Derby Cars and Gaylords

The boys had one busy weekend.  After a Whataburger breakfast,

Todd took the boys up to church to practice their Derby cars on the practice track.  First they had to put the wheels on and a few weights.  Josiah had made a Hardy Boys themed car. It is a hand holding a flashlight on the top and then Frank and Joe holding flashlights on either side.

Henry had made a Lightning car.

Todd said they raced their cars down the practice track 25-30 times.  Josiah consistently came in 2nd or 3rd and Henry consistently came in 4th (out of 4).  However, it did not deter them from racing again and again.

If we were going to make the actual derby next week, then Todd would have tweeked their cars a bit more, but knowing we'll miss it, he just let them have fun.  Fun they had until silliness and chaos ensued and it was time to depart.

I needed them home early anyway because we had signed up to volunteer at a program that collects books for elementary-aged students.  The nonprofit hosts "book fairs" in Houston schools at the end of each year, allowing each child to pick out 5-6 books to take home for free.  Their goal is to get books into homes that have no books and by doing it every year they can build up these kids' home libraries.  It is a neat program and we were excited to have the boys have the opportunity to volunteer. After getting introduced to the warehouse and what our assignment was for the afternoon, the boys only heard, "the kids can get in the big gaylords to help pick out the books."  Josiah and Henry were only too happy to help at that point.  They had fun sifting through the books, but also were a little disappointed that they couldn't bring a stack home themselves.  I reminded them we go to the library each week and check out on average 30 books at a time.  I think we're doing just fine with the whole book thing.

Henry has taken to reading to Caroline in the car a lot, too.  He'll usually bring a few books to read on the drive to karate and inevitably, she'll ask, "Henry, can you read to me?"  He usually does, which is very sweet to hear.  Caroline, however, has a tendency to interrupt to ask questions or give her two cents about the story on nearly every page.  So, sometimes Henry gets frustrated with her and threatens to stop reading if she won't stop interrupting.  While it's not always said kindly, I usually smile to myself as I can relate to the scenario.  We struggle with the fine line of interacting with the book by showing interest and having questions, contrasted to constantly interrupting just to talk.

Josiah made it to the doctor's office this week for his 8-year check-up.  The appointment went well and he's healthy and growing nicely.  We checked out and then were met with the elevator.  Now, Henry pushed the elevator buttons on the way up to the doctor's office, so Josiah and Caroline were to push the buttons on the way down.  I was distracted and did not see who pushed the button on the outside on the elevator to call it to our floor, but I soon learned it was Josiah.  Because after our family, and two other families, got in the elevator and Josiah pushed the button to go to the first floor, Caroline screamed bloody murder that she didn't get to push it.  She literally screamed the whole ride down.  One little boy asked his mother what was wrong with her.  Needless to say, I took her sticker away when we exited that elevator.  It was all the leverage I had at the time.  And now I will be the one pushing all said elevator buttons from here on out.

Now, by the time we made it down that elevator, Caroline was quite tired.  We had just spent all morning at CC, which always exhausts her, though she loves it.  The boys did presentations on artists.  Henry chose Da Vinci and painted the self-portrait that Da Vinci did when he was older.  (Note the long beard.)

Josiah presented on Raphael and tried to copy his self-portrait from when he was young.  They did a good job on their presentations.  This is one of the things I love about the CC program, is that they have to stand and give presentations each week which helps them get comfortable with public speaking at a very young age.

The kids were super excited to get special containers with handles from Nana and Grandad.   They each claimed one for their own and already have grand uses for them.  Henry has said his is a nature box to collect nature in and he has tried to force his siblings to have nature boxes, too, but they have not followed suit as of yet.

Caroline is rocking her karate class.  She gets so disappointed that she only has it once a week compared to the boys twice a week.  She loves it.  She does very well in it, too.  I think having big brothers has made her a bit tough and ready to learn some fightin' skills.

She's a tough girl.  We had beautiful weather this afternoon and the boys took her on some crazy Big Wheel rides. 

The kids also learned to not all climb the tree at the same time.  After requesting a photo op, Henry moved down the tree a bit, stepping on Josiah's hands who in turn stepped on Caroline's hands.  

And so begins another week...

