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.