Headshots

Caroline's friend from the neighborhood does ballet and recently gifted Caroline with her old toe shoes.  Caroline had been wearing them non-stop and dancing around the house.  She did it so much that her toes now hurt and she's laid off a bit, but she loves to dance around.  She can't decide whether she likes ballet or gymnastics best.


I tried to get a few pictures from gymnastics yesterday.  This time Caroline got to try the uneven bars.  They had to keep their arms straight with the bar at their hips and swing their legs.  She also practiced somersaults, cartwheels, and just kicking her feet up in the air.  I told her I saw the older girls doing the same kicking-up bit on the balance beam.  They had to kick their feet up and smack their toes together (at least that's what it looked like from the untrained eye).  Kick-smack.  Kick-smack.  This time Todd and the boys came along to see what it was like.  We quickly learned that one such child gleaned all he wanted to know about gymnastics in the first five minutes and then was torturing us with "I'm bored." and "When is it over?" for the next 55 minutes.  When we were in the car afterwards, Todd asked Caroline what was one thing that she struggled with or could work on to improve at gymnastics.  Her response?  Nothing.  She said she did everything perfectly.  Oh to have the confidence of a six-year-old.  2028 Olympics here we come.


The kids like to watch The Voice on TV.  It's the singing competition show in which the judges sit backwards so they cannot see the singers.  If they like the singing and want the singer on their team, they hit their button and it turns their chair around.  That way their picks are unbiased.  Our kids like to sit backwards from the TV and if they like the singer, they'll hit their imaginary button and turn around.  Caroline gets trigger happy and once the singing starts, she immediately "hits" her button.  She thinks she's hilarious.

Our CC Group went on a field trip to the Crocodile Encounter this past week.  The name of the place is somewhat ironic, because they quickly tell you that alligators, not crocs, are native to Texas.  Crocodiles are only native to Florida (in the U.S.).  We also learned that alligators do not see humans as food.  They only attack about one person every 50 years and it's usually provoked.  However, crocodiles eat a significant number of people per year.  They also said that the alligators and crocodiles could only digest food when their bodies were warm, so they didn't eat anything in December or January and were only now starting to eat regularly again.  (If their bodies aren't warm enough, the food just sits in their stomach and rots.)  In the first pond, the guide introduced us to the five alligators there.  They had Big Girl, No Name, two others, and Henry.  Henry's full name was Stubborn Henry, so our group got a kick out of that.  The name fits.  This particular guide was pretty funny.  He showed us the tortoises and talked about how they were terrestrial creatures.  He said that while turtles can swim, tortoises only "float with style."  We saw pond after pond (after pond, after pond) of alligators and crocodiles.  Then towards the end of the tour, we reached the goats.  They had goats, lemurs, pot-belly pigs, and a few other big animals.  Why they had goats they didn't say, but after all the reptiles, the goats were incredibly fun to watch and we were able to hand feed them carrots.  It was a good ending.

Our CC group does a yearbook every year, so this week I tried to get the kids yearbook pictures done.  I thought they turned out pretty well.  We only have three weeks of CC left!  It'll be a busy few weeks, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

At CC this week, it was Dress Your Mom Day.  The kids kept talking about what dress they wanted me to wear, so I was anticipating a dress-up kind of day.  But when the day arrived, the boys thought it would be hilarious for me to wear Todd's old KISS shirt.  I appreciated being comfortable for the day, but also felt the need to pin a "not my band" note to the shirt.  Henry had a good CC day because he learned the last history sentence and now has everything memorized for Memory Master.  We're going to do the Parent Proof with him on Tuesday, which he should pass without a problem.  Josiah may need some prayers because his Parent Proof is on Wednesday and I'm hoping he'll pass.

Henry finished his week with another karate belt test.  Todd said that he did really well and that he had ninja-like rolls.  He broke many boards with his hands and feet.  It's sort of a shame that he doesn't like karate anymore.  He is basically fulfilling his commitment to complete it until August, but mentally he's done.  He doesn't enjoy it anymore, which is sad because he seems to do so well in class. 

And that was our week.