Red Belt-Black Stripe

Josiah received the game, Jumanji, from his cousins.  We had fun playing it, mainly because there's a rhino figure that gets to block other players from moving forward.  That brought a lot of entertainment.  Todd made lots of "rhino" noises when he moved it around, but his "rhino" was eerily reminiscent of an elephant trumpeting.  He and I went back and forth blocking each other.  Josiah won the first game, which everyone was happy for because we were all about to die.  We've been playing board games nearly every night we're home and it's been a lot of fun.  Caroline typically plays with the remaining game pieces or she's our "timer girl" - she flips over the sand timers.  She likes her role.  We've enjoyed the game time.

It is good to get some family time in with the board games, because the kids are all about the neighbor kids right now.  The second they get home from school they are ringing our doorbell.  It's like our lives just all of a sudden changed.  Nearly every afternoon and hours upon hours on the weekends, they're playing together.  We've been trying to do one hour at the neighbor's house/one hour at our house and back and forth.  The kids have spent so many hours away lately, that our house is cleaner than it's ever been.  There have been amazing benefits to neighbor friends, and the kids really love running back and forth between houses, but it just takes some getting used to for the parental units.  We knew friends would be the favored people eventually, but it's come a bit sooner than expected.  Still, I'm loving the cleaner house. 

We have been learning about the Romans in school lately.  The ancient Greeks had philosophy down, but the Romans made a lot of cool things.  We read about their roads and aqueducts and then watched a few videos about them so the kids could actually see what we were talking about.  After lots of observation, we made an aqueduct of our own using the materials we had on hand - our marble maze pieces.  It was a good exercise because the kids were forced to work together to get it to work properly.  They were proud of their outcome, but there were quite a few arguments as to who could put the water (marble) down and when, but they had a good time with it.

Josiah has been waiting for months and months to get his next karate belt invitation.  He finally got it this week and had his test on Friday night.  Todd went and said he did really well.  He was proud of his progress.  Henry and Caroline are not as keen to do karate anymore, but Josiah says he wants to work his way up to black belt.  This picture is Josiah desperately looking out the window for the other student to come for the belt test.

Josiah worked with Mr. Thomas throughout his test and even Todd came home and said, "Mr. Thomas is amazing." We wish Mr. Thomas could come live with us. He is just an amazing instructor - incredibly encouraging, but still having high expectations.




That was our week! Short & sweet. School, activities, and tons of neighbor fun.