Meager Rations on the Trail

The boys are still quite obsessed with the Beatles.  They sing their songs All. Day. Long.  To those of us who are not-Beatle-obsessed, these songs can get stuck in our heads and it's not a good thing.  Todd's actually had a hard time going to sleep some nights because he keeps singing the songs in his head.  They put on another concert for us.  They practiced imitating the music videos they've seen.  Josiah likes Ringo the best because he played drums.  Also, he really loves Yellow Submarine.  As in sings-it-on-loop-all-day-long likes it.  Henry played his air guitar with rock star emotion.  (Caroline just sat drawing in the background.)

Henry had a good death scene during Eleanor Rigby.

During Hey Jude, Josiah was crushing it on piano as Henry did air tambourine in the background.  After a while, Henry got bored of the tambourine and whenever Josiah wasn't checking on his musical contributions, Henry broke out in dance, flashed a few gang signs, and did whatever else he could toss in for fun.

The kids did well in swim this week.  On Wednesday, it was raining pretty hard, but since it wasn't thundering or lightning they still had their lessons.  However, instead of the mid-90s like it has been, the temperature was 77° and the water was cooler than usual.  I told the boys they may not want to wear their swim shirts because they may make them colder once they got wet.  Josiah asked if he filled his shirt up with warm air and tuck it into his trunks, would that keep him warm.  Yeah, no.  They've been doing well in swim, but when they got their assessments at the end of the last class, neither boy moved up to the next level.  Their instructor said they had the skills for freestyle and backstroke, but they don't have the stamina to get across the pool.  So they need endurance training.  Josiah was sad he didn't move up.  Henry was mad and declared that he's never swimming again.  Todd told him about Tom Brady and how he was picked #199 in the NFL draft.  Did he get mad?  No, he just proved to them that he could do his job and do it well.  Henry needs to take that disappointment and use it to fuel him to get better.  For us, that means more trips to the neighborhood pool while throwing in a few laps with their play time. We did get there once this past week.

Todd introduced the kids to the classic Oregon Trail game.  The very game that bored me to tears in school.  It was so slow, everything broke, and everyone died.  Henry has loved it.  The game requires him to have five in his group, much to his disdain.  He wanted to go it alone.  He typed in all of our names and in the first three games he played, Josiah died first every time.  During one game, in the span of 60 seconds, Henry called out:
Caroline has typhoid.
You have exhaustion.
\Josiah has dysentery.
Caroline died.
You have cholera.
Josiah died.
We all died that trip.  But with perseverance, Henry played enough games to finally make it to Oregon.  He made the trip with just the three kids and their two neighbor friends.  Henry and Caroline were the only two to make it all the way.  He also proved to be a good shot.  He could down two bears, a dear, a squirrel, and a rabbit.  He'd have 800 lbs of meat, but was only allowed to take 100 lbs with him.  It was good that he could kill animals because he was chintzy when it came to buying food.  When we first departed from where the Trail starts, he had bought 45 lbs of food for five people to share for the whole trip.  To make it last, he went to Settings and changed our rations to "meager," saying that if we didn't eat as much we could go further faster.  So, basically, never put Henry in charge of food for a road trip.

We celebrated Father's Day early this year since we'll be out of town for the real one.  And by celebrate, I mean we ate tacos.  Since we did yard work on Mother's Day, we kept the tradition alive and did yard work on Father's Day, too.  It was pretty much everything Todd could have asked for.

We did finish school this week.  However, it wasn't the happy, woo-hoo, dancing around sort of last day.  I was first woken up with Caroline complaining to me that it wasn't fair that I took her toys.  The toys that I told her to pick up the night before.  The toys that when I asked her if she had cleaned her room, she said Yes.  After arguing with her for a bit about responsibility, the boys took over in the arguing department over every menial little thing imaginable.  Henry's comments on his last math paper summed up the day.  But, hey, we're done.

Caroline had a good gymnastics class this weekend.  One of the skills that she had to do over and over again was run, jump on a spring board, and land with her legs spread out (I've seen gymnasts do this to get on the balance beam).  Then after landing that move, she had to run back the other direction, jump on the spring board, and land feet first on the vault.  It's a pretty high jump for both.  She's still enjoying it and her skills are definitely improving.

Stick that landing.

We also went to a play at the library.  It was a cast brought in from San Antonio, so I thought it might be pretty good.  They did Jack and the Beanstalk and it was cute.  Josiah and Caroline liked it.  Henry likes to think he's too old and mature for these things.  They did throw in a good bit of humor for the adults.  It was cute.  And free.  Free always makes things better.

At this time next week we'll be in Virginia.  The kids were packing some things up tonight and were getting pretty excited.