Baptism Day!

Caroline had a good school week, because Todd bought her a preschool workbook and now she has her own papers to do.  She's in love.  She keeps asking to do, "one more page."  She loves her school books, she loves her Awana book, she loves to be the "swiper" with the CC app, she loves it all except waiting for me to finish lessons with the boys.

School stretched all day for most days this past week.  One day we were working on a science experiment at 4:00 p.m.  We finally got some sand and Epsom salts, so we've been doing more arts & crafts and science experiments.  This week we made sandstone by heating up sand, cornstarch, and water.  Then they shaped it into whatever they wanted and it was supposed to harden and be "rock-like."  Our end result didn't exactly look like the pictures in the science book, but they still liked it.  Josiah spent several days fixing his bird because wings, beaks, tails, bellies were all falling off. I think his end result was half sandstone, half Elmer's glue.  Henry chose a volcano and it turned out well.  Yes, we are aware that volcanoes are not made out of sandstone.


We also made sand art from our history lesson.  I told the kids to draw pictures that did not have a lot of detail.  I demonstrated by drawing a giant "C" on my paper and a few big lines on the bottom.  The boys chose to draw very detailed ninjas.  I tried.  Then we used glue sticks and colored sand and made pictures.

We made ice cream, too.  In an attempt to be more healthy, I tried to ditch my beloved creamer and embrace the not-so-sweet half-n-half.  After a few days of not enjoying my coffee very much I tried to make my own French Vanilla creamer.  I added a little sugar, a little vanilla.  It tasted great on its own, but didn't taste so well in my coffee.  So, we made ice cream with it by shaking it in a bag.  Henry shook it the most.  Josiah said I was a genius when he saw that it actually turned into ice cream.  But then he tried it and was not impressed with the taste.  It was a little icy, but really, it tasted just like vanilla ice cream.  Henry said he liked it, but then left most of his in his cup.  Considering neither boy has ever left a drop of ice cream in their dishes before, I'd say it was not a hit.

We finished our week making origami birds.  Henry wanted to lead us all in a craft, but he was making up his own origami.  A kid in his class taught them how to make an origami cup for his presentation last week, so Henry was inspired.  I dusted off my old origami book and searched it for something simple.  Josiah wanted birds, so we made "flapping-wing birds."  I was able to get us through all the steps, but at the very end I could not get my bird's wings to flap.  Todd came to the rescue and got all our birds flapping.  Henry was a happy kid and now wants to make everything in the origami book.  We're going to try to do it every Sunday because I have a feeling if we do it too often frustrations may run high and patience short.  Just a gut feeling...

Henry has not only been going into all of his classrooms well now, but he doesn't even need me to walk him to them anymore.  At WAM, he was in Caroline's room with me and I was going to walk him down to his room.  He and I had some miscommunication and after a few minutes I noticed he was no longer in my room.  So, I took a gander down the hallway to his room, he noticed me and gave me a thumb's up with a smile.  Ok, then.  I wouldn't have minded watching him walk to his room, but I'm glad he made it.  A thumb's up must be his sign because we passed one of his WAM classmates at church today and the boys got each other's attention and gave each other a thumb's up.

For Awana this week, I asked Henry at the beginning of the week if he wanted to work on one or two verses.  He said one.  So, we worked on one.  He learned one.  We quizzed him on one.  Then I picked him up at Awana and he exclaimed, "I said my verses.  I even said ones I don't know."  Well, I'm pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to work.  He had said seven verses.  Seven.

While we were at Awana, Todd put poison on our lawn (the organic kind, so it's all good).  Apparently there's an epidemic of Sod Webworms in the Houston area and we got them.  At first I thought the sun was just killing our lawn - frying it up - because it's still 90-feels like 120-here.  But we also had little moths flying up whenever we walked anywhere on our grass.  Tons of them.  Apparently they've laid eggs all over our lawn and their worms are eating our good, healthy grass.  If we don't get a handle on it we'll have dead grass with a healthy supply of weeds.  Now when we drive around the neighborhood we try to diagnose our neighbor's yards.  "Oh, they definitely have the worms!"  Unfortunately, Todd has to do the poison two more times so that we can kill all the egg cycles.  Not exactly how he intended to spend his upcoming birthday week.  :)

Our week ended very, very well.  Josiah has been wanting to get baptized for a long time now.  Today was the day.  Our church has a pretty awesome baptismal.  It is outside and they have a camera mounted up high that captures all of it as well as two photographers.  They said they were going to mail us the video and pictures in the next couple of weeks.  So, I literally left my phone (camera) in my purse and just enjoyed the moment.  Todd got to baptize him and Josiah was all smiles the whole time.  I'll say more about it when we get the pictures.

