This Week at Our House #10

Well this week was eventful. I aplied for jobs and got 4 interviews. I declined one interview, one job, and took a waitressing job at Cracker Barrel. I have an orientation Tuesday at 9am, so we will see how it goes once it gets going. The general manager told me that they are very busy. It sounds like I will be able to bring in $100 to $250 a shift if I turn tables quickly enough. We will see.

We finished our 8th week of semester 2, so there are only 8 weeks left of school. I will need to write up our curriculum for next year like I did this year. It's been nice to have it so organized, and to know what we need to do week to week.

Ruth continues to plug away on her illustrations. I can't wait to help her get that book for sale. Ruth has now been home for one year.

Kate reads to Ruth a lot and works on her own stuff. She also does a lot of the cooking. Kate and I are thinking that at some future point, we'd like to open up a bakery and pizza shop from home with home delivery.

Johnny is still working on our stuff and every week he does more home repairs for us.

Adam's doing great with school. He pretty much gets everything right all of the time now. He'll need to take physics or chemistry next year, so I will have to figure that out for him.

Rachel's growing into such a pretty girl. She is long and slender with a pretty face. She's still short and tiny, as I think she'll always be. She'll be 14 in a month.

Anya has been drawing and writing a manga, a japanese comic book. Her art is excellent.

Joseph still cries when he checks on the chickens and one is missing. Ruth was trying to get him to say why he cares about those chickens as much as he does. He doesn't know.

Joshua did school well all week without complaint. He's coming along. His reading is still behind and his math ahead, but he is continually improving. Josh has been spending a lot of time building legos the past few weeks. He comes up with very creative things.

Arwen told me that she can't see where I baby could come out of a mom, except for the mouth. Arwen now wants to read on her own, and she is ready. She can read a chapter of the Book of Mormon in an average amount of time now.

Susan is afraid of our rooster, so she does not play outside and gather the eggs like she used too. I think that is sad. Susan now says she is a pegasus unicorn who can fly.

I forgot to write that a few weeks ago, I moved the potty chair to the garage and Samuel uses the toilet without complaint. So he potty trained last May, but didn't give up the potty chair until I hid it away.

We call Gideon, Getting Giddy or Giddy Getting because he's so good at getting into things. We have to keep the bathroom door closed because he likes the tooth brushes and the toilet. The kids day that he is terrble two at one for how good he is at getting things. Right now he is sitting on Kate's lap and singing with her. He's darling. I am worried about how he will deal with me working.

This Week at Our House #9

We finished week 22 of the school year and 6 of the semester. In 10 more weeks, school will be done. Of course a lot can change in 10 more weeks.

Our pear trees that line the driveway came into a full beautiful snowball bloom this week. I took pictures of the kids near the blossoms. Some of them are great and some are awful. I think I will try portraits again in April.

1. Ruth's still coloring the pictures for her very first children's book. They're very beautiful. She's been working very hard. A few days she worked until 1am.

2. Kate's been reading to Ruth while she works as well as continuing on her own thing. Kate has one more thing that she's working on for her aunt.

3. Johnny keeps talking about when he can go on a mission. He wants that so much, but with our situation with church here, I wonder if it will ever happen. I hope it does for him. He's such a good boy. We're still planning to move out of here when we can for that very reason. In the meantime, Johnny's learning computer programming and animation. He's animating his own game. If I ask him about what he has, he says, "It's hard. You try it."

4. Adam's doing very well with school in all of his subjects. He's also working very hard at some of his own stuff. He draws all the time and his drawing has gotten very good.

5. Rachel did well this week. She finished her school work without as much trouble as she usually likes to give me. I wonder if she is learning any of it, other than math. Math is more measurable. But her math is good. She is in algebra one and understands what she is doing very well. She has the highest math grade out of all of the kids.

6. Anya has been writing and illustrating a little manga book (japanese story board book). Her pictures are as good as Kate could do in 9th and 10th grade. Anya is in 6th grade. I am going to get Anya illustrating for me this week. I will be able to put things out faster with more illustrators.

7. Joseph mostly wants to play computer games. When he is not doing that or school, he hangs out with Anya or plays outside. It was a nice week outdoors and Joseph went outside a lot.

8. Joshua only wants to play computer games too. I let him play Friday morning before we got to work, while I was writing. After we finished all of our work, he asked constantly for more computer time. On the other hand, as much as I say no, he builds with legos or plays outside and that is good.

9. Arwen's a good reader. She pays attention to what she is reading and asks questions when she does not understand it. Math is Arwen's bane. She can do it, but she does not like it, and some days she finishes late. Arwen's been playing legos with Josh. She too has that computer game bug.

10. When I took pictures, Susan was the easiest. Her pictures came out really pretty, and she talked and talked about how she had the best picture of everyone and Arwen did not.

11. Sam likes to sit and learn the alphabet with Susan. I've basically held Susan back a year because she was not ready to read, but Sam, on the other hand has shown so much interest, I am going to put him in preschool next year, and kindergarten a year early.

12. Gideon has been climbing everything and getting as high as he dares to. He's also getting into everything. I like to call him "Getting Giddy". He's dumped out 3 boxes of cereal. I think it's good that we have chickens to eat it all up, or I would feel stressed about wasting food.

This Week at Our House #8 The Yearly Snow

We woke up to snow this Friday am. The air is cold and the wind is blowing. The kids built several snowmen and are now relaxing him some homemade hot chocolate.