Fire Station Tent Village

Todd was off of work on Monday and so he helped out with school.  I really thought we'd get done quicker with two parents helping, but it didn't happen.  We were a little distracted in the morning by the 3 giant (they looked giant to me) opossum in our backyard.  I only got a picture of the little one, but the three of them were just walking around the yard like they owned the place.  Todd told his boss about them and she said they were good for eating rodents and rotting fruit, so that may be the attraction to our yard - our fig and lime trees have mushy fruit on the ground.  If they eat mice and rats then we'd be happy to keep them as pets because those are always a problem in this area.  Welcome to Texas.  We have fire ants and rats.

For Josiah's spelling work that day, he had to write down three wishes, and use a few spelling words in the process.  Now, if I were making three wishes I know that a personal chef and a personal trainer would be pretty high up there, but Josiah, who is 8, had other priorities.  His three wishes:
#1 - To build all of the Lego kits in the whole world.  (makes total sense for him)
#2 - I wish to eat pizza.  (again, makes sense for this child)
#3 - To work at Pizza Hut.  (And this may be where we need to broaden his life goals.)

We didn't make it to CC this week because the morning of CC, Caroline woke up very early and threw up five times.  After a mid-day nap, she woke up and seemed to be much better.  The next day at karate, I kept her in our car just as a precautionary, but we went in the building at the end to get the boys.  In those five minutes inside the building, she told no less than three adults, "I threw up five times!" with a giant grin on her face.  Clearly she was feeling better.

Since we didn't go to CC, we did school at home that day.  We tried to make stalagmites and stalactites, but the experiment was a fail.  We'll try it again.

We did boil eggs with onion skins and got them to change color.  Henry and Caroline wanted to eat the boiled eggs.  They thought the eggs were good, but they didn't like the yellow part in the middle.  Todd says they're definitely my kids.

Henry had finally saved enough money to buy his Lego kit, and it came in the mail on Wednesday.  He was sooooo excited.

Josiah was upset that he never gets anything.  (For this, I'd like to refer you to the blog post from last week with the pictures of him holding his three new Lego kits....)

They didn't have time to work on the kit that afternoon, so Thursday morning, the boys both did school very well, they were efficient and they didn't complain.  They had a goal in mind - they wanted to finish school by noon so they could work on the Lego Fire Station.  They did it easily, which we hope is always a lesson to them of what they can accomplish if they put their mind to it.  Henry was very kind to Josiah and let him build half of the kit.

Since the fire station was built, they have been playing Legos for hours each day.  All weekend, they have played upstairs making Lego cities.  Yesterday evening, they had been playing Legos for a long time, and Henry kept popping downstairs with different books asking me if I remembered that we had a particular book.  Then when I went upstairs, I saw just what he was doing with all of those books.  They became tents for all of his Lego people.  It was one big tent village.

We did watch the Inauguration on Friday.  Whether our candidate wins or not we still should respect the office of the president and watching the inauguration ellicited a lot of good questions from the kids.  I got to tell them about the different branches of government and balance of power, who the particular people were that they kept showing (past presidents or members of Congress).  There were many lessons in it.  Josiah actually watched it all and asked many questions, most of which were good questions.  My favorite, though, was when he heard Rep Chuck Schumer speak and he asked, "Does he do Gonzo's voice [from the Muppets]?"
After President Trump took his oath and they shot the cannons, Henry was concerned that they kept shooting them because they were going to hit people and hurt them.
But Caroline topped it all.  During President Trump's speech, she must have been listening, because when Trump said that we'll get our dreams back, Caroline piped up, "Yay!  I get my dream back."  Now, I don't know how many dreams she's lost at 3, but I'm glad she's happy to be getting them back.

This cutie did make it back to karate on Friday.

We're hoping for a drier week next week.  We had huge rain storms all week and besides having a water logged yard, the kids would like to ride their bikes again!

Eight Is Great

Josiah had a good week.  Our highly excitable child was in overdrive for his birthday week.  We started the celebration the night before with a dinner at a Tex-Mex place where he enjoyed a cheeseburger and fries.  Those good Tex-Mex fries.  Josiah actually has us move the salsas away from him due to the smell.  Meanwhile, Henry is dipping his fingers in the green sauce and licking away.  After dinner, Caroline and I went to get the birthday balloons.  We typically get one per year which has never been a big deal when they were younger, but handling eight balloons was getting to be a lot.  Caroline was insistent on helping me hold the balloons in the store.  She did get to hold them, but I glanced up at the balloon covered ceiling more than once hoping ours didn't meet a similar fate.  She also had a fit that I would not let her carry all eight by herself to the car.  It helped that she got to play with them on the drive home.  She loved being able to help.

