Broom Hockey

Tropical Storm Beta brought us a ton of rain this week.  Monday and Tuesday, in particular were drench fests.  Benson was not keen on using the wet outdoor facilities to relieve himself.  To make it harder, there were very few breaks in the rain.  Mostly it just went from hard rain to soft rain and back again.  All day long.  Our backyard was totally saturated, so we brought Benson out to a small portion that wasn't completely water logged.  While he peed throughout the day on Monday, he never discharged from the back end.  He is a very regular dog, so I was getting nervous as the day went on and was keeping a keener eye on him.  He'd stand by the back door whining a lot.  I'd take him out, but he wasn't having it in the rain.  Finally, as we all settled down in the evening, he did it.  He dropped his load at our entryway.  On the carpet.  Not the smooth, easy-to-clean tile that was literally inches from the carpet.  Right on the carpet.  By Tuesday, though it still rained all day, we had a few periods of very light rain and we took advantage of it every time.  There were no more accidents.  Rainy days were so much more enjoyable before having a dog.  

Since they couldn't play outside, the kids created a broom ball sort of game in the garage.  They all were on roller blades and they used brooms to hit a "puck" (an old karate board) across the floor.  The ladders were the goalposts.  They had practiced it a lot and wanted to put on a show for Todd and I when he got home from work.  However, for the show they were skating all crazy-like and kept falling on the hard concrete garage floor.  After one too many falls, we told them the game was awesome and it was a good time to stop or put on knee pads.  They opted to go roller blade in the rain.  

They also created their own hanging swing.  I wasn't totally trusting of the knot they had made in the sheet, but this swing has lasted all week.  And it's not so much as a swing as a resting spot.  Swinging usually bangs them into the hard wooden side of the bunk bed.  

Todd got new glasses.  A few weeks ago he had lost them at Costco.  Wearing the masks really inhibits vision and he said they must have fallen off their resting spot in his shirt and he never saw them drop.  Despite checking with the store several times, no one had turned them in.  Of course his prescription had expired, so it was a bit of a longer process than he had hoped.  When he finally picked them up this week, he said he had gone for the cheapest frames.  He tried them on for us and Caroline and I both commented that he looked smart.  

After CC this week we headed to a playground.  At this particular playground the neighborhood kids always seem to know when we're there.  They bike to their houses to get their light sabers and come to battle our kids who also have their light sabers.  Josiah was cracking all of us up.  He is an aggressive light saber battler.  He does not back down. 

Our A/C stopped working this week.  We had a repair man come out and he added some freon, but said our coil needed replacing and it was leaking oil.  Todd thought it'd be an easy fix - just replace the coil.  Apparently, the coil is a pretty big fix.  We knew our A/C was coming to the end of it's life.  Most around here last an average of 15 years because they are used nearly year round.  We are just over the 15 year mark.  The temporary fix the man did lasted about 24 hours, so we've had windows open and fans on.  It got up to 91° today.  We're hot.  We're sweaty.  But the good thing is we are at the end of the summer season and the temperatures are supposed to drop this week.  The hardest part has been bed time.  The kids aren't used to having their backs stick to their sheets.  We'll get it fixed this week and in the meantime we'll shower frequently.

This evening we had gnocci for dinner.  It was a different type of gnocci than we had had in the past, so I only put one on Caroline's plate to see if she liked it.  She ate it and said, "I love this. Can I have more snocci?"  More snocci coming up.  

Josiah's artwork of the week.  

This is Your Brain

In science we are studying anatomy and physiology.  We started with the skeletal system and this week we learned about the role and importance of bones.  One experiment, to demonstrate the importance of the skull (and cerebrospinal fluid), involved an egg, a plastic container, water, and intense shaking.  Each kid received an egg and put that egg in a small container.  It was pretty much the 80s TV commercial revisited.  This is your brain.  The container was their skull.  

Brains in skulls.

Then they were told to run around and see what happened to their brain.  Henry and Caroline's brains turned to scrambled eggs fairly quickly.  Josiah had a smaller container and his lasted a while.  He had to get some pretty intense running in while violently shaking his container to get his to explode.  

We washed their containers out, then filled each of them to the brim with water, then put in another egg.  This represented the fluid between the skull and the brain.  Again they ran.  They were determined to get these eggs to break, too, so they were really shaking their containers.  Not a one broke, which was pretty cool.  There was a lot of effort in getting them to crack.  Our skulls and fluids really protect our brains.

