Another Teen in the House

 

Daniel turned 13 this month. Now we have four teens again. 

Here he is playing with a gift from my parents, a Lego gear bots toy. He loves building things. 

One of the things that is nice for Daniel is that he has two older brothers. He is stranded in the midst of numerous sisters, and he likes and loves them, but the big boys, especially Isaac, are willing to chase Daniel around and tackle him and do boy things.  To be clear, Daniel LOVES this.

We have some new friends at church who have only one son and multiple daughters, and the mother has said to me that she appreciates that Daniel and her son will wrestle and chase and be rough and tough. Most boys thrive from some rough and tumble.

Hmmm, what else? I am toiling away on another book and it is coming along but sometimes it is boring to write.

However, the only way to make progress as an author, or at least for this author, is to work every day on it, or at least almost every day. I occasionally have something else going on, but almost every day I settle down after lunch and work for a few hours.

And I do enjoy writing.

It has been a cool week and today it is rainy. Kind of dreary, really. We will have warm temps eventually. So far, the pool is closed because it seriously hasn't been warm enough to open it.

This means lots of frogs are growing in our pool. Our kids keep going down and saving them and releasing them.

We may have an extra bonus bunch of frogs next year.

Octopus! And other things

 

The first full day I was in St. Croix, Kevin and I went snorkeling and Kevin found this octopus. I was out of shape and didn't swim for more than half an hour, but he spent a full hour and a half interacting with this octopus and taking lots of pictures.

He or she was an amazing creature. We have seen octopuses before, but always in holes or crevices. This dude or dudette was on a rock, camoflauged initially, though he flared white when Kevin got too close and curled up his tentacles to look bigger.

He had a mollusk and Kevin, once or twice or thrice, stole the mollusk and moved it, and Mr. or Miss Octopus swam down and retrieved it. Totally totally cool.

There are so many amazing creatures in the waters of St. Croix!

Ok, back to our life here in Ohio. It is cold this week! When I got up this morning, it was 48 degrees, which is chilly for late May!

We have also had a lot of rain and wind. Kevin put some tomato plants out and some of them were snapped off. Sad!

We have had a mild illness moving through the house for a couple of weeks now. It comes and goes. That is kind of annoying but no huge deal.

When I was in St. Croix, I had a strong desire to purchase a Major League Baseball subscription but it s $150 or so and I hesitated.

The very next day they had a half off sale and I jumped on it, so now I can watch the Detroit Tigers. They are doing very well this year so far. The main announcer is very good.

Busy busy busy week

 A few things.

 Our big girls have moved into a new apartment! It is very convenient to Naomi's job and pretty close to Lydia's job so that is good. It is also way closer to our house which makes me happy. It is about 15 minutes away instead of 30 minutes away.

We have a virus floating through the family. Some people are fine. Some people are a little sick. Some person (Isaac) has felt rotten for a few days, poor guy.

I finished editing our new book, which comes out at the end of the month. Yesterday I worked really really hard and my brain is fried. But I got it done! Which makes me very happy.

Daniel, our 12 year old son, is growing like a weed. He is in the middle of a growth spurt and is literally growing an inch every two or three months. He is currently a little over five foot five inches. His two big brothers are over six foot tall. No idea where Daniel will wind up. He has a different body type than his brothers, so maybe will top out at five foot eight or nine like his parents. We will see!

In the middle of all this busyness, we are mostly sorted after the vacation. The food situation has been a bit odd, with people coming and going and our big girls' stuff in our refrigerator. Lydia is gluten free so needs a different diet than us. It is all good, but we still don't feel totally normal.

Are we ever normal?

Anyway, busy week.

Mid May

 Yesterday, Mother's Day, Kevin and I got home from St. Croix at 1:30 a.m. in the morning.

This is our ... 9th trip to St. Croix? I think. It has been an annual tradition.

Kevin was there two weeks, the first with two of our daughters, the second with me. We had a great week together and the girls also had fun.

We stayed in a condo on the ocean and we spent a lot of time snorkeling. I succeeded in not getting sunburned even a little bit. Which is impressive!  Kevin took lots of lovely pictures of plants and animals under water.

