Christmas

It was a good first week off.  The weather had been great, so we got outside for some good ball playing.  Henry put Caroline in as his goalie, which would have been nice had she not gotten distracted on the job.  Henry didn't take too kindly to me making goals on her.  He had strict rules for me that I could only kick the ball from a standing position nearly up against my fence.  So I had to kick it all the way across the yard to make a goal.  He, of course, could dribble the ball all the way to my goal.

They had fun inside making blanket forts.  This is the one and only reason to have lots of blankets down here.  Fort-making.  There were issues when the kids no longer wanted to live in a group home, but wanted individual apartments.  The demolition crew was forced to come in and fold up their equipment.

We made it to a local Children's Discovery Center.  It is an off-shoot of the Children's Museum in Houston, so it had a lot of similar things.  The kids had a lot of fun.  Towards the front, they had craft tables.  The first one was Kwanzaa hats which the boys wanted to make.  They kept those hats on the entire time we were there.

Henry flexed his muscles and pulled himself up on the pulley chair.

Henry and another little boy had a lot of fun in the police car.  The boys mom even came by to tell her son to let our kids have a turn at the wheel.  Henry told her, that no, it was okay, they were having fun.  Meanwhile Caroline was in the backseat enjoying herself.  She told Todd she liked sitting in the back of the police car.  Just so long as she doesn't make a habit of it.

They got a taste for different occupations.  Josiah worked on car maintenance and repair.

Caroline worked as a check-out girl with a cool screen that really worked.  They boys were bringing her basket after basket of groceries.

They all loved the veterinary area.  They seriously would not leave this room.  It had just gotten to noontime and the Center had cleared out.  We weren't sure if they were closing or what, but it just turned out that most all of the families had little kids (toddlers) and they had left for lunch/naptime.  We almost had the whole place to ourselves.  So, there was nothing getting those kids out of the Vet Clinic until their own grumbling bellies got them out the door.

We made it to the park one day.  The kids spent so much time on all the spinny equipment.  I had to take a quick picture and look away.  They made themselves sick going around and around so much.  When Caroline initially got on each of the spinny things, she'd start to spin around and then ask Todd, "Will this unscrew all the way?"


Caroline spent the second half of her week as a princess.  Todd's cousin sent the kids a box of goodies and inside Caroline had a tiara and wand.  She has been wearing it all the time.  When she puts it on now, she's learned to ask, "Is it straight?"

When we were getting ready to go to church on Christmas Eve, Caroline and I got into a disagreement over wearing pants under her dress.  Usually this is something she does, but knowing that it would be a packed service and it was already a very warm day, I told her no pants.  She had quite the meltdown.  Probably not our first disagreement over what she wears to church.  She did, however, wear her tiara.  It came off only at the very end, so it didn't make the pictures, but she proudly wore it through the service.

Josiah had a bit of an emotional week.  The boys all watched the Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie.  When Han Solo died, Josiah cried.  I was a bit shocked that he was that emotionally invested in the movie.  I didn't know he was capable of that at his age.  I thought I had gotten out of watching Star Wars, but Caroline wanted to watch a movie with me and picked a Lego Star Wars short movie.  She knew it, too.  "Mommy, watch, Yoda is in the bus."  "Mommy, look over there, see Jar Jar Binks."

The kids were happy we made it out to see Christmas lights.  We drove around a bit longer than I had planned because I got lost in the neighboring neighborhood.  We just drove aimlessly around looking at lights, but then I found myself passing the same houses and couldn't figure out how to get out.  We drove for about an hour.  The kids talked the whole time.  Like non-stop talked the entire time.

And finally, it was Christmas.  Even though we've always told the truth about Santa, Josiah ran downstairs and said, "Santa came. Santa came."  He totally confuses Henry.  One of the first things the kids opened were Henry's presents.  He had made both Josiah and Caroline comics.  Caroline gave the best reaction.  She looked at the pictures he drew and just genuinely laughed out loud.  It was a comic about the Ninja Turtles.

We only got the kids three gifts each and no toys (we said we wouldn't and we weren't kidding), so our kids are very blessed to have very generous grandparents and great-cousins (if that's a thing).
Henry had a tornado kit going almost the whole day.  Although, it was Josiah's gift, Henry carried it around from room to room watching the tornado go.  Josiah loved his Spy Gear glasses.  He wore those for much of the day as well.  But what was loved the most were the Magic Tracks and the Lego kits.