It was an off-week from CC, but several families still got together on CC day to go to a playground.  We've been trying to do a new playground a week to try out different ones.  The one we went to this particular week was not just nice, but was surrounded by beautiful, huge pecan trees and lots of grass.  Very picturesque. There were four families and we were all having a good time.  About the time we were wrapping up, Caroline came screaming towards me that she got stung by a wasp.  She tried to tell me what happened, but it was unintelligible through the sobs.  Another mom gave her some ice and we walked quickly to the car.  As she calmed down, she was able to relay the story.  She was climbing up the slide and as she clutched the side, she grabbed a wasp nest.  Every time she retold the story, she always said, "And then there were wasps in front of me and they were like a distraction to the ones that were stinging me."  Clever wasps.  She had four stings on her fingers - two on her index finger, one on the middle finger, and one on the ring finger.  She also had a sting on her back.  Henry, too, had a sting on his shoulder.  He had shown it to me right after he was stung, but it hadn't swelled up yet, so I wasn't sure what had gotten him.  Looking at it when we got home, it was definitely a wasp sting.  So, it was a rough evening.  Her hand hurt for a good 24 hours.  Now she talks about how she broke her left arm and got stung by wasps on her right hand.  

Henry's new puppet arrived with the arm rod intact.  Meet Officer Frank.  The kids named their puppet show, The Playroom Players.  However, we've yet to see the show because their rehearsals have continually turned into arguing matches.  Typical of the drama types.  

We got dinner to-go from a restaurant this weekend and on the drive there, the kids held their puppets out the windows and waved at passing cars.  Every time they got a wave or smile or even the slightest acknowledgement, they screamed, "I got experience points."  Henry proudly boasted that his puppet received 23 experience points on that car trip.  

Awana was done through Zoom again this week.  Henry is really liking doing it on Zoom.  Sometimes he can be such a homebody.  This week, after doing the lesson, they played a game of Reverse Charades.  One of the leader's walked out of earshot while their spouse told all the kids the 'word.'  Then when the leader came back, all the kids had to act out the word while they guessed it.  Both boys had a lot of fun with this. 

In Benson news, he's never dull.  Earlier in the week I fed him his dinner and he got bored afterward because all the kids were upstairs.  To entertain himself, he took his Kong toy, walked up the stairs to the landing, dropped the Kong so it would bounce down the stairs, and then chase after it.  I thought he was so clever.  He did this for 20-30 minutes.  Up and down, up and down.  Then he stopped.  Then he threw up his dinner.  We brought him outside where he threw up the remainder of his dinner.  Then we spent the next three days trying to keep him from returning to his own vomit.  I hosed the whole area down, put rocks in the dirt where he puked, covered the rocks with sticks and chairs.  Still he was drawn to it and tried to dig there and eat whatever he could find.  So disgusting.  After three days I gave up keeping him from the spot and prayed his stomach acid was strong enough to kill whatever he ingested.  

Benson has also become quite comfortable climbing to the second floor.  We really don't want him up there, so we keep all the doors closed.  He walks around with nowhere to go and then will just lie down in the hallway so he can be near whoever is up there.  It's sad to have all the doors shut on him, but at the same time it's like protecting a baby from tiny things they could choke on.  

Then this morning Benson got bold and jumped up on our couch time after time after time.  He'd jump and lie on it nearly simultaneously.  Not cool dog.  Not cool.

We have a regular week coming up.  Most nights Caroline asks me what we're going to do the next day.  Often I reply, breakfast, school, lunch, school, chores, and then dinner.  She's not impressed.  

Playing Games

Henry at CC. Presenting on Dude Perfect. 

We had our second week of CC, which proved to be quite the humbling day for me.  I am helping with Caroline's class and she informed me before CC, "I wanted you to be in my class the first week, but not the other weeks."  Okay then.  Only 23 weeks to go.  

There is a portion of our CC day when we do review games.  This week we had an adventure game where the kids had to hop through a forest, jump a river, climb a mountain and zipline back to start.  As Caroline ziplined back to start she said, "This is actually fun."  Again, thanks.  And later at dinner, when Todd asked her how class went, she bluntly said, "Same as last time, just different words."  

Caroline presented on a scroll she made.  I could take a picture, because, you know, I'm in her class.

Friday morning it was amazing out.  72° of non-humid coolness.  We took a card table out back and did school there.  I took a picture at the beginning of our work commemorating the first cool morning.  No less than five minutes later, two children went back inside to get their hoodies.  Southern kids.  It still reaches up into the 90's by the afternoon, but there was a glimmer of hope of cooler weather to come. 

Henry has really gotten into Dude Perfect again.  He's been working on his own trick shots around the house.   