So yes, we had a great time.

We got home to controlled chaos. The big girls have moved in for a week or two with all their stuff as they are between apartments. We hope and believe that will be sorted out shortly.

I got to see all nine of my kids on Mother's Day, which is all I really want for Mother's Day.

This week will be a lot of catching up on stuff, plus we have a book we need to do second edits on.

It was great to go to St. Croix, and great to be back.

End of April

 I haven't blogged in two weeks. Lame!

Ok, what has been happening? Answer, a lot.

Yesterday, Kevin and Miriam and Angela flew to the Caribbean for a week in the fun and the sun and the water.  So enjoyable!

Naomi and Lydia are struggling through a challenge with housing. They were supposed to move into a new apartment in early May, and recently received a message from the apartment complex that the apartment needs a fair amount of work and they can't move in until Mid May.

But their lease on the old apartment ends in about a week!

Sigh.

So they will move their stuff to our barn and garage, and stay here for a few days, and the move to new apartment. 

My allergies have been bothering me quite a bit. I feel tired a great deal and I think it is becuase of allergies? Maybe? Not a huge deal but it is nice to contemplate that Heaven won't have any allergies.

A few minutes ago, I finished the first draft of my latest book.

Now I am gonna take a nap!

Chilly April

 So far this month has been chilly. One morning this week it was 25 degrees when I got up. Brrr!

I am at 60,000 words on my latest book. I think that it is going to wind up in the next twenty thousand words or so. This one has been tough for some reason. I have a lot of plot threads to manage which is making it difficult to get everything sorted. But that is Ok.

I have said before that while I admire Stephen King as a writer, I don't like reading most of his stuff because I don't like horror. But I like his autobiographical book, On Writing. In it, he said he was like 150,000 words into The Stand and had to take a break for a couple of weeks because he had written himself into a corner. He finally decided to wipe out half the characters in some cataclysmic event :-).

I decided a couple of weeks ago to drop my Lexapro a bit. I keep gaining weight and am hopeful that dropping my Lexapro will help, as I gained a quick 20 lbs after going on Lexapro eight years ago. I can feel the effects even though I am only dropping it a bit. Anxiety is such a strange beast. A big part of it is feeling worried about stuff that a.) I have no control over and/or b.) are not my problem anyway. Intellectually I know I ought not to worry about things, but actually not worrying is a different animal.

I am not bad, just feel a little more inclined to fixate on random things.

I don't think I mentioned in this blog that we have started attending another church. For the last eight years we were going to a church about 25 minutes drive away.  That isn't crazy, but it was far enough that just popping there for something was kind of a big deal. I have a lot going on at home, with homeschooling the kids and writing and all.

So some months ago, we considered whether we ought to look for a place closer to our house. After some consideration, we tried a church which is less than ten minutes away and really like it. It is a tiny church but we have met another homeschooled family with kids close to the ages of our younger three children.

More than a week ago, Kevin and I actually led worship which was fun.

New Car

 

We bought a new car this week. That is unusual as we generally buy used cars, but this one was not a lot more expensive than used cars of this model, and new is nice. It cost a substantial amount of money, of  course, but we decided it made sense to buy a new car right now.

It is obviously yellow. Yellow is fun and eye catching.

It is a hybrid Prius. We bought an older Prius a few weeks ago which Angela will use to learn to drive on.

Many years ago, when hybrids became more common, Kevin and I agreed that hybrids were a bit dubious because you have two systems -- batteries and gasoline -- in the same car so it seemed likely there would be more problems with hybrids.

Priuses are not like that. They are very reliable. They have amazing gas mileage too, like 50 mpg.

We toyed with the idea of an all electric car but the nice thing about a gasoline engine is that you can just buy gas easily. Electric cars are nice for buzzing around nearby but it is challenging to find charging stations when on longer trips, plus charging takes a long time compared to pumping gas.

I am well aware of the absurdity of our family. We have 11 people total in the family, and we now have 8 cars total and seven legal drivers. BUT Angela will soon have her license and she needed a car which we wouldn't mind being bashed up a bit. Our new drivers usually run into something at least once, though they have never hit another car. They hit trees and stumps and mailboxes.

