Boomerangs and Yellow Belts

We learned about Japan, China, & Korea during the Middle Ages at the start of the week.  Our activity to go along with it was to eat a Japanese meal.  Apparently they eat a lot of soup, so I followed the quite simple directions in our book and made a soup of chicken broth, thinly sliced mushrooms, scallions, and some thinly sliced meat (we had beef for beef stroganoff, so we tried to make it work).  I did try to add soy sauce to the vegetables when I cooked them, but it ended up getting dissolved in the broth.  We added a bit of rice to our meal and there we had it.  I was shocked that the boys actually ate their whole bowls of soup.  They ate their mushrooms and scallions!  It wasn't horrible, but it would not be a stretch to say that no Japanese person would have tasted it and been reminded of home.

By the middle of the week, we had moved on to the Aborigines of Australia.  We made boomerangs, but they were one-direction boomerangs that were used to strike animals for hunting.  The kids liked them a lot, because basically we just made weapons for them to throw around. (Josiah was trying to look tough in the pictures.)

At WAM, I had to teach/read the story to our class of three-year-olds because the teacher was out.  It was the Good Samaritan, so I brought our book from home which I felt was simple enough and easy to understand.  It would have been easy to understand if I had more than four kids paying attention.  Of course, that was the moment one of our pastors in the church decided to come in our class to see how we were doing.  He actually tried to get some of the less attentive kids to pay attention, but then I felt woefully unprepared to teach the kids with a pastor in the room.  It's at those moments that I wanted to scream, "I'm just a HELPER!" but in reality, I should have come up with better questions to ask the kids about the story.

We saw Henry's WAM teacher in the hallway after and she complimented him on participating that evening. He did the songs and the hand motions with them.  He was really proud and happy that she told me that, so hopefully that'll encourage him to keep at it.  I still have a video on my phone of when he was 3, doing the songs and hand motions at our old church.  I love that video!

Henry had another big night this week.  He tested for his yellow belt and passed it.  He was so proud to show us when we got home from Awana.  Todd said that he sparred with the instructor, he broke a board with his foot (on the third try), hit the dummy, and earned a belt.  He is one happy kid.

We went out to eat Saturday for a late lunch/early dinner.  After a while of eating and observing several fathers glued to their phones and completely ignoring their kids, I told Todd, "I'm glad you're not always on your phone."  To which he replied, "I'm glad you're not an uggo."  (our term for "ugly")  Keeping it real.

We're still playing lots of cards.  Josiah has gotten so much better with winning and losing graciously.  He's even working on strategy by not making a scene when he is dealt the Old Maid advertising his lot to everyone in the game.  Old Maid has become quite the popular game as of late.  The boys love it when Caroline plays because she loves the Old Maid and doesn't want anyone else to have the card (we got cards with people on them, not a regular deck), so she puts it aside and lets her other cards get taken.  If I happen to lose, I exclaim, "Yeah!  I get a maid!"

The boys were super happy to get a package from Grandma & Grandpa. It came in the evening, and they hadn't exactly been behaving at dinner, so we waited to open it. It is always a tough decision to wait until the next morning to open packages, because our boys dream about them all night long, wake up too early, and are as persistent as anything until it is opened. They were not disappointed. Make your own superhero outfits.

We have a packed week coming up with a field trip to a castle and a Fall party.  Maybe if we have a Fall party, we'll actually get some fall weather.  We're still hovering in the 90s on a daily basis around here.  We're getting desperate for temps in the 70s or 80s.