Owl Pellets

Small rant...
When Todd and I were making the big decision of naming our children, we knew we did not want a name so common that there were two or three of them in the same classroom.  None of the names we chose were anywhere close to the top ten baby names.  None of the names were particularly common; two were classic English names, one an old biblical name.  And yet here we are.  Josiah has another Josiah in his Awana class.  Henry has another Henry at church.  And Caroline, her name is everywhere.  Todd and I have an adult Caroline in our Sunday school class, our Sunday school teachers have a daughter Caroline and another couple in our class have a Caroline.  Who knew that Caroline of the 2010s would be the Jennifer of the 1980s.
Rant over...

This week's theme at home has been, "Be Encouraging or Be Quiet."  I thought I was clever with this one.  :)  Just a shortened version of, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."  That was just too long to say 50 times a day.  I needed it for myself, too, because some days after lots of not listening, it was very difficult to be encouraging and even harder to be quiet!  Josiah has been "encouraging" in his prayers at night.  He spent a lot of time asking God to help each of us work on character traits (I need to work on yelling, Henry needs to work on being nice, Caroline needs to work on sharing, Todd needs to not spend as much time at work and play with them more, etc.)  Apparently, Josiah's good, because he never asks God for help for himself.

When Josiah and Henry have their computer time each day, they usually request lego.com.  They used to spend their entire 30 minutes playing games.  Recently, they spend the first half of their time watching videos of Lego Creators - guys who have created Lego sets and how they came up with the idea, how they made it, and how to play with it.  This came out in Josiah's CC presentation this week.  He had made a very cool missile launcher that could move and shoot two missiles any sort of direction.  While giving the presentation he encouraged his classmates to "keep on building" and that one day they may even be building from a set that he created.  So, since we ruled out all medical careers with the crayfish last week, maybe we can add all sorts of architecture, building, engineer-type career paths this week.  Or he could become one of the lanky, bearded, knit cap, jeans, and hoodie wearing Lego creators that he likes to watch.

Josiah giving his presentation at CC

The boys did impress me at CC this week when we dissected owl pellets.  Owl pellets are basically giant hair balls that owls throw-up.  They are full of matted fur, feathers, and the bones of moles, shrews, rodents, and birds.  Josiah had the smallest owl pellet in the room and it was 2 inches long by 1 inch wide.  Henry had the largest in the room.  I didn't get the measurement, but it was huge and chock full of bones/skulls.  The boys really got into it and were fascinated by their finds.  Henry even brought his bones home with him (so that's one less tupperware container we have for food...).

Our A/C broke this week.  You may think that an odd thing that we still need our A/C in November, but we do.  I had thought about opening all of our windows to cool the house since it was 84 degrees inside.  Then I checked the temperature outside.  83 degrees.  That's November in Texas.  It started off with lots of loud noises and the entire second story of our house would vibrate when the A/C turned on.  Then there were loud whooshing noises of air.  Then I noticed a funny smell in the bedroom closest to the air filter site.  So, we filed a claim since we have a home warranty for the year.  Apparently "loud noises and odors" did not indicate the system was malfunctioning.  So, the next day the A/C just stopped working.  Broken A/C's are covered.  Lovely.  I'm pretty sure that vibrating an entire story of the house pretty much meant the system was malfunctioning.  The repair man came and, of course, he had to order a part to fix it, and since it was Friday at 4:30 pm, that part wasn't getting in before the weekend.
By Friday evening it was 87 degrees in the house and Josiah said he was dying.  The boys went to bed under a ceiling fan with just pajama shorts on that night.  Josiah must have been praying hard, because on Saturday we had a cold front come through and the temperatures dropped to the 60s.  Saturday night they went to bed with long pants and their blankets.

The boys have been eating soup all week.  We found Star Wars soup at the grocery store and they've been all in.  Of course, Josiah wanted the Stormtrooper soup.  Henry wanted Yoda.  The contents were exactly the same, so to avoid yet another fight I took the labels off both, gave them the labels to look at, moved the soup cans around for a bit and cooked a can.  It killed them to not know whose can it was.  I lied when I said I didn't know which can it was, but it was kind of fun to mess with them.  (They ate Yoda's first.)

Poor Caroline has spent the entire weekend sick, coughing up some owl pellets of her own.  She has a horrible cough and congestion, and has not exactly been the best at coughing into her elbow.  So, now Henry has a rough sounding cough and this evening Josiah mentioned he wasn't feeling too great either.  It would have been a perfect time to get sick, really, since we have an off week from CC.  However, this was also the week we made plans with two different families from our CC group, so I'm really hoping that we don't have to cancel.  One plan is a trip to the zoo that got cancelled twice last spring due to sickness (Caroline again!).  So, lots of prayers for getting healthy by week's end this week.

The two sickies home from church.