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....