Swim Success

We started off the week doing well.  Monday morning I mowed the front yard while the kids all played outside.  When the mowing was done, they helped sweep the clippings all over the driveway and sidewalk.  They asked to help and didn't complain.  Both boys with a broom and Caroline walking around with the dustpan and bucket.  It was great.
Inside we played Upwords, Yahtzee, and Uno.  We read.  We ate.  We were productive.

Tuesday morning the kids all focused their energy on making their cow costumes for Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-fil-a.  The boys made their signs and masks themselves which turned out really well.  As with every year, I always think we should laminate these signs so we can just reuse them next year, but then we go to CFA, eat, and the signs inevitably get juice or greasy fries on them.  No one feels like taking the time to do them again when we get home.  So next year it'll be the same scurrying around in the morning to make the costumes.  They ate their free kids meals and then played on the indoor playground.  There were about 20 kids in there playing, so it was slightly chaotic.  We left when I heard Caroline leading the girls in the "Boys not allowed!" chant at the top of the slide.

The kids finished up their session of swim lessons this week.  The last two days there were two instructors helping them, so I could see lots of progress.  They all passed the Yellow Starfish class and have moved up to the Pink Jellyfish.  They'll have two weeks in that and we shall see who moves up from there.  As promised, we went to our neighborhood pool on Friday morning so they could show me all they've learned.  I was very impressed with their skills.  Josiah could swim the full length of the pool.  It wasn't swimming as in freestyle or backstroke, but he was on his back with his hands above his head and his feet were kicking him across.  He did great.  He can float!  Henry and Caroline showed me all they learned with floating and diving for rings/torpedoes.  They all did so well.  I was very happy with their progress.  I cannot wait to see what they can do after another session of lessons.  They also went down the water slide what felt like 100 times.  Each time they got to the top, they'd yell down at me, "Are you ready?  Are you ready? [pause, pause] Are you ready?"  YES! I'm ready!!  I don't have many pictures of the pool, since I'm in the water with them, so here are the boys at break time.

The last 20 minutes we were there, Caroline attached herself to a little baby girl.  The baby was throwing the ball in the water and Caroline would pick it up and hand it back.  As with all babies, this went on for a very long time.  The mother was kind and let Caroline hang out with her baby.  Caroline really wants a baby sister.  Since that's not going to happen, she gets to play with others and carry around her baby Kevin.

Mid-week our church had a preschool movie night.  The boys were glad that Caroline was in pre-K and was invited to go.  This is the annual event that has the popcorn bar with all the fixins.  We were coming from swim and were late to arrive, so not wanting to be the parent who uses flash photography in the theater, I refrained from taking any pictures.  Needless to say, they filled their popcorn containers up with marshmallows, goldfish, gummy bears, and scoops and scoops of M&M's.  Seriously, including their second and third refills, they probably ate the equivalent of two packages of M&M's.  Not too surprisingly, two-thirds of the way through the movie, many of the preschoolers, hopped up on sugar, were up and walking all over the place not paying a bit of attention to the movie.  It is bittersweet that our kids will be too old for it next year.  With Caroline entering Kindergarten, we have officially finished the preschool years.

This weekend, the boys turned in their summer reading logs to Half-Priced Books and got their $5 book bucks.  Josiah decided fairly quickly on a Garfield comic book (to illustrate again) as well as a Star Wars activity book.  Henry spent the majority of his time reading baby board books, so when I gave the 5-minute warning he hadn't even looked for a book to purchase.  We were in the store for probably 45 minutes, so he had had the time.  He finally decided on a Build Your Own Minion punch-out activity book.  I'm not a big fan of minions, but at that moment I was a big fan of checking out at the register.  The boys have been making minions constantly.  I think Henry likes to make them, but Josiah seems to be the one playing with them.

Josiah has not only been illustrating his new Garfield book, but he's been drawing lots of Garfield pictures, too.  He's getting pretty good at them.  

Todd gave me the gift of new tires today.  We dropped our car off for the annual inspection and they took one look at my tires and said it would fail.  My first thought was, How can you tell that by just looking?  You didn't even do the penny test!  Then we looked at the front tires and were shocked to see how bald they were.  We were incredibly grateful for the protection we had to make it back from Virginia without any issue.

This coming week is supposed to be really hot.  There's another dust cloud from the Sahara that's hanging out overhead.  Apparently it acts like a ceiling keeping all the hot air in, with little chance for rain.  So, yeah,  a week of ridiculously high temperatures and minuscule dust particles in the air.  It'll be an indoor week for the most part.

And since there weren't many pictures this week, here's Caroline in her swim shirt and the shorts she put on to match.  This girl likes color.