Henry Is 8!

Caroline did a great job on her presentation at CC this week.  At the beginning of the school year she sort of mumbled her presentations, wanted me to stand up there with her, and didn't say a whole lot in general.  This past week I was in her room and she stood in front of her class by herself, looked at her audience, spoke in a voice people could hear and explained what she had made really well.  She spoke about her Roman mosaic that she made with beans.  I was impressed with her progress.  That is one of the things I love about CC - the kids have to do presentations each week so that they get comfortable standing up in front of a group, speaking well, and fielding questions.  It's great practice.  (Josiah did his presentation on Michael Jackson and The Beatles this week.  He had two minutes to talk about some of the most famous singers of all time.  While some people could talk about these two artists for hours, he needed just one minute per artist.)


The day after CC it was this guy's 8th birthday! 

I cannot believe he is 8!  He even came in our room at 2:00 a.m. to let us know it was his birthday.  He stayed in our bed and we were aware of his ever-moving 8-year old body all night long.














He wanted his birthday gifts hidden again, so we had his scavenger hunt ready.


He got so many good gifts from grandparents and aunts and uncles.  He spent the morning playing with every single thing he got.  He put together all his Lego kits.  He read through his books, he played with his new Hot Wheels set, he played many games of baseball.

He even went through all of his football stickers and (somewhat) organized them by teams.

Todd even started reading one of his new baseball books.

We made it to Which Wich for lunch.  Henry got his customary milkshake, which still sits nearly full in our refrigerator several days later.  Mmmm.  We spent the afternoon at a new park that we (I) have always wanted to visit.  It is in a very nice neighborhood and they spared no expense on this playground area.  It was amazing.  One of the favorite features was the zipline.  It was tons of fun.  The kids went across it one-by-one in the beginning, but then they would go two-by-two.  Before any other families showed up, I took a ride across it myself.  If I didn't have so many kids clambering to ride it again, I'd have gone across it a few more times. They had stepping stones that went in a spiral.  They had huge boulders to climb on and lots of stumps staggered to help you climb up walls.  They really let kids climb everywhere.  It was an awesome place.

We had a spaghetti dinner before heading off to Awana that night.  After Awana, when we were all incredibly tired, we sang to Henry and cut his cake. 

Actually he cut his own cake and each child wanted a different part of the cake, so this is what it looked like after Henry served the three kids.  Henry wanted an "H," Josiah wanted part of the "L," and Caroline wanted part of the "N."

Now several days later, people are still picking the letters they want to eat and the cake is in this condition.

Saturday, Todd and Josiah went to a local Comicon called Brazcon at an area high school.  He said it was really well done and much bigger than he expected.  It still had all the Comicon-type people dressed up as anime characters, Star Wars characters, Dr. Who people, Harry Potter characters, etc..  I am personally not a comicon-type person.  I'm not a, Hey let's dress up as our favorite character and hang out with other people dressed up, too, kind of person.  It's all a bit weird to me.  I'd rather Josiah not become that dressing up sort of person either.  Just a future hope of mine.  When they got there, they allowed Josiah to register with their library system (different county) and in doing so, he got a free t-shirt.  A little later, Todd heard a rather robust lady go up to get her free t-shirt and they informed her that they had already run out of Triple XL.  It was only 9:30 a.m.

One of the reasons they went was because the author Nathan Hale was there and Josiah has read all of his books.  He writes historically accurate graphic novels (the new term for comic books) about the Revolutionary War, WWI, WWII, the Donner Dinner Party, the Underground Railroad, etc.  The first session Josiah and Todd went to, they heard Nathan Hale talking about how he got to where he was in his writing/illustrating career.  He likened it to stairs.  In the third grade, his teacher noticed that he could draw and asked him to decorate their classroom door for Halloween.  In middle school, a teacher asked him and his friend to paint the backdrops for the drama department.  That lead him to painting backdrops for the community theater.  Because he did that, he got a job painting background scenery in a museum.  Towards the end of his talk, he said he is where he is because in the third grade he said, "Yes!" to decorating his classroom door.  Each thing built on the next thing.  He encouraged the kids to say, Yes! to opportunities.  Some kids may level up in Fortnite (video game), but you can level up in life by saying yes.  He also said that he wallpapered an entire wall in his office with rejection letters.  He encouraged perseverance, too.  Todd said he was great to listen to because he drew the entire time he spoke - stick figures acting out what he was saying.  He was quite funny, too.  After the first session they got in line to get Josiah's book signed.  The rest of the day was filled with eating brisket tacos and S'mores waffles from food trucks, browsing (and buying from) the Lego vendor table, and going to other drawing sessions.  It was a great experience, all except for the end when Josiah told Todd, "I need to figure out who I want to dress up as for next year."  Palm to the face.

While they were doing their comic book thing, Henry, Caroline and I went to a birthday party.  The little girl whose party it was, really loves Laura Ingalls Wilder, so the party theme was pioneer times.  Caroline made a rag doll which she loved and named, Raggy.  They both made lanterns out of soup cans.  We hammered holes through the cans in the design of a tree or star and then they had electric tea lights to put inside.  They also had a room in their house that was set up to look like the night sky with white lights on the ceiling.  They had trees for the "woods" and had paw prints on the ground and lots of stuffed animals everywhere.  The kids were given Nerf guns and had to kill their supper.  They had a lot of fun being pioneers.

We ended out our weekend doing Caring for Katy with our church. 

It is the day that the church is closed and everyone goes out into the community to do service projects.  Our community group went to a house that had been affected by Hurricane Harvey.  Their situation was really pretty horrible.  The week before Hurricane Harvey hit, the house diagonally behind them burned down.  The owners of that house were in the process of gutting it and had thrown a bunch of insulation and things in the backyard.  Then Harvey hit the following week and the debris in the neighbors backyard had somehow caused the water to flow to this house and it flooded the back of their house.  Our church had stripped the damaged drywall and pulled up the flooring last year.  The church had replaced all the drywall and got it habitable again.  However, the insurance money didn't cover all their repairs and now a year and a half later, they still have no flooring and they have had other issues with the house.  So our group went in and painted many rooms, replaced door frames, added gutters, did a lot of yard work, and got the house looking more like a home again.  The owners were really very handy and helpful, but they just haven't had the time or money to fix up the house.  Todd, the kids and I stayed out front and raked, mulched, and beautified the front to make it pretty to see when they got home.  Our kids did well and worked hard.  At first it was just the five of us doing the raking out front.  It was great.  We spread out and were getting a lot done.  Then, I guess the parents inside sent their kids outside and all of a sudden we had like ten extra kids in the front all wanting to help rake.  There were a few too many cooks in the kitchen at that point, but we got it all done.
Josiah was insistent that he stand in the middle for the official Caring for Katy picture.  Caroline is insistent that she always stand in the middle for every picture.  Thus we have the following.


We were all tired when we got home and so spent the afternoon watching Jurassic World.  We'll see how many visitors come to our bed tonight.  We both have our bets on Henry.  He does not like scary things.  Caroline's the wild card.  Ironically, Henry got a Jurassic World Lego kit for his birthday.  The kit came with the Lego character Owen played by Chris Pratt in the movie.  For Henry's birthday, Josiah dressed up as the Chris Pratt/Owen Lego figure.

Another birthday in the books.  I think "8" is going to be the year of "yo" for Henry as he has started saying that nearly all the time.  What's for dinner, yo?  What are we doing today, yo?   One more birthday and we'll be in the year of evens with 10, 8, & 6.