They played with the Magic Tracks all day long.  Literally.  They were going all day long.  Caroline loved them as well.  So much so that she got right up close to them.  She had a big chunk of her hair get caught in the first car, the red one.  We cut her hair off as there was no untangling it.  As Todd was working on getting her hair untangled from the tire axle, which actually was not that easy, she came downstairs with the second, blue car tangled in her hair.  The first time she was just nonchalant about it, but the second time she was mad.  We laughed that it happened again and we had to get a picture, but she was not having it.


Later, in the evening, I asked her what she liked best and she whispered in my ear, "playing Magic Tracks by myself."  She also had a lot of fun with her new bear in his new high chair.  She moved them up and down the stairs a lot.  It was a good day.

Unfortunately, our day didn't end exactly as Henry planned.  Todd wanted to have something special for Christmas dinner, so he found a crockpot recipe for meatballs cooked in cranberry sauce and onions.  It sounded weird, but they tasted really good, kind of like Swedish meatballs.  Henry, who is very good at trying new foods, but who also does not like cranberry sauce, asked, "Next time, when it's Christmas, can you just cook something that we already know so that we like it?"  He didn't mind the pumpkin pie for dessert.

Caroline's favorite park statute.

Winter Break

I don't think you could wipe the smiles off of the kids faces knowing we are now on our two week break.

It is a wonder we even got some school work done.  The workmen showed up Monday afternoon and worked on the patio roof.  Thank goodness they didn't come until close to lunchtime because otherwise we would not have gotten any school done.  They were just too interesting to watch.  They stripped the roof, replaced the rotten spots, and put a flat roof covering down instead of shingles since we essentially have a flat roof.

Early the next morning, (thank goodness I had showered and dressed), there was a knock on the door.  It was our friend from Sunday School, Gerald, with his painter who spent the day priming and painting the patio.  We had to leave for karate so we were gone for a lot of the afternoon.  Gerald called me to see if I wanted him to paint the trim and backdoor as well.  I declined, since I had planned on painting it anyway.  Then when I got home, I looked and saw just how much trim there was and how high it went.  I may have not declined so quickly had I been at home and looked outside.  Live and learn.  It's on my list of things to do this two-week break.

Despite all the distractions, Henry finished up his kindergarten math curriculum.  It was way too easy for him.  I had been doing two lessons a day for the whole semester and this past week, we did 3-4 lessons a day.  I'm not sure he was ever challenged by it.  But it's good that he experienced a lot of success and he's excited to start first grade math in January.  He ran around the house saying he was in first grade.  This can be the confusing part of homeschooling, they can be in different grades in different subjects.  There's always the joke that homeschool kids don't know what grade their in.  Henry's in kindergarten-ish.  There's always the "-ish."  One of his last lessons was sorting things by weight using a balance.  He had gotten them in weight order and then happily uncovered each cup.


We've had some real improvements with our card-playing attitudes.  Henry just decided one day this week that he wasn't going to throw a fit when he lost card games.  He lost a game of Uno to Todd, paused, looked at him (holding back lots of emotion), and stuck his hand out to shake.  "Good game."  He did the same to me a day later.  It was shocking to witness after full-fledged tantrums over losses.  We are loving it.  It seems the card-playing tantrum-throwing moved on to Caroline.  She sat down to play cards and announced, "It's my turn to win."  We don't play that way, and she lost.  When she gets upset, she cries and wails and throws herself on her bed.  This is how she puts herself down for so many naps.  She starts out upset, lays on her bed with her blanket, sucks her thumb, and before you know it, she's out like a light.  If she should go take a nap when she's married, her husband should know that she's probably not tired, she's mad.

Getting in the Christmas spirit, Josiah pulled the grocery ad out of our recycling box.  He said he was reading it looking for what to get Todd and I for Christmas.  He snuck over to me and pointed out what he was going to get Todd, a Family Size bag of Lay's potato chips.  Back to his ad and a few minutes later he went to Todd and pointed what he was going to get me.  Dove soap.  Thanks?

Saturday we went to a kid Christmas program at the church where our kids did VBS (Vacation Bible School).  This church does everything really big.  So they had this Christmas play with lots of puppets.  The puppets kept breaking out into song, singing Christmas-themed words, but using popular songs.  Sort of like Weird-Al-esque.  The kids probably had no clue that one puppet was Bruce Springsteen, and some others were the group Queen, but it was cute for the parents.  During one number, they had a disco ball.  It was the funniest thing to watch, all the kids were reaching out to touch the squares of light as they moved.  It was very much kin to cats-chasing-lasers.

The kids favorite part were three giant birds singing using blacklight.  It was very cool how they did it.  I didn't get a good picture.

