VBS, Part 3

The boys went to VBS this week.  This was their third year doing it at this particular church.  The theme has been superheroes and it was Part 3 of the superhero trilogy, so the boys were already familiar with the characters and story.  In year's past I was able to volunteer, but this year they did not allow me to volunteer since we are not members of the church.  That was fine.  It's not often you hear, "No, you can't volunteer."  But the problem that arose was that Henry did not want to do it if I wasn't going to volunteer.  So, on the first day of VBS, he spent the morning walking around the house ranting, "VBS is stupid.  I hate it."  I convinced him to just give it one day to see how it went.  I knew he wanted to know what was going to happen with the superheroes.  So, he gave it a day.  He went in reluctantly, but after we picked him up and got in the car, he and Josiah talked the whole drive home about the story line and where they were sitting during one show, what snack they ate, etc.  Clearly, he'd had a good time.

For the rest of VBS, each morning, Henry would somewhat reluctantly go into his class, but by each afternoon he was all smiles.  Then, Thursday evening they had the "Big Show" for the whole family to attend.  At the end, they showed the theme for next year, Pirates, and Henry left saying he wanted to do the Pirates VBS.  So, it was a success.

Josiah had a great time.  He always enjoys these sorts of things.  When we were all there for the Big Show, they wanted to take a picture with each and every thing that had to do with the superheroes.

They pretended they were moving in most pictures...

Caroline was disappointed that she didn't get to participate, but we had fun together.  I was able to get a haircut (yeah!), we shopped at Goodwill where she wanted every toy they had (some of which I'm pretty sure we donated).  She even got to watch her movie from the library without the boys' commentary that it was a baby movie.  Every morning after we dropped Henry off in his classroom, we passed the Superhero pedestal, and every morning she wanted a picture on it.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Henry has been into naming all the U.S. states recently.  The other day he said he was going to name all 51 states.  I reminded him we have only 50 states and he was pretty adamant that Canada should be included.  I was impressed, though, he named all but Wyoming.  And speaking of educating him in U.S. geography, I was working all week on our school room.  Basically, I hadn't touched anything in there since last June 1st, so there was a lot of putting away of the old and getting out the new.  Plus, we've done some rearranging of furniture to make the room more functional since Caroline will be doing more real school this year.  She will be starting CC as well and we're looking forward to this year because it is U.S. history and geography.  Part of the curriculum is learning all the states and their capitals, so hopefully Henry will ditch Canada and pick up Wyoming.

A few months ago, the kids put a hole in our wall.  What happened was I told the kids to go wash their hands.  One child was washing their hands, a second child came in the bathroom, impatient to wait their turn, and started washing their hands.  The first child, not happy to share the sink area, pushed the second child who fell back into the wall knocking the toilet paper holder which broke it and a chunk of the wall with it.  So, a few months, a few emails to Grandpa, and a few YouTube videos later and we fixed the wall.  Todd did the first steps with a little help from his friends.  They seriously were all over him the entire time he was working.  And I'm glad that he let them watch, and I'm glad that they see him fixing things.  They had many questions about it and were surprised that the wall was hollow.

We are down to our last week of summer vacation next week.  It is sad to leave vacation behind, but I'm looking forward to having a better routine to our days.

Tokens, Trophies, and Dead Tired

This was a surprisingly busy week with surprisingly few pictures to show for it.  We began a token system this week.  It seems as the summer has worn on the obedience has waned and the mean talk has increased.  For example,
Me: "Child, please put away your papers/markers/Legos/toys/dolls/shoes [insert any and every object a child has touched]."
Child, in an increasingly whiny/combative/angry/lazy/[insert any tone of voice except pleasant]: "But, Mommmmmmmy, it's not mine/I didn't do it/I'm not finished with it/why do you make me do everything?/it's not fair."
So, Voila, the token system.  If they do not do what I ask right away, or they answer back with anything but a pleasant, "Yes/Yes ma'am/Yes, Mommy dearest, I'd love to do what you ask me" then they get one token taken away.  They get three tokens a day and at the end of the week if they have 18 or more tokens then they can take something out of the garage sale pile or the pile labeled "Grandchildren."  I have a box of confiscated items that were too nice to get rid of, so I told them I'm saving the toys for when they have kids, hence, the grandchildren label.

