A Sad Farewell

We studied the Haitian Revolt at the beginning of the week.  During this time of upheaval in Haiti (Saint Domingue), Napoleon sent his brother-in-law to take charge, but yellow fever (malaria) overwhelmed his troops and killed thousands of Frenchmen.  Our Activity Book, to go along with this story, had old remedies to "cure" malaria.  There were cold baths, hot bricks soaked in vinegar to sweat out the sickness, blisters of mustard paste to stimulate blood flow, all kinds of fun things.  One remedy was to drink limewater and milk to soothe your stomach (which you'd have to drink quickly due to the curdling effect).  This was one we could do.  So, I mixed the lime juice with milk and quickly set out two cups.  Josiah reluctantly tried it, but Caroline refused after watching Josiah's reaction.  It was probably for the best because it was already curdling a few minutes later when Henry tried it.  Henry gave his usual shrug that it wasn't that bad, while Josiah dramatically said otherwise.  These poor people who were subjected to unimaginable pain through the "cures."  We are thankful for modern medicine around here.

Henry, "Meh? I'm a fan of curdling."

Caroline, Nana, and I went shopping earlier in the week, and Caroline proved to be quite the shopping partner.  She gushes over everything sparkly.  We were walking around and she loved all the necklaces and earrings.  When we walked by the high heels with sequins on them, she picked them up and said, "Oooooo, I love high heels."  She touched every soft blanket and sat on every chair they sold.  She was a shopper!

Mid-week, Grandad & Nana flew back home and, as was the case last year, we sadly sent them home with the kids' illnesses.  The morning after they left, Henry woke up and immediately asked, "Can I have my phone just to look at them?"  He had taken a picture of them on an old phone as they were leaving.  He has cried several nights for them.  It is because he loves so much that goodbyes are hard.  We are grateful for all the time we got to spend together, though.  The kids have started a countdown to June when they can be reunited again.

A couple of days later we woke up to snow on the ground.  It does not snow very often around here, so it was quite a surprise.  And because it doesn't snow a lot, we do not have winter coats. The children have all outgrown the ones we brought from Virginia and there was never a reason to buy any more.  We doubled up on sweatshirts, Henry sporting one of Todd's.  They had a lot of fun running around in it and making snowballs.  But they were also freezing and their hands were red when they came inside.  (We don't have gloves either...)  Josiah was the only one to remember snow from our time back east.  (It is hard to believe that they were only 5, 3, & 1 when we left.)

Caroline was so excited to play in snow.  She saved her snowball in the freezer.

The boys threw snowballs at our stop sign.

The boys finished up their robotics class this week as well.  They had an obstacle course and the younger kids were racing the older kids to see who could get through it without touching the legs of the chairs.  Our boys were on the younger kids team and they beat the older kids 4-1.  They were excited for that.  Robotics has turned out to be a well-loved activity.

We finished up CC for the semester as well.  Last year we finished up before Thanskgiving, but we're still on Hurricane Harvey schedule with all of our activities.  It has felt like a very long semester in that regard.  This past semester, for science, we have been doing the human body.  We have done different body systems and learned about different organs.  The culmination was to put our "bodies" together.  The kids got to glue themselves together and our director had printed out pictures of all the kids faces, which made them very cute.  Now we need to find wall space to hang these up.

We got our Christmas tree up this weekend.  Todd set it up and spread out the branches.  I sat and handed out non-breakable ornaments.  The kids put all the ornaments on the tree.  The vast majority of ornaments are now situated in the front middle third of the tree.  It is quite cute to see a heavily decorated tree at their eye level.

Josiah has also drawn a lot from his art site on YouTube.  Caroline sat with him and drew a nutcracker following all the instructions.  I was super impressed with her finished product.  This is going to get laminated and taken out every Christmas.

Sadly, Josiah's weekend ended on a sad note.  He's had a high fever and lots of nose sniffling.  This seems to happen at the end of every semester as well...sickness invades.