This is the same church that does train displays each December.

We've spent Sunday staying warm.  Saturday it was 77 degrees.  We woke up this morning and it was 36.  When we got to church, we saw that there were kids getting baptized in the baptismal, which as I've mentioned, is outside.  The water is heated, but it has got to be cold when you get out!

Now our two weeks begins.  I have a whole list of things to accomplish, much to Todd's delight (not so much).

Caroline took a few selfies this week, too.  She asked me to hold the phone for the second one, but it was very much her doing.

Trimming the Tree

We got the Christmas tree up this week.  Todd and I unpacked it's artificial goodness and set it up one evening, sans kids.  Then after school the following day, the kids put on all the ornaments.  There was a clear line of demarcation about 3/4 of the way up the tree.  That was where their reach ended.  I left it that way, because it's kind of cute, and next year the line will be just a little higher.

There was a lot of discussion from the eldest that it was his turn to put the star on top.  We all knew that Henry did it last year because we took photographic evidence (so, so handy).  Josiah felt it should be his turn next, but upon closer examination it was determined that Caroline had never done it before because the year before Henry's turn she would have been only one and it was highly unlikely we would have given her the star.  So, after all of that, Caroline hung the star.  We again have photographic evidence, although it probably isn't necessary, as Josiah will remember all year long that his turn is next.  

They love the tree, they love turning on its lights, and they now love to do their schoolwork under it.  It started with Josiah taking his math workbook and doing it there.  It began nice and quiet, but then the other two got some schoolwork of their own and set up shop next to Josiah.  Then the talking began.  Henry was trying to do handwriting, which wasn't exactly proper handwriting posture, and they were talking non-stop which is really hard to write, think, do math, and talk all at once.  We did all of our corrections in the school room.  But they were motivated to do all their work that day.  They loved getting the next subject and going off to the tree.

Henry had his WAM concert this week.  Being a church performance, he wore his best pair of sweatpants.  He takes his comfortable pants seriously.   He did a really good job.  He did all of the hand motions,


the rhythm sticks,


and the ribbon.


He knew it all, but he didn't sing too much.  It was amazing how different Caroline's concert was with three-year-olds and Henry's with kindergartners.  Caroline's had about half the kids following the hand motions and maybe 1% of the kids singing.  Henry's had all the kids, but one, doing the hand motions and about 60% singing.  There was one kid, front and center in Henry's group which stood the whole time.  He didn't sing, he didn't do hand motions, he moved his body in no such way, he just stared at the parents.  It was pretty funny.  We were watching Henry for the most part and he was trying not to look at us, but every now and then he'd steal a glance and try not to smile.

We were really proud of him and he was quite happy with himself, too.  Later, Todd said that when he was watching the concert, he was looking at all of the kids and his thought was, "Henry could take down all of these kids."  Todd's been working on some jiu-jitsu moves with all the kids.  I did bring up the fluffier kid in the class and Todd said that Henry could still take him because he'd tire out quicker.

The kids were invited to a Christmas party from a friend at karate.  It was a big party and we knew no one but the host, but she had it planned out.  She used to teach early elementary school (and homeschools now), so she had a schedule!  She read books, did games, had crafts, had crafts to take home, and we had a potluck lunch.  I didn't totally realize it was a lunch, so when I was deciding on what to bring, I thought it was sweets.  I found an allergen-free gingerbread recipe because her son has a peanut and dairy allergy (like anaphylactic, super allergic).  I have never been more nervous to have someone eat something I've baked.  Fortunately he ate it without incidence.  We could never host a get-together at our house with someone with a peanut allergy, because we eat peanut butter every day around here and no matter how much I clean, I'm sure there's some lurking somewhere.

For one of the games, we had to tie cups around the kids' waists and fill them with jingle bells.  Then they went head-to-head against another kid, trying to get the bells out of their cup first without using their hands.  All three of our kids lost to their opponents.  Caroline still thinks she won her round, Josiah got over it quickly, but Henry was not a happy camper about it for quite a while.

This weekend was spent hanging around the house because we have this going on:

We discovered a few months ago that our patio roof/posts were breaking away from the house.

They were breaking on the one side and on the other side the posts were lifting up.  Todd was sort of hoping for a big storm to come around and knock the whole structure down so the insurance would help out a little, but no such storm came.  So, we discovered a guy from church had a business that did this sort of thing.  The workers revealed that the previous posts were sunk in 6 inches of concrete.  They were sinking the new posts in 3 feet of concrete.  Slightly more secure.  The soil here in this part of Texas doesn't seem to be the best.  I don't know exactly what they mean when they say, poor soil, but we've heard it several times.  We do see lots of jagged sidewalks, though.