We had a fun time at the splash pad in the neighborhood.  We hadn't been since last year, and it wasn't working the day we went then, so I didn't recall the set up.  The kids had a great time, but I was sweating like crazy because there was no shade.  Technically there was shade if I stayed on the grass, but the fire ants found me there, so I stood on the sidewalk.  Next time I'll have to walk through it once or twice to stay cool.  It's like a bazillion degrees in the sun.

We made it to a program at the library to fulfill one of the summer challenges for the reading club.  It was a man with a guitar teaching the kids to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  It takes a special man to sing little diddies for the kids.  Basically, he resorted to potty talk, telling them they needed to use less toilet paper, which got them all laughing.
Josiah also finished his 20 books for the summer and earned his trophy.  He was happy about that.  Fortunately, we still have another reading program to finish out July to keep them motivated and focused.

We met up with a friend from Virginia who happened to be in our neck of the woods and she took our family pictures.  We're anxiously awaiting to see how they turned out.  She has a little boy who just turned one and our kids completely loved him.  Henry kept asking me, "Can I touch him?"  They just wanted to hold his hand and walk with him everywhere.  They were all really good with him.  It almost made me want to have another baby just to see them interact with a little person all the time.  Almost, but not quite.  We'll just have to enjoy other's babies for now.  We met in the evening and went out to dinner after, so we didn't get home until 9 p.m.  Our passengers were completely passed out.


We did a ton of yard work this weekend.  We have discovered foundation issues with our house (yeah! just what we wanted!), so we worked on getting rid of foliage too close to the house.  Henry was out there helping us and he is just a joyful little helper.  He is so pleasant and just runs and does whatever we ask.  We love working with him.  But Henry is also a saver in every sense of the word.  Every time I was getting a bundle of branches ready to be tied up, he'd always find some to save.  "Oh, mom, I can use this one."  Right now he has a whole pile of branches that he's going to use to build a house.  He's always working on a project.

This coming week the boys have VBS in the mornings.  Caroline isn't old enough for the program so she and I are going to have girl time together.  It should be a good week.

Wind in Your Hair

We participated in the CC Practicum for the first three days of this week.  The kids were in camp all day: "Geo-Draw" for the boys and "Play Camp" for the lady.  The boys were not over the top about it after the first day, but I think that may have been a reflection of the length of the day (9 a.m.-4 p.m.) rather than the camp itself.  I'm not sure they've done anything like this all day before.  For my part, we got to listen to a speaker who had graduated all three of her kids from CC, and she was so encouraging.  Homeschooling is not easy and she opened up about the struggles and triumphs she had with her kids.  We parents were so appreciative.  Seeing how they do middle and high school in CC was awesome.  They really teach them to think, speak, and write very well.  The students learn to draw the entire world from memory in 7th grade.  It was exciting to see how the program develops and how what we're doing now really sets them up well for the later grades.  It was just what I needed as we gear up for the next school year.
When I picked the boys up from Geo-Draw camp one day, their teacher said that Josiah was so sweet.  He told them he had a sister and that he loved her very much.  Henry, having heard what Josiah said, chimed in, "Yeah. I guess I like her, too."

Our church had a movie night this past week, so we went and watched Finding Dory.  They had a popcorn bar with an abundance of toppings.  Our kids filled their bags up with popcorn, animal crackers, Cheez-its, marshmallows, Skittles, M&Ms, gummy bears, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, etc.  There was one poor container of raisins that sat untouched the whole evening.  Caroline went up for refills at least 5 additional times.  The boys went back, too, but they weren't dainty like Caroline, they filled their bags up to the brim.  Caroline had a friend from WAM that was kind enough to share her pillow, so they sat together for a while which was pretty cute.

Henry has made some major life changes this week.  He has always freaked out whenever we drove with the windows down.  Like he would just start screaming, "Put them down! Put them down!"  (because in his anxious state he always got it confused).  He was deathly afraid that every paper in the car would fly out.  However, now, in the middle of July in southeast Texas, Henry has decided he likes the windows down.  The other kids were so happy about this change that we have driven for the past several days with windows down, arriving at our destinations windblown and sweaty.  I'm sure I'll appreciate it more in October.

Henry has also conquered the fear of getting a professional haircut.  We had a coupon for the haircut place, so one morning I planned on taking Josiah & Caroline to get their hair trimmed.  Henry surprised me by saying he wanted one, too.  What he really wanted was for all three of them to get their hair cut at the exact same time, which just so happened to work out because we were there early in the morning.  He was beaming afterwards.  It was a really good cut, too, especially with his spiky hair.  As we walked back to our car, Josiah kept telling Henry what a great haircut he had, "Henry, that's a great haircut.  It's the best haircut you've ever had."  I tried not to be a little offended...


