This Week at Our House # 47 Last Week of School

We finished up our last week of school. Our first semester is over and we are half way through the school year. Everyone is happy to now be on vacation and I have a lengthy list of home repairs and yard work to keep us occupied through the holidays.

The whole week went smoothly and quickly enough. We still had a little sickness making it through the ranks, but everyone is better now and we were all able to get to church today.

Rachel and Adam still have one book from first semester to finish reading over vacation. They were warned, though, that the work had to be completed. I also plan to read some of the next history book to Rachel to get her a head start for the next semester, and instead of the writing course I was going to give to Adam and Rachel, I am having them join Joseph and Anya with their good and beautiful lesson.

Anya and Joseph have finished everything. Arwen and Josh are a little behind, but they have done their lessons everyday, and the only reason they are behind is because I spent more than one day on lessons that I felt like they needed more time on. Suzy is a little ahead of where I wanted her, so that is good.

I have one book ready and on the computer. I have a few more things that I want to do to make it look better and John has been editing the poem to make it flow more nicely. Kate was the illustrator. The book that Rachel illustrated and Adam and Rachel colored the pictures is ready to be uploaded too. I am hoping by the end of the week, I will have my first two children's books up for sale. One is a Christmas book. Ruth is still working on the illustrations for my other Christmas book, so we are planning on having that ready for next Christmas.

We tried to put in a new ceiling lamp in our laundry room. Once we did, we no longer had lights working in my bathroom, the kitchen, and the dining room, and the laundry room still. I took out the new light and Johnny figured out how the wires were routed before and got all the other lights working again. That is some pretty messed up house wiring. Johnny was awesome to figure a lot of it out, and he said he might be able to figure out how to get the new light working.

Adam loves to draw and has been getting frustrated when he is asked to do things that interrupt that. John wants Adam to be able to develop his talents, so he has given him the whole day off from chores to draw.

Ruth and Kate have been working on illustrating and church history as usual. They work quite hard and I am grateful to have them here with me as I start this children's books project. They are happy to be here doing this with me too.

It rained most of the week so the kids did not play outside as usual, and we were very behind on laundry. I don't even have a dryer in the laundry room anymore. All of our clothes get dried outside. It saves a lot on electricity and gives us more space, but it is hard on rainy weeks.

I bought candy bars to get Sam to start using the toilet instead of his potty chair. He loves his potty chair. He has been potty trained to it for several months now and I would like him to move his business to the

toilet. Yesterday I had a funny conversation with him. He asked for a candy bar. I told him he had to go to the toilet. He went in his potty chair and then asked for a candy bar. I told him that didn't count, he had to use the toilet. Sam thought for a moment and said, "I don't like that. Give me a candy bar."

Gideon LOVES to walk. He spent the last three days walking around the living room and kitchen, literally the whole day, with the biggest smile on his face. He is now 10 months old and cruising. He is also saying "yes" to us now. It is cute because every time he does, several kids say, "Wow! Gideon said yes to you!"

This Week at Our House #46

Wow oh wow, time is flying. We finished off week 15 of school and have one more to go before our first semester is over. The kids are excited about that, and I have a large list of yard work and house repairs that we will need to get finished during our 6 week break. I am so, so, so glad that I prepared so perfectly for this year.

Sam had his birthday and asked to be sung happy birthday to with candles the two days after his birthday. He got a light saber that lights up and rarely puts it down. Susan has been trying to get it from him, though not successfully, so we have had more contention coming from the younger section of the family this week.

Gideon walks and walks now and he has not yet hit 10 months. He is our youngest to start stepping and walking.

Gideon watched the kids put up a Plants v. Zombies computer game and growled through the whole of it. Everyone laughed and laughed and Gideon just continued to growl.

I have one book that is complete except for putting it up on Amazon, so that will be done this week, and hopefully people will be willing to buy it.

Everyone else was a bit sick and the weather was cold windy and rainy, so things were fairly low key. The wind was so bad Friday and Saturday that Joseph asked if we were getting a tropical storm. The winds were tropical storm force, but the rain was more of a normal amount. Joseph kept more animals inside on and off.

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