As of right now they were supposed to be finished with their work on Saturday.  But they haven't finished the posts, and they haven't even started fixing the roofing or painting the whole underside.  Fortunately we aren't in a hurry, so hopefully it'll all get done this week.  It does keep the kids entertained watching them.

One more week of school before our two-week winter break!  Hallelujah!

A Sad Goodbye

On Monday we noticed a patch of hair was missing from Henry's head.  We could clearly make out the scissors line to see what had been cut.

We gathered the boys together to determine just how the hair got cut.  (See how we gathered both boys together?  It's like we knew it wasn't just one child involved.)  Apparently, Josiah thought it would be fun to cut Henry's hair.  So, following the golden rule of doing unto others as you would want them to do unto you, we cut Josiah's hair.  We gave him a little tuft of missing hair in the exact same spot.  I wasn't sure Todd was serious that we do it, so I had the scissors in my hand looking at Todd for some sort of go-ahead signal that we weren't just playing with Josiah.  I never could tell what Todd was thinking, so I just snipped the hair off and he ran to the bathroom to see the horror bestowed upon him.  It'll grow back.  It wasn't that we were mad at Josiah, we just didn't want him taking advantage of his brother just because he's older.

It's been great having Nana here, we have been going to new shops and getting some decorating done.  We went to Hobby Lobby and Grandad & Nana let each of the kids pick out a Nutcracker.  Henry quickly found the one he wanted.  He liked the English Bobby mostly because he was holding a set of handcuffs.  Josiah took forever deciding on his favorite.  He finally settled on the Uncle Sam one which he named Paul Revere.  He liked that it came with a real flag.  Caroline looked all around as well and she settled on a fancy Nutcracker that came with a cape.

We did start school up again and got a little bit done.  In history, our activity had us making Samurai Warrior hats out of origami.  The instructions were in our history book, but we were not following them very well (it's hard to do origami without pictures).  All we had to do was check YouTube, and there it was, an instructional video on Samurai Warrior origami hats.  You can find just about anything online.  They turned out to be more decorative as they didn't stay on their heads too well, but they were fun to make.

Josiah in Samurai Warrior Pose.  Henry looking a bit Pilgrimesque.

The boys were sweet to Caroline.  She was not able to go to Awana this week because she'd been coughing for a couple of weeks and I was concerned she was contagious since Henry had strep.  It was Awana Store, the time when they got to spend their earned points on little trinkets.  Josiah determined that he was going to get something for Caroline since she wouldn't be able to go spend her points.  Then later, Henry saw what Josiah did and gave up one of his things for Caroline.  That'll bless your heart to see them do that on their own.  You do love each other.  :)

Unfortunately Grandad and Nana had to fly back home at the end of the week.  We had some pretty sad kids on our hands.  The first day, Henry was very quiet and sad.  He teared up a few times.  But the second day, Henry was wailing because he missed them.  He missed playing ball with them, going outside with them, reading with them, seeing them, hugging them, the list went on.  He was just inconsolable.  He finally fell asleep that night, but only after some long, exhausting cries.  Later that night, Todd and I went up to bed and discovered it was doubly occupied.

Since Henry had already had a tough night, we didn't want to move him.  Todd and I just picked a twin bed each.  He chose the princess room.

We did a Lowe's Build & Grow project this weekend.  The kids each built two picture ornaments.


We were talking about what pictures they could put in the ornaments, and Josiah asked to pose for this picture for his first ornament.  Nothing like immortalizing the Lunchable.

We finished out our week at Josiah's WAM concert. WAM is Worship Arts Ministry and each kid in grades 1-5 could pick a track for the semester. So, this concert was the culmination of all they had worked on. We got to see what the other kids had done: photography, woodworking, interpretive dance, singing, drama/theater, guitar, drums, art, etc. Josiah picked the Banners track and he was always secretive about what the banners looked like and the work he did.  They turned out to be very impressive.  The pictures don't do them justice.  He said he cut out some of the triangles and glued them on.  He was also in charge of the sequence.  His favorite was the lion one on the right.


Caroline got into some of the songs at the concert.  During one number in particular she could not help but get up and dance.  It was loosely in the genre of "interpretive dance."  You can see her silhouette with her pony tail flying to the side as she was head-banging to the worship songs.

And so begins another week.  Our goal right now is to just finish out the year well.