Caroline had her last ride in her old car seat this week.  We let her pick out a booster seat and it arrived in the mail.  She picked out the same exact blue flame booster seat that the boys have.  Henry was upset about it because he thought they wouldn't be able to tell all three of them apart.  The boys' fabric is slightly off, so they can tell theirs apart.  I told him hers would be the clean one.  After it came in the mail, she was so excited, but then later the same day she said, "Mommy, wait until I forget about the booster seat and then you can surprise me with it.  Or... Maybe when I forget about it, you can put it in the car and surprise me when we go to the car."  So we have a girl who likes to be surprised.  We didn't wait long because the next morning she was already asking about the booster seat.  We "surprised" her that day with it already in the car.

Sitting in the way back for the first time

This weekend Josiah got his library card.  The night before we went to the library, he kept saying, "I can't believe I'm old enough to have a library card."  That was one of those nice moments when we got to tell him it was because he had shown that he was responsible with books.  We only let him check one book out for the first time, but he was pretty excited about it.  Somehow he found a Muppet's comic book as his book, so we've been hearing things like, "Did you know that Gonzo was really a plumber before he was a Muppet?"

Henry and Caroline, who are not ready for their own library cards, went to the summer reading tables at the library and collected their awards.  They got certificates, pencils, bookmarks, and their beloved trophy.  They only had to read 20 books each to gain all of that, but with Caroline she was up to 64 books on the computer and that's just what we put in there.  Henry had 31 books that he read all by himself.  Josiah's working on it.  I'm not letting him slide by with Henry-level books, so he's not always happy with me about that.  For a while we were struggling with getting Henry to read books.  He loved to be read to, but when I would ask him to read to me he'd gauge the length of the book by the size of the font, which wasn't the best judge.  But the past few days he was motivated to reach 30 books and did just that. (Caroline with last year's and this year's trophies.)


This coming week should be just a nice, easy summer week.  We may even check out our neighborhood pool now that Caroline can officially get her neck submerged.

The Vacation

It seems incredibly difficult to encapsulate three and a half weeks of fun into a relatively short space.  So, here we go.

VIRGINIA

The kids were so, so excited to see their Grandad & Nana again.  Henry even said he wanted to be an engineer at NASA just like his Grandad.  Josiah responded with, "I'm not sure what I want to do.  I'll just be a man with a pig and I'll bring my pig to visit Henry at NASA every day."
Todd took a trip down memory lane and got out all of his old games from the attic.  He and Henry had a few games of Gunfight at the OK Corral.

We played with bubbles, ran around the yard, played baseball, ate many delicious dinners, and took rides steering Grandad's lawnmower.

Grandad & Nana took us all to a Chinese buffet.  Our kids were apparently not familiar with the word "buffet."  Josiah kept calling it the buffet, as in Jimmy Buffet.  Henry said we were going to the Chinese bucket.  Henry at least ventured out and tried some Chinese food.  Caroline filled her plate with Chinese chicken nuggets and french fries.  Josiah ate mostly plates of carbs, but he did "try" the Mongolian BBQ.  Of all the meats and vegetables and other items you could choose from, he picked a small pile of noodles that he ended up not liking because they had flavor on them (soy sauce?).  With him, we're just glad he tried it.  The adults enjoyed it all!

We got to see old friends which was great.  The boys got to spend time swimming with old friends one day while Caroline was still in the hospital.  Fortunately, we got to go back and spend a second day with them so we all got to catch up with our friends.

The kids enjoyed playing with Bryce, Grandad & Nana's neighbor.  If they ever spotted Bryce outside, they were ready to run and play with him, and he is just the friendliest kid.

We went back to Bluebird Gap Farm where Henry wanted a picture of himself with every animal.  We made it through the farm in record speed and played on the playground before they got to the stage which is what they all wanted to do.  They all danced and jumped off the front.  Henry went from a Russian dancer to a mosh-pit rocker.

One day we went up to see Great-Grandma and celebrated her birthday a week late.  She had salvaged a keyboard from their trash area, cleaned it up, and the kids loved it.  It was a very coveted item on the drive back to Texas.  They played the demo songs repetitively.  All three kids love Greensleeves now and can recognize it immediately.

