FroYo & Sumo

Last week it really felt like we were finishing up all of our activities for a while, but this week was just as busy.  We had our last night of WAM ("Yay, it's over!!!") and Josiah had his last Boys of Iron meeting.  For his Boys of Iron, all the boys in grades 1-5 shot off bottle rockets for an hour.  They filled 2 liter bottles with water, and then pumped them up with air until the pressure got so great that they shot in the air.  Those things shot up super high, much to the boys' delight.

We were up at church a second night for Henry's kindergarten graduation.  It was a really nice thing they did for all the kindergartners.  He was all excited to do it up until the moment we got there.  He finally allowed us to drop him off and while we were away he got to see his new first grade room at church, where they discovered there were no toys.  They got to see the game room, they made crafts, and had sandwiches.  Then we all gathered together for a graduation ceremony.  Henry really loves his one teacher, Mr. Jay.  He's made Sunday mornings much better for Henry and we are very grateful.

Henry was also very much in a celebrating mood before the ceremony began.  He was dancing in his aisle and doing all sorts of silly faces and body movements.


While Henry was enjoying all the kindergarten activities, we took Josiah and Caroline to a playground near church.  They had almost two hours to play before we had to get Henry and it happened that for half the time, Caroline found a little girl to play with and for the other half, Josiah found a little boy.  When Caroline's new found friend was leaving, she kept calling out, "Bye, Claire! Bye, Claire!"  Of course, Caroline was just ignoring her, until I let her know to say goodbye.  Josiah also mastered the monkey bars.  Once he got his body swinging, he did fine.


Todd's been punching his man card a lot this week.  He changed a car battery, did all the yard work, is working on fixing a bathroom fan, and even made gingerbread cookies.  He conveniently left the recipe on the kitchen counter all week and dropped hints about how good the kitchen would smell with cookies baking in it.  He finally gave up and made them himself this evening (he couldn't ask me to do it on Mother's Day).  Now, Todd didn't want to waste any time with making them.  The recipe called for 4 1/2 dozen cookies.  That would be 54 cookies.  He took that as a challenge, made 34 cookies out of his dough, and put them all on the same tray to cook.  What came out looked very much like gingerbread meatballs.  And I quote, "The recipe didn't say to push them down."  In his defense, they did taste good.

Todd also took the boys out for some frozen yogurt.  It's one of those shops where they give you a dish and you put the yogurt and toppings in it yourself.  You pay by weight.  The last time he went, he went on a solo mission with Josiah.  It cost a little over $3 for Josiah's yogurt.  This time he took both boys.  He was helping Henry with the toppings while Josiah was behind him helping himself.  This time it cost a little over $9.  Needless to say, they enjoyed it.

We did get some school done.  (Three more weeks left!)  We learned about Japan and so we had to do what all Japanese people do.  We drank tea and watched a little sumo wrestling.  The boys had a lot of fun doing their own sumo wrestling until one brother sustained a head injury after being pushed into the couch.  He got back up, but we had to call the match from that point.  Caroline enjoyed saying, "3, 2, 1, SUMO!"

And we ended up with Mother's Day this morning.  When I came downstairs, Josiah, our chief celebrator, had made me a toasted bagel with butter ("I toasted that half on '3' and the other half on '5.'") with a mug of hot water.  He's our holiday man, always ready to celebrate any and all holidays.  He's a good kid.

He's also getting older.  We went to get him a haircut this afternoon and when we left he said he loved it.  In the car, he wanted the windows up - a rarity if Henry's not in the car - because he didn't want to mess up his hair.  Then he wasn't sure he wanted the air conditioning on either because the air from the vents might mess it up.  But I wasn't about to melt on the way home, so he suffered through the A/C vents being on.

We are finally down to just one activity - karate - for the rest of the summer.  Three more weeks of school.  It is good to be in the home stretch.