A Whole Hand

Henry turned 5!  He was so happy to turn 5. and to get cards and packages in the mail.  Josiah made him a very sweet card.


The grandparents came through again with the Lego kits.

He loved the toy from his cousins - a car racing track in which you get to launch the cars.  He and Josiah race all the time.

We got him a new bike, but it rained at the beginning of the week, so he couldn't test it out right away.  When we finally got outside, he had a little trouble learning how to brake.  Apparently, with his tiny bike before it, the pedals went backwards and did not brake.  So, with the new one he was constantly hitting his brakes, but after a few days he's gotten it and is riding on his own.  

For dinner he requested shrimp and cornbread.  This had been on the menu for weeks and we were always trying to get one more food in there.  He finally agreed to baby carrots.  We all dressed up in our Star Wars masks for the main event.  I identified them to the best of my ability: Henry, pilot; Todd - Chewbacca; Caroline - dirty stormtrooper; Josiah - clean stormtrooper.  I was also given, "Clean Stormtrooper" until Josiah's mask broke and I sacrificed mine so that he could continue to fight the force.

There is no shortage of facial expressions when it comes to Henry.

I hope he had a good birthday.  It was an early night because they had woken up before 6 to celebrate which made for a wee bit of crankiness in the afternoon.

Henry has said that he really likes the P.E. class now.  They played soccer this week.  When they were inside on Wednesday, the boys talked nearly the entire time.  It is mind boggling to me to talk that much.  I cannot imagine the need to say every thought that comes to my head.  So, I did speak to them about not talking so much and listening more to the instructor.  They were talking far more than any other child in there.  I did not get to see if they spoke less for their Friday class because we met at a park and Caroline spent her time running around, checking out the water/rocks, walking to the car to get her sunglasses that she kept on for a good two minutes, walking back to the boys, throwing pebbles in the water, walking to the public restrooms.


One thing we have learned about homeschooling is that it is messy.  The house gets messy every day and it is nearly impossible to keep clean.  I look forward to a few weeks off in the summer to try and get things organized again.  But for now we continue on.

Josiah de-leafed a stalk for his signage re: snakes.

We made Roman mosaics with beans, popcorn, and noodles.  I showed the kids examples of the mosaics, how they were on the floors and thus would be flat.  Josiah insisted on making his mosaic 3D and then when he kept getting glue everywhere he informed me that "artists are messy."  I countered with the quite precise and orderly Ancient Roman civilization of which we were studying.  I am glad that we'll cycle through the "Ancients" again with our history because I figured out a better way to do the mosaics in the future.  Henry got it, though.  He made "waves."  He didn't have the stamina to make a full mosaic, though.


Josiah was given a chart from his Trail Life troop in which he was supposed to write down all honorable acts that he either witnessed others do or that he himself did.  It has really helped him to serve others more this week.  One day, completely on his own, he started doing all his brother and sister's chores for the week.  He said he was going to earn their money and I said that no, he would not earn their money, but it was still very nice of him.  He was happy that I wrote it on his Honor Chart.  Then that same evening, since he did want to earn money, he asked to clean my toilet.  Uh, yeah you can.  He asked if he could clean it every week for $1.  It took me 3/10 of a second to answer that in the affirmative.  Hopefully he'll want to start dusting, too, because I have always disliked dusting.

Caroline has watched the boys eat cereal with milk for a couple of years now.  She has never had it before because it isn't something we think of with her since she can't have gluten or dairy.  But this past week she asked for cereal with (soy) milk and she was one happy kid to be like her big brothers.  Todd also found a flourless peanut butter cookie recipe that is a huge hit with her (and even more with her father).

Caroline also likes to "hide" from Todd every time he comes home from work.  This is how she hides and I took the picture from Todd's perspective when he walks in the door.  Every night.

Several weeks ago a friend from CC gave us two free tickets to the Houston Zoo.  Then the mail had a flyer in it with a coupon for buy one get one free zoo tickets.  It was about to expire and since we had never been, we figured we better go when we could get the best deal (even though it's not really Todd nor my favorite thing...).  So, Todd told the kids that they were going to "surprise" me with a birthday treat of going to the zoo.  So, for my birthday at the end of the week, we went to the zoo.  It was a really nice zoo, but even with all of our coupons we still had sticker shock over the prices.  It's tough to grow up in the D.C. area with all the free museums and the free zoo and then see what it's like everywhere else.  Two tickets, $30.  I looked at the lady and said, "With the coupon?"  She laughed.

Afterwards I asked the kids what their favorite animal was that they saw that day (which is funny, because I always hated the "favorite" question when I was a kid).  Josiah said he liked the baby bats, the giraffes, and the lemurs.  Henry liked the lemurs and a surprise animal of which he has yet to reveal.  Caroline liked the peacocks and baby elephants.  We saw no peacocks.  But the baby elephants were the cutest things ever.

baby elephant

Caroline also really liked the recycling waste bins.  She pointed them all out to us.

Henry trying to drink from the bottle.

And I'll leave with a few of the pictures our CC director took of the kids.  She said Caroline wouldn't smile for her, but you can see one cracking through.  She managed to keep it from fully forming.  :)