Hot & Humid in Houston: 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.