But, we did go celebrate afterwards with some good Tex-Mex.
Our bandit bibs.

Our celebratory dessert.


Caroline with her favorite colored flower.

Cubbies & Sparks

NFL Season began with a win for our local team.  The best part of the NFL season, in my opinion, is that when our Texans win, Papa John's puts their pizzas at half-price.  So there will be many Mondays that I don't have to think about dinner, I don't have to cook dinner, I just get to eat some pizza.  It is wonderful.

Henry has had some highs and lows for this week.  He rocked it walking straight into his room at church this morning.  Todd said he just walked right in and stood next to the teacher whom I'm sure was surprised that he was upright and not attached to a parent.  He did the same for me at WAM.  I dropped him off in his room and he just walked right in.  Later he said that he had noticed two of his friends in the room, and so long as they were in there, he would walk in without issue.  We are currently praying for these two friends to never get sick!

Then he's had moments of not being happy with his position in life.  He just broke down one afternoon because he was upset he was born second.  Josiah was always going to be older and do everything first.  We talked for a long time.  I told him I was third to do everything when I grew up and that sometimes it isn't always best to be born first.  We make all our parenting mistakes on Josiah and then learn to do better for Henry!  :)  Plus God put him in our family right where He wanted him and we are blessed by having him in our family.  He's such a sweet kid.  If anything, he seems to have the best position in our family because he's close with both Josiah and Caroline.

We read about the Code of Justinian in history this week.  It was a code of laws for the entire Byzantine Empire (because many of the lands it ruled had their own laws which caused problems, so this code covered all the land).  We decided to make our own Code.  We came up with some laws we have in this country.  We started with traffic laws, stop on red, obey the speed limit, etc.  Then we moved to laws/rules within the house.  We came up with no running in the house, no hitting/kicking each other, no whining, etc.  Then we decided to come up with consequences.  Josiah had some interesting consequences - 30 jumping jacks for running inside, 15 push ups if you don't share your toys, write an "I'm sorry" card if you speak meanly to a sibling.  Then Josiah showed me the Code he had written, complete with his own consequences.  He was kind enough to give a choice: they could either get punched in the face, or they could draw a picture for the victim.  I don't know if he feels this is a difficult choice, but I think most are going to pick the picture.

Consequences in the form of pictures on the right.

Another day, I told Josiah and Henry to bring a game back upstairs that we had just finished playing.  It was their game.  They were playing it.  They brought it upstairs and then a few minutes later Josiah handed me this sheet.

He was taxing me for making him put his own belongings away.  He said I could pick whichever value I wanted to pay him.  I assured him I would be paying him no such money and that if anything, I should charge him if I have to pick up his things!

The kids had a friend come to play midweek.  It was our friend, Bobby, who sadly, Caroline no longer called Be-Bop.  He brought several Mario and Luigi stuffed animals and the kids played with them the whole time.  Then the next morning, Josiah got to work on their costumes.  Classic Josiah.

For Awana this week, Todd and I got to drop off all three kids and we had about 90 minutes all to ourselves.  Josiah suggested we play Go Fish and get some Dairy Queen.  We scrapped the Go Fish, but we did walk around Hobby Lobby at a leisurely pace without concern of a child breaking anything or asking for anything.  Then we followed Josiah's lead and got milkshakes.  When we picked up the kids, both Henry and Caroline had earned their new books, vests, and bags.  Caroline looked so grown-up coming out of her classroom all dressed up.  They were very proud kids (as they should have been).

We're working on our picture smiles...

Josiah's suggestion of playing Go Fish was kind of funny given our week.  Early each morning, Caroline has come in our bed and laid back down for about an hour.  Then when she's ready to get up, she'll sit up, hand me the pack of Go Fish cards, and whisper, "Can we play Go Fish?"  So, every morning before I even get out of bed, I've played a game.  We've played it most nights as well.  All the kids are really into it.

Todd brought out his Muay Thai pads and had the boys practice their karate.  The boys loved showing him their kicks and punches.  They are still really enjoying karate.  After the boys practiced, they wanted to hold the pads for Todd.  Josiah held them and one punch from Todd pushed him backwards.  Josiah stayed on his feet, but was cracking up the whole time because Todd's punches were so powerful for him.

For the CC presentation this week, the boys have to demonstrate how to do something.  Henry is going to demonstrate how to build a volcano.