That was the night before Josiah's birthday.  The morning of Josiah's birthday began at 3:45 a.m. when Josiah walked in our room ready to party.  I kindly (??maybe??) sent him back to his bed, reminding him to "wait til the 6."  At 4:00 a.m. I heard squealing downstairs, so I went to investigate and both boys are sitting at the breakfast table with party hats on looking at his gifts.  Josiah was NOT happy to be told to go back to bed.  He went back to bed, but I really don't think he went back to sleep.  Finally, at 6, we got up and he opened his gifts.  He loves his Legos.

Froot Loops were the breakfast of choice.  He originally wanted IHOP, but then remembered Froot Loops and they were much better, so we conceded to the $2 Froot Loops.

We went to a sandwich shop for lunch.  While they were eating, the boys were discussing their sandwiches.  Henry kept saying how delicious his was and that it was very "flavorful."  (He chose ham, cheese, mayo, mustard, & lettuce.)  Josiah agreed that his was "good, but not very flavorful, because, you know, cheese is just plain and not very flavorful."  He thought that next time he'd order mayonnaise on it.  

Our church put on their Winter Blast the evening of Josiah's birthday, so we got hot dogs & chips there (free!) and birthday dinner was taken care of.

They also had open fire pits so we could roast marshmallows and make smores.  The boys loved making smores and also learned some finer points about fires, particularly being "downwind."

Caroline was happy that she could walk up to a table and someone would just hand her a marshmallow on a giant stick.  They had four tables set up and we didn't rotate very well, because Caroline's third time to the table the lady said, "Oh, you want another?"  She couldn't have the chocolate and graham cracker, so we let her have a couple marshmallows.

The best part of Winter Blast were the imported snow hills that we got to sled down.  The kids absolutely loved to sled down the hills.  Caroline would scream with glee each time she descended.  It was hilarious to hear her.  The only issue with the imported snow is that it kept on melting in our 75 degree air, which caused a bit of soggy grass which quickly turned to mud as hundreds of kids kept getting back in line to sled.

Josiah also participated in a snow ball fight with the snow they had dumped in one patch of grass.  By the time he got to it, though, the snow ball fight had been going on for a few hours and the snow was brown with dirt.  Like very brown and muddy, but that didn't stop him.  He liked his independence of running around with the big boys.

We didn't get home until late that night and after a quick bath, we sang to Josiah.

He blew out his candles and then we let the boys have one bite of cake.  Henry, ate his bite in true Henry fashion, all at once.  Josiah, in true Josiah fashion, savored his.  Henry wasn't too happy that Josiah savored his.  He always thinks that Josiah "gets more" because he takes longer to eat everything.

Since his birthday was so busy, we didn't get to his party poppers until the following day.  The kids were so excited about them, but they didn't exactly know what they were.  I think they had big expectations for what was going to fly out of them, because after they popped, they didn't say much.  I think they were hoping for big streamers, lots of glitter & fireworks, and a loud boom.  All they got was a "pop" and a small clump of streamers.

Caroline wanted to wear red that day.

And then it was back to real life, back to school and reality.  We studied the Mongol Empire this week, so one of our dinners was a traditional Chinese meal.  Now, when I lesson planned for the week, I wrote in my planner that this is what we would do, but I didn't actually look at the recipe at all.  So, when it came to time to actually making it, I only had half the ingredients.  We substituted real onions, garlic, & ginger for the powdered variety.  Rice wine vinegar became apple cider vinegar.  But I did have soy sauce and peanut butter.  While I was cooking it, Henry told me that it smelled really good.  I said, "Thank you."  He responded with, "Well, I didn't say it tasted good.  I haven't tasted it yet.  I just said it smelled good."  Again, "Thanks...."  He did end up liking it.  I thought it really did taste like Chinese food (it was chicken & broccoli in a peanut sauce with rice).  It had way more flavor than most of my dishes.

To keep the Chinese theme going, we painted Chinese scrolls - an outdoor scene with Chinese lettering on the side/bottom.  Henry chose a panda bear eating bamboo.  He wrote the Chinese characters for "panda bear" at the bottom.

Josiah painted a waterfall with birds.  He wrote the character "person," but didn't actually paint a person in the picture.

In Caroline's school, she tried to do a picture like Ezra Jack Keats does in his books.  She understood what he did in his book, but her picture was a little more abstract.