BEACH

We had a great week at the beach.  Josiah started it off by jumping through the porch window, rolling onto, and then off of Henry's bed, onto the floor where he injured his back and thought he couldn't move anymore.  When paralysis didn't set in, I got him up and had him lay in his bed while I securely locked the window with threats that they were not to do that again.  He really did hurt his back, though, it hurt for a few days.  Lesson learned?  Probably not.  The kids were so happy to see their grandparents though.

Of course, all three kids were up before 6:00 a.m. the next morning, so we got an early start on the beach.  The kids loved playing in the sand and splashing in the waves.  I tried to keep Caroline away from the water at the beginning of our trip since her neck was still healing, but after a few days, it was hard to keep her away from the ocean.  She loved jumping the waves.  Unfortunately I took no water pictures, because I had a death grip on her hand the whole time.

We tried our hand at pirate golf again.  It was as if I took the three little bears with me.  Josiah thought he was a pro-golfer out hitting balls on the range, he hit so hard and far.  Caroline gently tapped her ball, so she had a 20 stroke average per hole.  Yet she hoisted her club in the air to celebrate each time it went in the hole.  Henry seemed to catch onto the putt-putt concept the best.  He even made a hole in one on the last hole winning himself a free game.


We did all the beach things.  We rode the trolley.

We ate fries and ice cream.


We even went to the playground for some fun, until Josiah wandered away from the playground area and explored all the port-a-potties.  We left for some good full body sanitizing after that.

The best day of all was when their cousins arrived.  These kids love their cousins.  They ran all around the house and the yard, they ate together and played together.  When we walked into town for ice cream, they all held hands and sang Ring Around the Rosie (Caroline would fall to the ground each time the song got to that part).  Josiah, Henry, and Caroline had very full hearts in their presence.  It was hard to say goodbye.

JAMESTOWN
On our last day in Virginia, we finally made it to Jamestown.  We went to the recreated settlement as opposed to the "ruins" one.  The three ships were a big highlight.  The kids could walk all over them and touch everything.  On one of the ships, the interpreter asked the boys if they wanted to help him fix the sail.  They happily pulled the ropes for him and tied it back down.  I'm not sure how many times a day he did this with kids, but they really thought they were helping out which was awesome.

They loved the Powhatan village a lot, too.  They could go in all of the huts, they ground corn, they sat in a canoe that was made there.  They hollowed out the canoes by slowly burning the tree trunks.  They had one tree actually burning and one side of it had a lot of ash that they allowed the kids to scrape out with oyster shells.  Ours tried it, getting ash on their hands, of course, and then Caroline had to scratch her nose, so she had nice little black marks on her face.

the scraping

the scratching

After the Indian village we went to the fort for the English folk.  There we watched an interpreter fire a musket and explain the weaponry difference between the Powhatans and the English.  After hearing about that, Josiah wanted to race back to the Indian village to warn them about the English's guns.  We had to explain he was 410 years too late for that.

We asked them what they liked best.  Josiah said the ships.  Henry was very gracious and said he liked "learning" the best.  If you based what they liked best on where we spent a lot of time, I'd say the water fountains were pretty high up there.  We even got a family picture taken by a gracious tourist.  There aren't many pictures with all of us in it.

The drive back to Texas wasn't too bad, although on day 2 I was thinking I was going to have to call the doctor to get the kids checked out for UTI's we were having to stop so much.  One of our stops was at Buc-ee's which here in Texas is a kind of a big thing.  It's like a gas station on steroids (our pump was #220), but they're known for their clean bathrooms.  The bathrooms were quite clean and the store had everything you could possibly want.  T-shirts, food, wall art, propane tanks, and their famous fudge and jerky.  It was quite the collection.

Henry wearing the noise-cancelling headphones.  Whenever a child put these on said child all of a sudden got a lot louder.

This past week the kids have switched beds.  They thought it would be a fun thing to do and spent all of Monday switching.  You'd think all they'd have to do was switch their pillows around, but our kids wanted to go all the way.  They put their pj's and "morning" clothes in the other's dressers.  Caroline had her jewelry box and hair brush in the boy's room.  It was quite a move.  But what happened was great.  Josiah slept in Caroline's room, so he got to get up at his usual early time and didn't disturb anybody.  Henry and Caroline slept in the bunk beds and didn't get up until 7:30 which is late around here.  They wanted to stay switched, so we didn't want to upset that good sleeping pattern.  Now I'm thinking Josiah needs his own room because this is working out.  He's been thinking the same thing...