Monopoly, Money, and Maleficent

This week we began our summer schedule.  To the kids that meant they could wake up and watch TV.  TV during weekday mornings screams summer to them. Everything gets turned off at 8:30 so that they can eat, dress, and do a little learning.  We read the Bible, do a math lesson or flashcards, and I read aloud to Caroline while the boys have their own assigned books.  We're currently reading through the Little House series, which all three kids have been enjoying.  We also plan to start typing lessons, which the boys are interested in learning.  In reality, this should only take an hour at most.  Basically we try to finish by 10 a.m. because that is also the time that the neighbor boy tends to ring the doorbell.  Then they spend most of the rest of the day playing outside with their friend.  They had been eating all of their lunches at a card table in our garage.  By the end of the day there has been a mess of chips and salsa, Gatorades and popsicle wrappers everywhere.  On Saturday I told them they needed to move the card table out under the tree to keep the crumbs and popsicle drippings outside.  They didn't mind doing that because all week the kids had been complaining about an odor in our garage.  We weren't sure if it was rodent or what.  So today we took everything we could out of the garage, swept it, and had Todd do a rodent sweep, though he found nothing.  Then, as if the kids weren't happy enough to clean out the garage, I made them even madder by only allowing bikes that worked back in the garage.  We had three bikes that were all missing one pedal each.  I made them write a giant "FREE" sign and put the bikes on the corner.  To our hoarder children that want to keep everything from their childhood, they were quite upset.  We kept telling them that they were bringing joy to other kids who would be able to ride them (assuming their parents' could fix the pedals).  But we have a clean garage...and still a little odor.  Hopefully it goes away...

Last weekend Henry wanted to play Monopoly with just me.  His strategy has always been to buy up every property he possibly could and then buy houses for them just as quickly.  I spent countless moments in the game telling him that he should save a little money in case he landed on my properties.  I, too, had monopolies and houses, albeit I had conservatively put just one or two houses on my properties while Henry was working on hotels.  All my money saving advice went in one ear and out the other.  I ended up landing on his St. James Place property with hotel five times in a row and that was the end of me.  He won.  As soon as that game was over, Josiah and Caroline wanted to start up another game with me.  Typically Josiah plays in much the same way as Henry - buy, buy, buy.  But this game his strategy was to buy one property of each color.  Once he had a rainbow of properties he was content and didn't want to do much else.  When that happens, we just go around the board over and over paying each other $26 here and $12 there.  The game never ends.  Finally he caved once he got Boardwalk and had the opportunity to trade for Park Place.  Currently he has hotels on both properties so now the game will end.  Thank goodness.  We've been playing it for six days.

Rainbow of property.

While Monopoly has not taught the kids much about saving their money, Todd has been teaching the kids about money management.  He has been reading one chapter a week from the Money Matters book with the kids.  It is a really good book and has a lot of interesting information.  Unfortunately this week's topic was banking, not the most interesting.  Todd taught them about savings accounts, interest, compound interest, etc.  They were enthralled.  I seriously had to walk away because their faces were cracking me up. 

Caroline got a new lamp for her desk this week.  She said that it was too hard to read in bed with the overhead light on because when she got sleepy, she didn't want to have to get out of bed to turn off her light.  So, she picked out a pretty white lamp with a pretty pink shade and she's a happy little girl.  Todd caught her reading Waldo one night.

Yesterday afternoon she was also reading to her Monkey.  She's still at the age where she reads out loud most of the time, so it was really cute to watch her.  She read really well, too.  She's getting much more fluent in her reading.  It is an exciting thing to hear her read.

Josiah's puppet, Al Dente, has been a regular fixture in our house.  We have lots of puppet shows in the evenings and Al spends the days with us chatting us up, talking about cooking.  Whenever Josiah is not playing outside, Al is on his arm inside.  We got pizza one evening and Josiah drove with me to get it.  He had Al hanging out the window waving to all the cars we passed.  Josiah said he wanted to "spread a little joy" during the pandemic.  He's a good kid.  At a red light, a lady in the pickup next to us asked us where we got the puppet.  I told her and she said she needed to get one for her granddaughter.  Then she proceeded to talk like a ventriloquist to us.  It was funny, but at the same time I was thinking, Come on green light.

This week the kids went over to their friend Bobby's house to do a special CC video.  Usually we do a CC practicum each summer and while I would listen to speakers, the kids would have been in camps.  With COVID, they cancelled all practicums in favor of an online version.  So, CC created a sort of summer camp video-style for the kids.  This past week they learned about South America.  The camp is six weeks, so the kids are very excited that they are guaranteed to go to Bobby's house for six weeks in a row.  He's their favorite person ever.  We have also set it up that Bobby gets to come to our house once a week as well, so the kids are thrilled.

While they were at Bobby's learning about South America, I was running to pick up a pair of roller skates I got for $5.  They were practically brand new and Caroline had been asking for her own pair of roller blades since Josiah had taken over her other pair.  While these were roller skates as opposed to blades, I thought she may like the way they felt better.  Roller blades always look hard on the ankles.  She has been riding them every day since and has grown to really liked them.  Of course the only picture I have is Josiah wearing them.   

Henry has had a bit of a rough week.  One afternoon their neighbor friend invited the boys over for pizza and a movie.  They were having a great time until the start of the movie.  It was Maleficent which is about the evil witch that curses baby Aurora (from Sleeping Beauty).  Henry cannot do scary movies.  Not even a little bit.  He's been scared for days now.  It's been rough, especially at night when a big 9 year old comes into our bed and moves for the next 30 minutes trying to get comfortable and then that comfortable is holding onto my arm rubbing the inside of my upper arm which tickles at the start before the chaffing sets in.  No scary movies!  My arms can't take it!