 Caroline also wanted to work on her "opposites" this week.  Several times in the car she'd ask us to give her opposites.  It went like this:
What's the opposite of up?  "Not up."
What's the opposite of full?  "Not full."
What's the opposite of asleep?  "Not asleep."
What's the opposite of large?  "........Medium."
So, she is really good at negation, and now we have something to focus on and work towards in her schooling.

Caroline ended her week better than she started it.  Monday night, she got in bed with us because she was very congested and we had a humidifier already going in our room.  She spent two hours going to sleep because she couldn't breathe because she refused to take her thumb out of her mouth.  So, she has her thumb in her mouth and she is desperately trying to breathe through her very congested nose.  She clearly is not getting enough oxygen, but even when I would try to pull her thumb out so she could get a few good breaths in, she had lock jaw on it.  Finally, after two hours, she was breathing better.  Her bed has become the coveted room for Todd and I.  Should we have nightly visitors, we always hope its Caroline so one of us can get her bed.  It is rare to sleep in a quiet room with no nightly interruptions, plus her bed is comfortable.  Whoever gets her bed always sleeps well.  Whenever Todd says he's going to her bed, I always get a little jealous.  Man, I should have called it first!

And for those on mustache watch (mainly, me), I have a good report:

One birthday week down, two to go.

Karate Girl

Our week did not begin exactly as planned.  The plan was to start the brand new year with lots of enthusiasm, good attitudes, and joyful anticipation for schoolwork.  But then I woke up Monday morning and I could not sit upright without feeling super sick.  So, I spent the morning in bed.  The boys were only too happy about it.  They were very kind and made me nice cards.

Henry was so excited to start his first grade math book that he couldn't wait another day and brought it upstairs to do on the floor.

Josiah quickly said he was in charge of the house and would take care of things.  I begged them not to do the dishes for me.  (We've been there before with dish soap in the dishwasher.)  They did practice a show and performed it for me.  Josiah likes to give lots of acting directions and lines to his cast mates, so the shows are sometimes hard to follow.  By the afternoon I was upright, much to their dismay.  It meant that school was a possibility the following day.

This was a still from their show.

School officially started back up Tuesday.  There was little enthusiasm, slightly dismal attitudes, and a paltry amount of joy.  Some days we have great days of school and accomplish much with little complaining and then there are many more days with lots of whining and complaining that sends me to the computer searching out charter schools.

By Wednesday, Josiah must have caught our bug and threw up in the morning.  It was a quick bug because 30 minutes later he was asking for food and he didn't stop for the rest of the day.  He liked my "crispy toast" as he called it.  Most of us would just call it toast, but Todd likes "light" toast (warm bread) and I like real toast (brown and crispy).  I tried to give him a little break on school with the throwing up and all, but I wanted him to do one math sheet (front and back!).  The horror.  It tooks hours, literally, hours.  It was ridiculous.  Those moments make me think about the kids that get off the school bus and have to do homework.  I cannot imagine having to do homework with Josiah after a full day of school.  It is then that homeschooling is the better alternative for him.

Josiah was very happy that his Angry Birds Lego kit came in the mail.  It was a kit for slightly older kids, so it was a little more of a challenge than he's used to, which caused a few breakdowns, but he got it completed.

Caroline had an exciting finish to her week.  Our karate school started up a new class for her peers and she tried it out.  Lucky for her, Henry's gi had gotten too small for him, so we passed it on down the line.  She was very excited for the weeks prior to it starting.  She was very excited on the car ride there.  She was very excited until we walked into the karate building and she actually had to go in the gym room.  But finally she sat down next to a little boy she knew and after another 10 minutes or so of not participating, she got into it.  She can now show us "fighting stance" and is learning to punch and kick like the best of them.

Josiah is getting very excited about his upcoming birthday.  I asked him to write a list of the things he wanted to eat and what he wanted to do on his special day.  He named off three restaurants for all the major meals.  So, basically he wants to eat.  Henry started planning his birthday, too, and not only did he name three different restaurants for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but he also named two other restaurants to get snacks between meals.  Henry also wants to go to a bounce house place on his birthday, which is pretty much what you want to do after eating all day.  Jump on inflatables.

I'm still on mustache watch.  Unfortunately, Todd received two compliments on it this week, further encouraging him to keep it.  Plus the fact that he actually likes it.  He's told all his co-workers how much I dislike it.  I'm not sure what he's trying to accomplish by keeping it.  Maybe he's participating in an experiment at his university about growing unsightly facial hair and the reactions of those around you.