Six Years with Caroline

This was one busy week.  From Wednesday to Friday we were on the go nonstop, but for the most part it was all for a fun reason.  Wednesday we went to the Houston Rodeo with another CC family.  There were two of us moms and seven children.  She and I counted to seven nearly 500 times that day.  We kept all our ducks in a row.  The nice thing was that Caroline had a buddy and they held hands the entire time.  Josiah is in class with the two oldest kids and he and the oldest girl talked nearly the entire time.  Henry was a little bit of the odd man out, but he became my buddy for the day.  It was good to go with another family because we did some things that we normally didn't do.

We splurged and did the pony ride which they all loved.  Their circle of ponies included the speedwalker Malibu, who was interested in giving the kids as quick a ride as possible.  Henry kept lassoing his arm in the air like he was going to tame some buckin' bronco.

We learned about bees, bugs, and bunnies.  We saw the miniature cows, donkeys, and horses.  We walked over to the birthing area where they had pregnant pigs, goats, and cows, as well as a bunch that had already had their offspring.  The lady we spoke to said that the animals typically always come on their due date.  Only one pig was four days late and her babies were quite large.  On gigantic screens above the birthing area, they showed a continuous loop of calves, piglets, and kids being birthed.  I can still visualize the entire calf birth as we saw it several times.


We ate giant turkey legs, corn dogs, fries, and churros. 

This year we got the carnival pack, so we had 150 tickets for the kids to use on carnival games and rides.  Some rides are 10 tickets a person (nearly all were more than 5 per person), so they got a lot of fun in and we got to say that when the tickets were done, so were we.  The very first thing they chose to do was the hall of mirrors.  Two of our three kids came out with red spots on their foreheads where they banged into a mirror.  Most of the rides were spinny rides, so I would take some pictures and then look the other way while the ride finished.  The only one I actually went on was a ferris wheel because the little girls needed an adult rider.  They had a lot of fun and the carnival pack we bought was totally worth the money.

We spent the final tickets on carnival games.  The very first one we went to was a water gun that you had to aim at the target.  It would blow up a balloon and the first person whose balloon popped got that prize.  This was the same game Henry won at Disney World, so I think he thought he had it in the bag.  He played it about 10 times (no joke) and never won.  He was so close at least half of those times, but he never got the prize.  He was pretty disappointed and slightly angry.  So we used our last tickets at the throwing game just a few steps away.  You had to throw a beanbag type thing and pop a balloon to get a prize.  All three of our kids were able to pop a balloon and so they won the small stuffed ice cream cones.  Henry wanted to try to pop more balloons to work his way up to a large toy, but it was at that point that we ran out of tickets.  Time to head home.  Actually, it was time to head to Sam's to get Caroline's birthday cake, grab some dinner, and head to church for WAM.

We made it to WAM on time (but just barely).  After WAM is over each week, we always walk the kindergarten class to a couple of rooms where they play until their parents pick them up, and it is called Little Lights.  Caroline has been asking all year to stay late for Little Lights.   She never had any need to go because we could just drive home after WAM.  But every week as we walk our class to Little Lights, she always asks if she can stay.  Usually she wants to stay because she sees what they're having for snack...  So, I asked the director if she could do it just one time as a treat.  This week was her night to go.  When I picked her up she said that it wasn't as fun as she thought (yay for me!), but that she really liked the snack: donut holes, always a delicious treat at 7:30 p.m.

The next morning, our little Caroline was six!  She wanted us to hide her gifts just like Henry, so we had a scavenger hunt set up for her.  She also said she wanted to be able to read the clues (no help from her brothers), and seeing how it was really difficult to write clues using only three-letter words, the vast majority of clues were: "Look!" followed by a picture of where she should look. 

She ran around collecting them all with a lot of excitement.  Both sets of grandparents and we got her lots of doll accessories.  The very thing she wanted.  She has dressed up and changed her doll's outfit time and time again.  Grandad and Nana's accessories came with a suitcase and Ja'Neesa, the doll, has traveled all over the world in every outfit she owns.  The day after her birthday she mentioned that what she really wanted was a doll outfit to match her outfit.  And then what should arrive in the mail, but that very thing given to her by her cousins.  She was ecstatic!  She was also given a glitter wand from Grandma & Grandpa that she plays with nearly as much as the doll clothes.  If you hold it upright all the glitter falls to the bottom, but all you have to do is turn it to get the air bubble to travel up to the opposite end sending the glitter all down the tube.  She thinks it's a magic trick and has asked me countless times where the glitter has gone.  Poof, there it is!  I actually had the same toy as a kid and remember doing the same thing - watching the air bubble hit the glitter at the end and watching it spread, making the glitter all fall back to the bottom and letting that air bubble go get it again.  Mesmerizing fun.  ;) 
Opening up three sets of doll clothes/accessories:

For breakfast she chose Tastykake donuts. I couldn't believe she didn't want real, fresh, delicious glazed donuts.  I think after eating the Tastykakes that she'll go for the real thing next year.  She had CC on her birthday, so we were gone nearly all day.  We did bring in Entenmann's party cakes to give out to the girls in her class. They sang Happy Birthday to her, too, which made her really happy.  After CC we quickly dropped all our gear off at home before heading out to dinner at Sweet Tomatoes.  Caroline came decked out in her latest fashion - new boots, new skirt, and the head-to-toe striped clothing was to match her doll's outfit.

We made it back home to eat some princess cake and crash into bed.  She had a good day.


Since Caroline was at CC for nearly the whole day on her birthday, we took Friday off and headed to the Children's Museum in the morning.  They played around in the grocery area.  Henry was adding up the lobsters to see how high he could get the total bill to be. 

Josiah was running around to all the ATM machines trying to withdraw money only to be told that he had insufficient funds.  The kids do have the ability to "earn" money by working different jobs around the museum.  Josiah delivered newspapers to all the buildings, but that appeared to be more of a voluntary job as opposed to a money making venture.  We went into the art area where they had the spin art machines set up.  Instead of squirting out paint onto the surface of the paper and watching it spread out in circles, they had markers out.  So, if you held the marker down it would move in circles as the paper spun around.  It was a novel concept and far neater to make than if we had used paints.  Plus there was no drying time which was good for me as I had to hold them all.  We were happy to make it out of there with no contagious diseases (at least none that have surfaced yet).  The last two times we went to this particular museum, we were given the gift of pink eye.  I still have eye drops at the ready if necessary.

We left the museum to take Henry and Caroline to the doctor's office for their yearly check-ups.  We learned that they both grew a little over 3" this year.  We also confirmed that they can both see and hear perfectly well.  So they have no excuse that they "didn't hear me" when I tell them to pick up their things/do their school work/eat their vegetables/and all the other fun stuff I get to say around here.

This weekend, Todd took Henry out for some one-on-one time.  They went to a sushi restaurant with a revolving sushi bar. 

Basically they sat at a table and could pull off plates of sushi that were rotating on a conveyor belt.  Each plate had 2-4 pieces of sushi on it.  You paid by the plate, so when you finished a plate you put it in a contraption at the end of your table that counted the number of plates you consumed.  If you made it to 15 plates, you got some sort of prize.  Henry was hoping to get the prize, but Todd cut them off at 13 plates.  They tried California rolls, (cooked) beef rolls, (cooked) shrimp sushi, and tuna rolls.  Todd special ordered an eel sushi plate to try.  They both said they definitely wanted to go back and despite being served from a conveyor belt, Todd said it all tasted really fresh and good.  After lots of sushi they stopped at another restaurant and had crepes for dessert.

While they were dining like kings, Caroline and I got our hair trimmed.  The whole experience was very predictable.  She said she wanted a trim, she told me exactly how much she wanted cut off, I told the hair dresser who cut off 1.5" and when all was said and done, Caroline remarked that she actually wanted really long hair.  I told her if we trimmed it every now and again, it would grow healthier as it grew longer.  That seemed to satisfy her desire to have long Rapunzel hair immediately.  We finished it up with eating at Jersey Mike's, one of Caroline's favorite sub places.

Josiah says, "No sushi. Yay subs."

Henry's weekend ended well.  Todd granted Henry's deepest desires this afternoon by installing Minecraft on one of our devices.  Henry has taken out countless Minecraft books from the library, read about how to play the game ad nauseum, has begged us for weeks to install the game, and then when I went to upload my photos today, he had taken 108 pictures from one Minecraft book about all the different instructions for creating certain things within the game.  There could possibly be copyright issues with the sheer number of pages photographed...  He wore us down.  He hasn't actually played it yet, but it's on his docket for tomorrow.  After school.

It is Spring Break for this area this coming week.  For us that means no karate, no church activities, and no Awana.  A nice restful week in that respect, but we're still doing school until we finish Memory Master at the beginning of April.  Then we'll take a week off as a reward.