Kevin will be driving the new car. It is very fancy with lots of new tech. It has some wonderful safety features like it will nudge the car back into the middle of a lane. I am kind of a luddite in that I don't like new tech because I have to learn it.  :-)

So all that is exciting.

Also, the kids seem to finally be over their stomach bug so that is good.

Late March

 We are having a few cool days which is no surprise in late March. I am excited about April as we will soon have flowers blooming and trees covered with blossoms.

The next few days will be warmer and wetter. Very thankful for a dry house to live in along with heat.

My friend D. whom I visited at the beginning of this month passed away a few days ago. I am sad for her family and friends, including me, but so happy for her.

I have another friend who lost a son to a sudden medical problem. It was out of nowhere and heartbreaking, of course. With D., she had been sick for many years and battling more and more medical problems. She loved... well, she loves... Jesus, and was so ready to be in Heaven with Him.

So yes, I am sad for us and so happy for her that she is in a new body and walking Heaven's streets.

It was a gift that I was able to see her one last time before her death.

I am trudging along my latest book. I have three to four hours a day set aside for writing. I don't do it constantly; I often watch a TV show off and on while plugging away. I often need to take a break as new scenes develop in my mind. I am grateful for a bunch of gifts that allow me to write books. Not only am I good at plots, I am also good at forgetting previous plots. I have 28 novels now, all based on Pride and Prejudice characters, and I am good at forgetting scenes and ideas from previous novels so each one is moderately fresh and new, or at least as much as is possible given I am using the same characters!

Almost Spring

 Tomorrow is officially spring!

We have had some lovely days of late but today is not one of those days. It is in the lower 40s and dropping, and it is raining dismally. Good day to stay indoors!

Last week was a full lunar eclipse. I decided to go crazy and have it as a wonderful learning experience for any children who wished to stay up. It was a full eclipse at 2:30 a.m. or so? Late!

I stayed up the whole time and Angela did as well. Miriam and Joseph and Isaac, all of whom needed to work, did not.

The younger three kids stayed up for awhile but finally got super tired and went to bed, with requests that I would wake them up at totality.

So about 3 a.m. or so I went upstairs and woke up Daniel and told him to go look at the eclipse. He sat up and talked to me and then I went in and woke up Rose and Sarah, who both went to their window to look at the eclipse before going to bed.

The next morning Rose and Daniel were both sad because they missed the eclipse, claiming that I had not woken them up.

In both cases, apparently they were talking in their sleep. Daniel apparently just went back to sleep after we talked, and Rose while she did look out the window, has no memory of it.

So ... not a great success. We did talk about eclipses so that was cool, but D and R really wanted to SEE one, and did not, or at least, in Rose's case, has no memory of seeing it.

Next time I will try to march them downstairs in the hopes that that will wake them up sufficiently!

Hmmm, what else?

Kevin has been working on another audio book with one of our narrators, Harry Frost. It will be launching soon. Audio books are expensive to make because we have to pay the narrator, but eventually we will make money. 

Harry is in England and is excellent at portraying different characters with his voice. He sometimes does voices for video games along with Regency romance books.

Not a whole lot else going on. We are healthy. We have food. We are grateful.

New family picture

 In the header! Isn't it nice?

The kids are growing up!

Warm weather at last!

 

It is truly warm today, as in over 70 degrees! It feels like it has been a cold winter and early spring so hooray!

We have spent a fair amount of time outside and are thoroughly enjoying it.

Last night we had a chimineya fire. Think the spelling is wrong on that.

The last week has been moderately mellow. We have been healthy and a lot of friends have been sick so I am grateful for that.

Our older girls have found a new apartment which is much closer to us so that is awesome.

That is about it!

 

Trip to Michigan

 I am not a big traveler, and rarely am away from home overnight. Kevin and I go to St. Croix once a year and sometimes we visit my parents. Other than that, I am here. As time has gone by, I have been less inclined to go somewhere and I think it is because for so many years, we have had our beloved Horde to deal with and packing for the Horde, or making sure the Horde is fine while we leave, is a lot of work.