Awana began this week.  We were able to pick up the kids' books at the church during the day.  Then in the evening we had prerecorded videos to watch as well as Zoom calls.  Watching Henry do a Zoom call is hilarious.  He played with the options the entire time.  He'd move the view from gallery to single person to speaker to gallery to the chat room to the gallery.  He did not stop messing with the mouse and the people the entire time.  Until the scavenger hunt.  Their leader had a scavenger hunt to find things around the house.  She asked them to go find colored pencils, their favorite book, something in the kitchen that begins with an 'S,' etc.  One item she asked them to find was a roll of toilet paper.  Henry ran at top speed to the bathroom and ripped the toilet paper off the wall.  Not just the roll, but the metal part that attaches to the wall.  Because, Henry.  Fortunately it was fixable, but I told him next time could he just look under the sink and get a loose roll there.  Please.  Please?

We had Family Game Night this Saturday evening.  Caroline has requested that we do Family Movie Night and Family Game Night each month, so we are doing them every other week.  Caroline picked out the game of Clue.  One boy was mad that she picked out the game (because she also got to pick out the movie two weeks ago, even though said child was given a chance to pick out a game but deferred his pick til next month) and so refused to play.  The other was busy upstairs (unbeknownst to us creating his own game).  So Family Game Night was Caroline, Todd, and me.  Because Clue is no fun with only two teams, Caroline played solo for the first time.  By the time I won (haha), she had already figured out the suspect and the weapon, so she did well.  After Clue, all of us headed to Josiah's room to play his game.  He had his broken karate boards in a semicircle shape.  At each board he had pieces of  Lego figures.  One board had all legs, the next all torsos, then heads, accessories, etc.  Josiah took control over all aspects of the game.  He rolled the die for each of us.  The number it landed on was the number of spaces we could move forward.  Only Josiah could move our figures.  For Todd, it took him four spaces to reach the first board.  I made it in three.  Caroline reached it in one space.  Since there was only carpet between each board, you were never sure how many "spaces" it took to get to the next board.  When you reached the board, before you could get the Lego piece to build your figure, you would have to answer a question.  Josiah very cleverly had a wheel that he 'spun' using only sound effects.  Then Josiah would pick off one of the Lego figures from the wheel, put that figure in the 'hot seat' and he'd ask you a question about the movie related to that figure.  It was a really well thought out game.  He had nothing written down, but he continuously came up with new questions.  The figures on the wheel were characters from the Avengers, the Lego Movie, Nightmare Before Christmas, etc.  Unfortunately when it was my turn, the wheel was always against me giving me Nightmare Before Christmas questions.  I, of course, fell asleep during that movie and so didn't know any of the answers.  I don't remember what happened to Caroline and Henry.  I think they got mad over missing questions.  So in the end it was just Todd and I and we tied.  This was actually the second game that Josiah made this week.  

The Wheel

Earlier, Josiah had created a different Lego game.  This one involved his Ninjago castle and Todd and I were again hopping on old karate boards.  We've noticed that all of Josiah's invented games involve him controlling it.  He controlled the dice, how many moves it took to move from board to board, and what happened during all our ninja battles.  This particular game was just between Todd, Josiah, and I and we laughed a lot.  No matter what Todd suggested happen in the battles, Josiah would shoot him down that it was a bad idea.  It was a fun evening with him.  He's a creative little guy.  

Todd took Josiah to the orthodontist this week.  Todd went because he had the most questions and the most skepticism.  ;)  We have two options to correct his overbite.  #1- Extract two teeth up top and push those teeth back.  #2- Push his bottom teeth forward.  Option #2 seemed sort of ridiculous for his mouth, so really there was only one logical choice.  After the appointment, Todd and Josiah went to the grocery store.  Josiah is not the kid to go to any store with, because you will always end up buying far more than planned.  This time they came home with Pop-Tarts.  Three boxes of frosted Pop-Tarts.  I have never bought them, so the kids were having them for the first time.  I told the kids to enjoy them because I wouldn't be buying them; they were pure junk and had no nutritional value.  Henry read the box and piped up, "They're a good source of 3 B vitamins."  No.  No, they're not...  

Benson watching his humans play outside.

Todd took Benson to the vet this weekend to get a shot.  He was able to weigh him and he is now 42.2 lbs!  He's doubled in size since we got him.  He still has super long legs, so he definitely has more growing to do.  With his growth, he has matured in his sleeping.  Now he's been sleeping til 5:00/5:30 a.m. which is really amazing.  His wake up time had been 3:30 a.m. and that was getting rough.  His new puppy love is zippers.  He's destroyed the one on his dog bed and eaten two off of the kids' jackets.  He has also had horrible gas this week.  Really, really horrible.  And lots of it.  Hopefully we'll get some cool weather this week so we can open our windows and air the place out.  