Josiah is going to demonstrate how to draw the Angry Bird, Red.  He even had us go to the library this weekend to make copies to give to all the kids in his class.  They've been waiting for this week all semester and came up with their ideas on their own.  It is hard to believe we are already going on week 5.

A Cursive Kind of a Week

We started our week thanking Todd for Laboring for us with a big IHOP breakfast.  Josiah has been wanting to go to IHOP ever since they built it.  So, we went, we ate, and we don't have to go back.  Josiah liked his meal the best.  He got five silver dollar pancakes and Todd encouraged him to try a different flavored syrup with each pancake.  So he did.  Henry said his had too much chocolate.

After spending some time in a sugar/syrup/carb-overload coma we finally got some schoolwork done.  Todd took Caroline to the store which helped immensely as the boys do not like to do schoolwork with Todd home.  Todd home = vacation time.

We had our family presentation at CC this week.  It is a super simple presentation of our family.  After introducing us and saying what Todd did for a living, the kids each said their name and how they like to spend their time.  I cannot remember all of what Josiah said, except that he spoke really well and he said he liked to do cursive.  (!!)  Henry said he liked arts and crafts, and Legos.  Caroline liked to play on playgrounds.  Henry has gotten the cursive bug and wanted to scrap his Manuscript book for the more mature Cursive book.  Seeing how he still needs the Manuscript book, Josiah took it upon himself to teach Henry cursive.  He wrote up lots of papers of all the names of our family members, one letter per line.  He even had the small arrows showing how to form the letters.  Then a little later in the week, Josiah received the letter he had mailed himself.  Part of his Grammar assignment was to mail himself a letter.  Well, Josiah addressed it to himself as the assignment said, but inside it was a cursive kit he made for Henry.

Cursive.  Who knew we'd still be all gung-ho about cursive writing.

Science has also been a favorite subject this week.  We do science three days a week and each science lesson has an experiment/activity attached to it.  One of the lessons this week had us make a representation of Earth's core, mantle, and crust with a gumball (we used a Skittle), a marshmallow, and melted chocolate.

The boys are really into science now.  We were also supposed to make a glacier another day, but we needed to get sand first.  We're finding out that sand is a key ingredient in our earth science-ish experiments.  We're trying to keep a lot of the learning hands-on so we do as many activities as we can with our science and history lessons.

All of our fall activities began this week.  WAM began at our church which is worship arts ministry.  All three kids were able to participate in it.  Josiah got to pick a track and he chose "banners."  His group is making/decorating/painting banners to go with the final presentation in December.  He does that for half the time and then practices all the songs for the other half.  Henry's kindergarten group just does the songs and some sort of active thing where they play music through different mediums.  Caroline and I are in the 3's class.  We had Caroline and 34 of her closest friends this past week.  Having two slightly loud and crazy boys of our own, I thought this particular class of 35 3-year-olds went really well.  They were fairly quiet and listened to the story and most of them paid attention to the songs.  I was quite impressed.  The other leader, who mentioned she had two very low-key girls, thought it was chaos.  Perspective.

The next day we were exhausted.  Caroline napped, Henry kept saying he was tired.  And I thought I wouldn't be able to make it past 2:30 p.m. without a nap.

The next night we did it again as Awana started back up.  Caroline was excited this year because she got to participate and is now officially a Cubbie.  She doesn't get her book, bag, and vest until next week, so we'll have pictures then.  Henry was excited to move up to Sparks with Josiah.  Josiah is now the big man in the Sparks room which is for K-2nd graders.  Henry had to give up his beloved snacks as the Sparks have to make it the whole hour and fifty minutes without eating a single thing.  You should have seen them when they got home.  They all ate liked they hadn't had dinner or anything.

Saturday morning, Henry lost another tooth.  (The one on the bottom left.)  He has showed me how he eats everything in the back of his mouth now.  He loves his Bugs Bunny carrots (long type), so it hasn't changed his diet a whole lot.

We also made it to the library, which always gives us at least a couple of good reading days.  Henry has been reading books to Caroline at her request.  There's nothing better than seeing one child read to another.  It was a Level 2 reader, so Henry was proud to move up in his reading abilities.

There has also been a lot of Lego building this week.  Josiah made several trips downstairs one day to show me the movie he had made with his Legos.  These are all his Ninjago characters and he had me watch his 20 minute movie that I think he made up as he went.  He usually has Sequels to everything he does, so we'll see if we get Parts 2, 3, & 4 this week.