So anyway, yesterday and today I made a quick trip to Michigan alone to visit a friend. She and I were in college together and I truly adore her and very sadly, she is in hospice care with cancer. 

I visited her at her parents' house and we were able to reminisce and say good-bye. She is a Christian and very ready to see Jesus. It was wonderful seeing her, but very sad too of course.

Last night I stopped in Ann Arbor and spent the evening and night with old friends, and this morning I attended the church that I attended when I was at the University of Michigan. The pastor of that church presided over our wedding. I attended the very first Sunday service of this church and I think there were ten people there that day. This was more than 30 years ago.

We haven't been back in more than a decade and today was amazing. The church is huge. Like four hundred people maybe? It was awesome.

Then I drove home. I am tired and sad about my dear friend, but grateful I was able to see her and that I made it there and back safely. I am not used to driving so much but everything went fine.

End of February

 We have one week until the end of February and March will bring the very early snippets of spring. We hope. 

This week has been super cold and we have a lovely blanket of snow over everything.

I think we got four inches or so last Sunday? And it has been really cold this whole week so the snow has stayed. It will warm up the next few days and everything will get muddy and wet.

Kevin likes to make snow ice cream for the children. Get clean snow, add condensed milk and vanilla, mix up, and voila!

It was so cold that olive oil which was shipped was this weird solidified goo when I brought it indoors. It melted nicely but wow. I have never seen that before.

I finished a 1000 piece puzzle this week. I used to whine about 1000 piece puzzles and now I love them, at least so long as the picture has a lot of variety. If it is all just shades of blue I would hate it :-).

This was a lot of fun!

I bought flowers at Trader Joe's. And chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

So the big news of the week is that I have finished the first draft of my latest book. It is over 100,000 words so a long one.  Now I have to edit the whole thing (that is the sound of my teeth grinding.)

It is fine. I don't like editing but still, it has to be done.  Usually once I get in the groove I am fine, but just the thought of facing 300 plus pages of the printed out document is intimidating.

But I will be strong, and I will do it!

Rocks

 Kevin and I went to a "rock show" yesterday; basically a giant room filled with a multitude of neat rocks of various kinds.

We are both materials engineers and love rocks. So it was so much fun. We actually spent quite a bit of money; more on that later.

When we got home, we cleared a few shelves from our IKEA cabinet to set up the new rocks plus some others we have obtained through the years.

And voila.

The last pic is of a big piece of petrified wood. SO GORGEOUS.

Kevin decided to go back to the show today with three of the girls (the kids who wanted to go) and they are there now. Probably will come back with a few more treasures.

Now I am a saver by nature. Like, I was born a saver. Add that to having nine children to care for, and I tend not to want to spend money on non-necessities. I do, of course, spend money, lots of money, on food and shelter and electricity and clothing...

But we are used to being careful financially and it is frankly hard sometimes to spend frivolously.

Not that rocks are exactly frivolous!

Wait, they are frivolous. They serve no practical purpose. We just like them. A lot.

They are also educational :-).

Anyway, I am really happy about our new rocks and reminding myself that money is a tool, and that just storing up money for no particular reason is silly.

In the early days of our parenting, when we were living on a smaller income with a bunch of little kids, we had to be very careful.

Now it is fun to buy rocks! And it is financially just fine.

Book Launch Day

 We just published a short book, only 32,000 words, which is short for me.

We will see how it does. It is kind of light and frothy, with more silliness than usual.

In other news, we had an ice storm yesterday evening and night. Fortunately, everything warmed up through the night and the rain melted any ice on the roads. Everyone got to work fine this morning.

I am almost 67,000 words into another book and I can feel the fire in me starting to burn high. At some point, I get sick of a book and just want to finish it. I think I am getting close to that for this book.

We have started attending a different church; the one we were attending for the last eight years is a very good church, but it is almost half an hour away from us. The older we get, the less we like leaving home. Also, it is hard to make friends when we are quite a distance from the church. So we found a church only ten minutes away (actually, 9 minutes) and while it is tiny, we already have made some friends. There is another homeschooling family with four children and we have a lot in common, including that in both marriages, the wife is a year older than the husband. That is random and not important :-).

