Vacation is almost over

Zach slept until 12:30 this morning. I was still up with Noah when he woke up. An hour later, Noah was asleep and I was ready for bed, but Zach was of course wide awake. He was in a good mood, though. I got him set up to play on the computer and then I went to bed. He came in a while later and told me he was done playing on the computer. I put a Dora video on for him and then again went to bed. He didn't wake me up again until 6:30. I guess he fell asleep on my chair at some point after I put the video in for him.

One thing I wanted to do today was grind some wheat and I did it! I haven't been super productive lately and I am getting behind on everything, but we now have wheat flour to make delicious bread. Zach, Eleanor, and Emily helped me. The process involves plugging in our wheat grinder and hooking it to the bucket that came with the grinder, turning the grinder on, scooping out a cupful of wheat, dumping it into the grinder, and repeating the scooping and dumping process 4 times. When the wheat is gone and grinder makes a higher pitched sound, we count to 10 before shutting off the grinder. Then we turn the grinder off, unhook the bucket, dump the flour into a 5 gallon bucket, hook the grinder bucket back to the grinder, and turn the grinder on again. Then we repeat the scooping and dumping process. This is the second time Zach has helped me grind wheat and I think he could do it himself if he wanted to.

I am thankful for the wheat that the Booths gave to us!

At 12:45 (our meeting time was 12:40, but somehow I missed the turn at Russell Hill Road and ended up going all the way into town and then heading to Orland), we met Tiffany at the Shell gas station to pick up Zoe and bring her home. I found out that Zoe and Morgan had fun playing together yesterday afternoon and evening until Morgan started throwing up around 8pm. Zoe spent the rest of the time there playing with the dog and Morgan's little brother, Nathan.

I'm glad we went for a ride this afternoon because Noah fell asleep in the car and then took a 3 hour nap. I was able to get the kids fed, eat some soup, do the dishes, put away laundry, work on my lesson, and I put the fairy hooks and paper holders back up on the wall that had fallen down. I got serious this time and used screws instead of nails. It felt great to get so much done! The kids took turns playing on the computer and Zoe, Emily, and Zach went outside for a bit before dinner. Eleanor and I worked on making a picture of a house out of 100 pennies for her 100th day of school on Monday. Eleanor counted out 100 pennies, but I need to recount the pennies on the picture because after talking on the phone with Capital One while gluing pennies to the paper, I heard Eleanor say 103. There are pennies left over, so I think there are 90 something pennies actually.


Zoe and Emily worked on their Math-a-thon books today. We have yet to attempt to collect any pledges, and they are due on Monday.

Emily is the one who gets the most strikes these days and ends up doing some cleaning in the kitchen before bed. She had a meltdown this evening when we told her she was washing the dishes. She hates washing the dishes, which is why we chose that job. I think we have been too easy on her in the past because she doesn't seem to mind getting strikes. Her American Girl doll and her Nintendo went into timeout before she started the dishes and her blanket was next, but she got up to do the dishes before Matt could get his hands on it. Emily was putting up such a fuss before and while washing the dishes that Eleanor exclaimed about Emily, "She is freaky!" Spoken just like a teenager.

Noah is crying...