I seemed to have missed Friday again,

October 14, 2017

but we'll do bullets anyway.

Today is H.'s 15th birthday. How can that be? 15 seems so darn old. We are celebrating tonight, so I'll do her birthday post on Monday, so I can include pictures.
I did the math, and realized that in eight years, we will have 8 teenagers in the family. That seems like a lot, doesn't it?
J. bought himself a chainsaw (a piece of equipment he has been hankering after for a long time, by the way), and has been cutting down some of the many overgrown and volunteer bushes that we have growing. It is pouring today, so I can't show a picture of the progress, but we think it looks a lot nicer.
A. now has a working car. It involved a couple trips to various places to look at various cars, but we are now done trying to figure out how to get everyone where they need to be with not enough vehicles. She is now trying to sell the old car, which is barely drive able due to the wheels potentially coming off. I am amazed at the number of people who have contacted her about it, even through she was honest in her description. I think it's because she had named her car Wally, and she mentioned that in the add.
L. has spent the entire week writing novels. The first one, which is six chapters long, was an imaginary story about Q., the quail. In it, Q. thwarts some robbers and the police reward him with a worm. But, I was also warned before I read it that it had a sad ending, "because it is an animal story, and they have to have a sad ending." She is now working on one about a penguin who is a detective. She is hoping to have B. illustrate it for her. Note that this is the first time B. is hearing about this. So, B., start working on your penguins. I believe there is also a talking panda involved.
I have a little Putumayo addiction. They are the record label that compiles world music in different collections. J. and I have a CD we love, and that everyone refers to as 'the cooking music' since we tend to listen to it while we are fixing dinner. And now with our around the world trip, I have an excuse to buy more. My plan is to play music from each country while we do a craft. I suppose I could have checked them out from the library, but my experience is that library CD's are usually scratched. My disk with music from Mexico arrived yesterday, and I'm liking it.
The weather must be finally changing, because I made several big batches of instant oatmeal for breakfast the other day.
A.'s eye is getting better. She went back to the eye doctor yesterday for another follow-up. He was pleased with how it is looking, though he did add that it was a very large ulcer, so it will take a while to go away. I'm kind of glad to not have known that the ulcer was 'very big' when it was first discovered.
I have been having R. watch some Leap Frog Letter Factory every day for school. I didn't do it last year because even that seemed too much for her brain to take in and sort properly. She seems ready for it this year. And she is loving it. Because of her working memory issues, it will probably take about a million more viewings for it to really stick, but she can now tell us what sound some of the letters make if she hears a letter name. She also used the phonics firefly appropriately for the first time last night. She didn't get any of the letter correct, but she was at least sort of understanding that there was a process to it. This time last year, she would just randomly push buttons and ignore the spoken prompts. It's progress.
I love having a smaller house. To really clean it is a matter of a couple of hours at most. A couple of hours working in the Big Ugly House would have been just a small part.
It has rained and thundered all night and now all day. Poor Kenzie is back to hiding in closets and bathrooms. He really enjoyed our month without rain. (And we've tried everything people have suggested, and nothing really helps. He just doesn't like thunder.) Olive doesn't seem to even notice.