Speaking of homeschooling families, we have friends who used to live on our street, and they are military, and they were sent to Germany, and now they are back in the area and living about 20 minutes away from us. They purchased a very old house, like the second oldest in our county. I honestly love the house, which is a rabbit warren of additions and old fireplaces and stuff. It is not the most practical house in terms of layout, but it is charming. The wife and mom is expecting her tenth child (they are quite a bit younger than we are) and while I sort of envy them the new baby, because I LOVE babies, I am aware that life is easier for us now since everyone can feed him or herself, and everyone can put his or her shoes on...

Given our age it is a good thing we don't have a baby. We are pretty tired. I am grateful for having kids who can move trash around and carry softener salt up and down the stairs...

It feels like we are busy but we aren't crazy busy. I mean, I am writing a lot, and the kids have a lot going on, but nothing extravagantly exciting is happening, which is probably a good thing becuase often 'exciting' is a negative thing.

Late January

 

We had a snow flurry yesterday which was actually quite impressive.

Also we are in the middle of a really cold snap. Tonight it is supposed to drop below zero!!

One of my longstanding disagreements with Kevin regards blankets. He, and every other person in the house, thinks you can never have enough blankets. I disagree. Rose decided to make a mountain of blankets which I think proves my point, but ... yeah, everyone else still thinks more blankets are better!

Kevin bought me this puzzle for Christmas and I finished it a few days ago. So fun!

Yesterday was both MLK Day and Inaugaration day. The working kids had the day off, and all seven kids at home crowded around the computer to watch the inaugaration live. Love him or hate him, Trump's second term is historic.

We have spent quite a bit of time sitting around the table or in the family room talking politics. I am generally not a hugely political person, though I have strong views about a bunch of stuff, but the way government works IS interesting.  For the younger kids, there is a lot of bewilderment and it is fun explaining the way the legislature and judicial and executive branches function.

I am fairly knowledgeable about the government in the Regency England thanks to my writing career, and power was definitely in the hands of a few men in that day and age. One of the major problems with monarchy is you don't know if the heir will be a decent person to rule. I think the Prince Regent, eventually George IV, was a pretty lame ruler for a bunch of reasons. Maybe the biggest was his insistence on spending Crown money like water.  Oh, his marriages were a mess too. 

I feel embarrassed to admit this, but I was a little shaky on out parliementary governments (like England and Canada and Australia and a few others) work. I read up on it today.

Kevin and I have had a wearying couple of months, with lots of illness and lots of work with the children. We are grateful for all our blessings and especially the kids, but there are times when a whole lot is going on in their lives and this is one of those times. That, and back to back to back illnesses, is rather draining.

It does help me to think about how fortunate we are, with a warm home and healthy children and food in the refrigerator. Also, I do a lot of praying that God will guide us, and that He will watch over the children and help the older ones as they make adult decisions. He is faithful.

Mid January

 I am finally feeling pretty good today, which is a relief. I have been extra tired and my breathing has been a bit weird. I have been very careful not to push my lungs.

But yes, I feel more energetic today.

Last Sunday, we got a bunch of snow. Here in southern Ohio, we often get very little snow throughout the winter, so this was pretty exciting.

Kevin plowed out the driveway and made a huge pile of snow for the kids to play in.

Rose on our back deck. You can see how much snow we have!

Random picture of Sarah and Miriam. Obviously a big height difference! Sarah may still be growing a tiny bit but I think she has topped out at about 5 ft 10 inches tall.

Kevin has been making snow ice cream for the children. It is snow plus condensed milk. It has been a great hit. And yes, he does go out in shorts.

I thought this was funny. These two sticky notes were on our counter and they describe the difference between Fe2O3 (rust) and Cr2O3, which is the protective surface layer for stainless steel. Cr forms a protective layer but Fe oxide flakes off. I thought Kevin was explaining it to Isaac, but no, it was to Daniel and Sarah. This is what happens when you have Ph.D. materials scientists for parents.

I love oxidation and protective layers and all that. I love it.

That's about all. Oh, wait!

We got 4 or 5 more inches of snow last night! Very exciting!