Swim Lessons

When we drove into Houston from our trek across the country, we were greeted with an extremely hazy skyline.  The skyscrapers were just shadows in the haze.  We learned later that there was a big dust cloud from the Saharan Desert that had traveled across the ocean and passed through Houston.  We were also greeted with Houston weather - super hot and humid with lots of mosquitoes.   The buzz of mosquito spraying trucks late at night are always a welcome sound. 

The kids have had to adjust back to "house rules" after having "vacation rules" for quite a few weeks.  We're having a break from media and while they complained for the first few days, they've resigned themselves to acceptance (at least there's no media during the day - I can't control when Todd watches TV and they happen to watch along).  One day, I set a timer for reading time and it was very cool that even after the timer went off, they all continued reading.  That'll make your heart feel good.

This week, the kids all began swim lessons.  I put them all in the same class even though Josiah is older and has more experience.  The problem is, he still cannot float.  Floating seemed like an important enough skill in the survival department.  They have absolutely loved swimming lessons.  The first day went great - they were blowing bubbles, dunking their heads under water, and practicing floating.  By the second day, they forgot that they were taking swimming lessons and thought it was a "see what I can do" class.  We discussed the purpose of class and they did much better by the third day.  Now we need to bring them to our neighborhood pool so they can show me all that they've learned and to have a free playing time.

Waiting for their class on the first day.

Three in a row.

In the pool, Josiah tends to throw his body all over  - bobbing up and down in the water, throwing himself backwards, he's constantly moving.  Henry's far more reserved and less comfortable.  His floating was quite stiff the first day, but he's relaxed more each following day.

I'm exited to see each of them swim the length of the pool.  It may not happen for all of them this summer, but it will be a big accomplishment when it does happen.

The 4th of July hit mid-week and for us it was a very rainy day.  We tried our hand at Great Grandpa's 3-D puzzle that Great Grandma gave us.

What we learned was that Great Grandpa is a puzzle-master-genius and though we gave it a valiant effort over several days, we finally gave in and put it up, to be tried again in a few years.  It was hard!

Josiah showed up as John Adams and read the Preamble to the Constitution to us all.  While it was a good speech, we'll have to teach him the Declaration of Independence, slightly more appropriate for the 4th.

Caroline and I made a Patriotic cake.  What we envisioned was a layer cake with red on the top, followed by thick white frosting, and a blue cake on the bottom.  What we ended up with was a peachy colored top layer, a thin layer of white frosting, and a greenish layer on the bottom.  A bit more food coloring would have helped.  That, and we need to learn how to make our own frosting, so we can have enough to cover a two-layer cake.  She enjoyed helping make the cake...

...and eating it.  Despite its looks, it did taste good.

The rain made for a lazy day and Caroline fell asleep mid-day.  While she slept, Todd introduced the boys to the 80's comedian, Gallagher, and his Sledge-o-matic.  At the end of each of his performances, Gallagher brings out the Sledge-o-matic, a giant wooden mallet, and smashes it down on apples, heads of lettuce, mustard bottles, pineapples, anything really.  The boys found it hilarious.  They were cracking up, but they also repeated everything Gallagher said, so you could only hear about half of his routine.  Unfortunately, the two jokes the boys found funniest were the ones with innuendo that they didn't understand.  One in particular was about a lady in North Dakota who had 22 children.  She bought the Sledge-o-matic and never had a problem having children again.  Neither did her husband.  Ba-dum-bum. The boys think it's because she used the Sledge-o-matic on her own kids.  Not quite...  Of course, this was the joke they were relating on the drive to church this morning.  Don't share it in your class!!

We didn't see too many fireworks this year, unless you count A Capital Fourth on TV.  I'm guessing it was because of the rain, but we let the kids stay up til 9 p.m. hoping there would be more to see.  They weren't happy to go to bed, yet fell asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow.  A little after 9, the fireworks really got started.

Henry finished out his week earning a new belt in karate.  There were only three kids testing so Henry had Mr. Gregory testing him the entire time.   I wasn't sure if we should have put off testing for a while since we haven't been to karate in a month, but Henry wanted to do it.  It was a lot of work and a lot of moves/kicks/hits/forms/self-defense that he had to remember, but he did really well.

He easily broke all three boards on the floor at the end.  This time they held a board up in the air and he had to try and kick and break it.  He wasn't able to do that, but he gave it a good try.

Saturday morning, Josiah busied himself with summer school lessons for Todd and I.  All three kids were busy in the dining room getting things set up.  When they came out to get Todd and me, Josiah said, "Don't gasp when you walk in."  That wasn't a comforting thought.  He had taped up dinosaur pictures on our blinds.  I think that was the gasping moment.  (We don't like to tape things on our blinds because we've had blinds break...)  They gave us a few math papers to do and we each had to draw a picture before it devolved into all three kids talking at once and there was no order to anything.  We deemed summer school over, but I did offer to do some school with the boys if they were interested.  They weren't.


Josiah has gasping on his mind, because when I came downstairs this morning, Josiah said, "Don't gasp when you walk in the school room."  Hmmm.  You do know how I like to start my mornings. Apparently the kids had an early morning painting session, and they hadn't exactly cleaned it up yet.

Next week is just a nice, easy week, just swim and karate.  I'm hoping to get a few closets cleaned up, assuming I don't have too many helpers around trying to get me to save everything from the trash bin.

While I'm sitting here writing this blog, Todd and Caroline are playing Guess Who? behind me.  I heard Caroline say, "You look like this guy, Daddy, and Mommy looks like her."  When I saw the pictures I laughed out loud.