Stronger Together

Henry has continued to work hard on his handwriting.  When he practices it, he whispers a mantra to himself, "Focus me. Focus me."  He says this the whole time he's writing his letters.  It must work, though, because his handwriting has been very neat.  We had to do all of our schoolwork at the dining room table this week, because the boys kicked me out of the school room on Monday and said I couldn't come back in it until Mother's Day.  They had made a sign on the window and used lots of stickers everywhere and made a giant mess in general.  What they didn't know, was that I could see the sign in the window when I mowed the backyard Monday evening.

I thought I was doing a helpful deed for Todd.  About half the time, I will mow the backyard while Todd does the front.  I enjoy mowing, plus the backyard is about as easy as can be.  At least it was until I mowed around one of our trees and noticed that the front end suddenly moved closer to the ground leaving a bald spot in its wake.  I checked out the front wheels to see what was the matter.  I merely touched the metal piece that changes the height of the wheels, and boom, it fell off.  It wasn't a fixable part.  The metal piece broke in half.  So, Todd got his backyard mowed and he got to buy a new mower.  He told me it was my mother's day present.  At least Henry had baked a cake that day so that made Todd's evening a little sweeter.


They used Christmas sprinkles this time....

We had an object lesson from Aesop's fables.  The story went that a man had kids that were fighting over everything, so he had them each find some sticks.  He bundled them together and had them try to break the bundle.  They couldn't break it.  Then he had them take one stick each and try to break it.  They broke it.  So the moral was that we are weak when we try to do things alone and are selfish by only thinking of ourselves.  Yet we are strong when we work together as a family and a team.  I got to tie it back to God, too, that when we stray from Him and try to do things on our own, then we're weak, but we are strong when we are with Him.
Unbreakable:


To breakable (Caroline succeeded first):

Caroline, not fully understanding the object lesson, went to work on her strength by trying to climb the doorjambs like the boys.

School on Friday lasted forever.  It all started with a traffic accident delay.  I had recently cleaned our back windows with my Norwex cloths.  The cloths really made them look amazing, so we kept the blinds up to enjoy the lovely streak-less windows.  Well, they were actually so clear looking that on Friday we had three birds fly into our windows.  The first happened at 7:15 a.m.  The poor bird just lay on its side on the ground next to the window.  The bird looked like a baby and I seriously thought it was a goner.  After about 10 minutes it hopped up onto its feet, but then just stood there for another 30 minutes.  I still thought it was a goner.  Josiah wanted to go get it, take it in the house, and nurse it back to health.  He had a plan in place to go dig up worms and get a water cup.  I had to tell him no less than 100 times to just take it easy and give it some time.  Clearly the bird was stunned.  So, after a long time of the bird just sitting there, I let him go dig for worms.  What harm could come from that?  Unfortunately, he couldn't find any, so he insisted on water.  So, I got a small water cup and we placed it near the bird.  It was enough to startle the bird and it flew briefly to a nearby branch.  After a while it must have gotten better because I haven't seen it since (and I have looked on the ground under the branch just in case).  After all the birds running into them, our windows ended up quite streaked with fingerprints and face prints from our bird-watching kids.

That day did end on a better note.  The boys had their Awana award ceremony in which they got their book awards (ribbons).  Henry got up on stage and did the hand motions to his song with the rest of his Cubbies.  Josiah, not so much.  Caroline was not as impressed with the event and had to be taken out twice.  She thought she could operate my phone's camera for the entire event and was not happy that I wanted to take pictures of the boys on stage.  She was also under the impression that since she was coming to Awana that it was finally her chance to be a Cubbie like Henry.

Todd gave me a Mother's Day gift (besides the lawnmower) Saturday morning.  He took the kids to the library's family story time.  I got 90 glorious minutes all to myself at home.  It is such a rarity to be alone in the house.  It was wonderful.

Later that day he and the boys washed my car.  It had been a few years since its last washing, so it was due.  The boys, of course, took the liberty to spray each other more than the cars, but they had a good time.  Henry sprayed Todd once in the chest, but quickly followed it up with, "I love you," so it was okay.

Caroline fell asleep on the way home from dinner Saturday night.  It was about 5:00 p.m.  Her no-naps tend to catch up with her.  So, about 11 1/2 hours later, at 4:29 a.m. Sunday morning, she woke up.  She managed to hang out in our bed until 5:22 a.m. when her belly got to growling.  I anticipated her waking up early, so I went to bed quite early myself.  We had a nice girl's morning before the rowdy boys joined us.

Sunday.  Mother's Day.  I finally got to go in the school room again to officially see the boys' sign.

Josiah said I could go shopping for twelve hours by myself.  It was a great idea on his part.  He also wanted to make me a pizza.  He wanted it to have: whole wheat wrap, grape jelly, grapes, and mozarella cheese on top.  Maybe not the best idea?  Unfortunately we never made it to the store to get those ingredients.  Hmmmm.

Our Mother's Day pictures. They had to be taken at two different trees. One that Josiah picked and one that Henry picked.


This week Josiah begins his swim lessons.  I feel like it's about 4 years later than I intended, but at least we are finally starting!