Awana Awards

Caroline bought a Frozen Lego kit which arrived in the mail Monday afternoon.  She didn't want the boys to help her with it, but they sure sat there, and talked, and picked up all the pieces while she and I put it together.  My head actually hurt that evening from the abundance of words spoken in a high-pitched excited manner for hours at a time.  In the end, Caroline got her Ice Castle with Elsa, Anna, and Olaf.  She's a happy girl.

Caroline got her pumpkin bread this week as well.  For the past couple of weeks, she has been picking out the can of pumpkin from the pantry and asking to eat it for breakfast.  I don't know what she thought canned pumpkin tasted like, but we finally got around to making her pumpkin bread.  In a mere 36 hours, the kids, and only the kids, had eaten an entire loaf.

Caroline also got to go out with Todd to have a special lunch with him this weekend.  So, she's been making good in the food department.

In school this week, we learned about coral reefs in science and the boys made really good versions of them out of clay.  Henry had a variety of coral in his model.  Josiah made brain coral.


Caroline made a sand castle.

We also learned about Dutch dikes and the boys attempted to make some out of sand but they soon learned the weaknesses of dikes.  We also watched a few You Tube videos of Dutch dikes.  Type that in and see what you get.  For every three clean Dutch dike videos we passed, there was at least one of the other variety.

Henry also learned subtraction this week and has taken quite a liking to it.  After finishing up his usual math assignment, he asked to do a whole sheet of just subtraction.  He did that for a few days and still smiles when he thinks about subtraction.  He's a funny kid.

We met our local sheriff's deputy.  All the neighborhoods in this area have the sheriff's department patrol them.  We always see them driving up and down the streets several times a day.  One day this week the deputy turned on our street to stop and introduce himself.  Caroline chatted him up and he gave the kids stickers.  He showed me his radar system and said they can shoot radar from the front or the back or the car, from a stationary position or while driving.  I certainly took note of those helpful hints.  So, now, while we're out on our morning break we can wave and say Hi to our new officer friend.  

The weekend was a busy one.  Friday night the kids had their Awana Award Ceremony.  They all got certificates, Henry and Caroline got ribbons, and Josiah got his Sparky plaque for finishing all three Sparks books.  They were excited to receive their awards, eat the cookies afterwards, and then play on the playground.  Now, our Henry likes to run head first into all things.  He is always in forward motion.  Unfortunately, he ran right into the bottom of the slide, which in his defense was where he was aiming.  I think he was trying to jump on the bottom so that he could climb up it.  But the way things go for him, he jumped toward the bottom, hit his nose pretty badly on the slide, and then was hit by Josiah who was in the process of sliding down the slide, "I couldn't stop."  It wasn't a shake-it-off injury.  It was a, "let's go home and get some ice on that nose injury" and that was what we did.  It was already late at that point, but it wasn't the happy, fun ending we had anticipated.  And while his nose still hurt a lot, Henry said the reason he was so upset to leave was because he didn't want it to be his fault as to why we left when we did.  (We told him it was time to go anyway.)  Poor kid.  And his nose was okay....thank goodness.

Josiah finished our week up with his WAM performance.  He had been talking about how funny it was going to be and that we'd really like it.  It was a "Whodunit?" musical about the Good Samaritan and the kids did a really good job.  Josiah spotted us and waved like crazy during the time people were taking their seats.  Then, as soon as the musical began, he quickly put those hands down and didn't do a single hand motion for the rest of the evening.  He was easy to spot in the crowd.  Out of the hundred or so kids in the choir, only two weren't doing the hand motions.  Our Josiah and another little boy.

The best part of the WAM performance were the emails leading up to it.  Two days prior we got an email with the subject line: Lice Alert.  So, yeah, that was fun.  Fortunately we have not seen any on our kids' heads and I just pray it remains that way.  Josiah tends to be a bit of a hypochondriac when it comes to these things.  We told him to not share hats, not to put his head close/touching another kid's head, etc.  But the minute he knew about lice, he was scratching his head and finding lint and asking if it was a lice.  This kid has laser sharp focus on these types of things.

It is nice for all of these activities to come to an end for a while so we can have some weeks without rushing about.

And just some last pictures of Henry jump roping.  He really likes doing it, but the expressions Caroline captures of him jumping are pretty funny.