Josiah finished up the weekend with going to his very first Life Group.  In junior high and high school, our church does life groups.  They are small groups that get together once a week to grow deeper in their faith and, according to Josiah, play a lot.  They are separated by gender, so his is a small group of sixth grade boys.  When we asked him what they did he said they played a lot and ate Teddy Grahams.  They were also given books that they work through for the year.  He had a lot of fun.  It is really hard to believe he's so old.  

This week we already have a week off of CC.  We postponed our start date by two weeks, but kept all the original breaks.  So it's just a normal week at home.  Hopefully cooler.  Hopefully we can open some windows.  

CC Begins

The heat is still really bad here.  The kids have started playing outside from 7:30-8:30 a.m. before school starts.  It seems worth it to begin school later so they can have some outside time before the temperatures climb.  There has also been a revitalization of The Cool Kids.  This is the group the kids made up for their bike trick shows.  The three of them made themselves new t-shirts.  Josiah was so confident in his talent that he said, "I'm going to wear this shirt in the show tonight.  Then I'm going to sell it as merch.  Annndddd it'll be worth more because I wore it."  He does not have a confidence problem.  Sometimes they think they are at a Dude Perfect level of success.   Poor Caroline made her new shirt with Crayola markers, so when I did laundry this week, there went the design.  

In school, we got the results of our apple slice experiment.  As we dumped the contents of each cup to see the apple, it was clear that baking soda did not preserve anything.  All apples with baking soda in the mix turned dark brown.  The apple covered with table salt did quite well, as expected, but surprisingly, the best one was the apple in 1/4 cup table salt, 1/4 cup Epsom salt combined.  After getting all the apples out we had a giant bowl of salt/soda.  The kids played with that for a good while, pretending it was snow.  They kept asking to eat it.  It's salt, not snow. 

CC began this week!  We were required to wear masks the whole time except when we were outside/eating lunch.  We chose to eat our lunch outside just to make it easy to socially distance ourselves.  Plus no sweeping up crumbs was a bonus.  The masks were hot.  Really hot.  But everyone understood that was what had to happen, and I didn't hear anyone complain about them.  Josiah brought his puppet to use as his presentation, but of course he took him out of his backpack the minute we got there.  Our other two were not interested in taking a 'First Day of CC' photo with Al Dente.  So we have a lovely unhappy-happy-unhappy picture.  Caroline did her presentation on her pin art toy.  She actually spoke for a long time, which was good that she still felt comfortable speaking in front of her peers.  Henry started Essentials this year which is the grammar and writing course (as well as math games to work on speed).  His goal for the first quarter was to memorize the 'Chart A' about sentence structures.  A day later he had 3/4 of it memorized.  I wish I had his brain sometimes.  Overall, the day went really well.  It's definitely a different sort of year.  One to remember for sure.

Friday evening we had a special Awana Award Ceremony drive-thru style.  The original award ceremony back in May was postponed because of COVID.  They had the Awana leaders outside the front of the church cheering and waving.  We drove up and they handed the kids their awards.  Best 3-minute award ceremony ever!    They also threw in a craft project, cups, candy, and other fun things.  The kids enjoyed all their treats.  On the drive to and from Awana, Josiah and Caroline waved at all passing cars with their puppets.  So, despite being embarrassed by Al Dente at CC, Caroline and Henry had both ordered their own puppets.  Caroline chose a cheerleader that she named Sandra.  Henry picked out a cop that he named Officer Frank.  Officer Frank came with a broken stick so we had to send off for a replacement.  I see many, many puppet shows in our future.    

Benson made it all the way up to our second floor this week.  There was one day in which he was getting really close.  He was constantly practicing while the kids were constantly yelling, "Down!"  In anticipation of his eventual success, they shut all the doors upstairs.  Somehow, in the course of the afternoon, Caroline's door was re-opened.  It was then that Benson made it all the way up the stairs and he explored the only room available to him.  Caroline discovered him sniffing around her room and FREAKED OUT.  She screamed bloody murder and she continued to scream and yell for a good half hour (no exaggeration).  She does not want him in her room.  She is really worried that he'll poop in her room to mark his territory.  Now we have a giant Amazon box on the landing of our stairwell that has kept him at bay thus far.  We really don't want him upstairs.  The sheer number of Legos that he could eat is massive.

Grandma and Grandpa sent a package and this one included treats for Benson.  Can you tell he knows what is for him?  

We also cooked bacon and used proper head coverings to protect ourselves from pops and splashes of grease....