Today was Patriot Day, so the kids wore red, white, and blue to church to honor those who lost their lives on 9/11.  Todd and I reminisced about where we were when it all occured.  I was actually driving north on I-95 towards Northern Virginia when I kept hearing the events as they happened on the radio.  I saw more State Trooper cars/SUVs than I knew existed pass by on the shoulder as the regular traffic crawled along.  It was unbelievable to hear it.  I knew two people who died - one in the Twin Towers and one on the plane that hit the Pentagon.  We want our kids to know the importance of the day and remember it.

Caroline wanted a picture with just her, but was upset the boys got their picture done first, so she still wanted the picture, but this was the only expression she would give me....

Spiky Hair, Please.

Caroline is going to be one smart 3-year-old.  She wants to sit at the table and "do school" with her brothers more and more.  After she watches Henry do his math lesson, she always wants me to teach her the same lesson.  Personally, Henry's math seems a bit too easy for him, (we've been doubling up on lessons to move up sooner), so it's not all that surprising that Caroline could it, too.  Here's she's putting our little circle things (that I wish we had a name for) in an AB pattern.

Matching my tower to hers in height:

She even insists that I give her a sheet of paper with letters on it when the boys are practicing their handwriting.  She's trying to write the letters in her name.

We are fresh from recess.  Henry likes to wear a towel on his head when he's sweaty.

When we practice the kids presentations for CC, she will often give a presentation as well.  The presentation topic at CC last week was, "Somewhere you have been or somewhere you want to go."  Henry chose the beach we go to in Delaware.  We asked him what he wanted to say about it and his reply was, "We get to watch Teen Titans and sometimes Ninjago there."  Todd and I encouraged him to expand his focus a bit onto the beach part of the trip, maybe just a few facts about the state and ocean.  Henry was a bit rambunctious in his CC room this week.  He can go from quiet and reserved to wild and silly at the drop of a hat it seems.  He kept hugging on another little boy that was sitting next to him and the other little boy said they were best friends.  The other little boy participates in everything they do in class so he should be a good influence for Henry.

For recess one day this week, we ventured out to the backyard because it has been so hot in the front.  There's little shade in the mornings in front.  The boys wanted me to mow the back, so I did and all three kids spent a fair amount of time running along the paths I made in the grass.  It was no ordinary mow job.  Poor Caroline got eaten alive by mosquitoes, though.

One of the best things about doing homeschool with little kids is that we get to reread all the classic childhood books again.  Last week we finished Socks by Beverly Cleary.  This week we made it halfway through Stuart Little.  I couldn't remember what Stuart Little was about, and I must say, the cover just didn't look very appealing to me.  But I  knew it was a good piece of literature to read to them, so we started it.  Henry loves it. He is always asking me to read him more chapters.  Josiah took it for his quiet reading time and read three chapters ahead.  Josiah said he originally didn't think it looked good, so I got to be all adult to him and say, "Don't judge a book by its cover."

Henry had Josiah's Lowes' creative streak hit him this week.  He created a Lowes' kit of Superman for us to do.  First we had to check in and sign the waiver, as always.  (Already at 5 and 7, they know they have to sign waivers to participate in anything.  "I will not sue you should this activity result in my death.")

Henry's waiver was fairly simple.  A box to check next to a backward S for Superman.

He had the instructions and the parts.

He included a comic in his, too.

The finished product.

Mine

Josiah's - he had to color it all.

Caroline finished out her week by going to get her hair cut for the first time.  All my attempts at cutting her hair have been horrible failures.  Cutting in a straight line is not as easy as it looks.  She's been asking us to take her all week.  We went Saturday at 6:00 p.m. and discovered they closed at 6:00 p.m.  She was so upset she just stood by the car door refusing to get in.  She wanted a hair cut and she wanted it right then.  We made it back on Sunday and she did really well.  I told the girl it was sort of Caroline's request to go there, so just to take a few inches off and shape it a bit.

Caroline did really well following the hair dresser's directions.

When we left the shop, I asked her if she liked it.  (She wouldn't talk in the store.)  She said it wasn't like the boys hair.  She wanted a cut like the boys.  Then later at bedtime, she was more specific and said she wanted her hair spiked up like Josiah's.  They always spike up his front section when we go.

I kept having visions of her as a teenager with 80's spiky hair. For now we'll settle on a sweet little girl haircut.

Tomorrow is Labor Day.  Josiah asked what Labor Day was, so Google let us know.  Then he whispered to me that we need to get Todd doughnuts for Labor Day since he's the one who labors for us.  Maybe that'll sweeten his morning so he won't complain much when we do school.  He cannot stand to do school when Todd is home.  But, as I told them at the start, we are 6 weeks on, 1 week off.  Our 1 week off is our holiday.  Tomorrow begins week 3.