does work.

Anya is just an easy going, sweet girl. She had a bit of a struggle with math this week and cried over that, but I never have to tell her twice to finish her school work or do her chores. She just does them. Anya has also made a huge stride forward with learning Japanese. She studies the flashcards for at least an hour everyday.

Joseph has been studying language very hard too. He knows Spanish quite well. At this point, I think he knows it best of everyone in the family.

Joshua and Arwen do their school together, That has been nice for them. They compete with eachother a bit. This year, they have long lists of words that they have to pass off. Arwen is better at reading and Josh is better at math. They kind of accept that as fact. So, Josh gets really excited when he does better than Arwen on reading.

Susan loves her school work for the most part. She goes strong for about two hours and then she asks

to be done. I don't think kindergarten needs more time than that, so that is all she does right now. I am reading Ramona to her and she likes that. She likes that the character Susan has curly hair like she does.

Sam loves electrical cords. It's a bit of a problem because important cords for handheld devices and laptops are often missing. This week, he excitedly brought a picture to me from a coloring book. It had a picture with an electrical cord. He pointed to it and lovingly said, "Look mom, it's a cord." Then he colored only the cord.

Gideon is sleeping through the nights most nights now, but when he can't sleep, the whole family knows it. Not being able to get to sleep distresses him more than anything else.

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Happy Birthday, Johnny

It's hard to believe that 18 years have gone by. Johnny says that he still feels 16. He still looks 16 too. Johnny is as good as a young man gets. I rely on him spiritually more than he relies on me at this point. He will grow to be an excellent man. He has the foundation that he needs. Though, I know that he was simply born with that foundation.