Christmas

We gave the kids the board game, Sorry!, as an end of the semester gift.  We thought it would be good to have a new game to play during our break, especially to help pass the time before Christmas.  They tend to get so excited and eager for Christmas, that they don't often know what to do with themselves, so this would give them something to do.  I played this game as a kid and always liked it, so I thought I'd pass that joy along.  Well, the first game ended with one child throwing all the game pieces off the board because they thought they were going to lose.  That child was sent upstairs.  The second game ended with a different child throwing a tantrum because they did lose.  Not the Christmas joy that I had expected.  We have played many games since while learning how to lose graciously and not bad-mouth our opponents.  The lessons that must be taught with each new game we introduce.

A few days before Christmas, we stopped by Chick-fil-a and got the kids dinner and milkshakes right as the sun was setting.  Then we drove around a neighborhood looking at Christmas lights.  The neighborhood we drove to is known for their lights and it did not disappoint.  House after house had huge displays of inflatables and lights covering their entire front yards.  Each year there are pick-up trucks hauling Christmas-decorated hay-filled trailers packed with people to tour the neighborhood.  (We looked up how much it would cost to do this because it looked like fun.  It was $125!  So, we'll continue to tour the neighborhood from the comfort of our own car.)  After we left that particular neighborhood, the kids asked to drive around our neighborhood a little to look at lights.  We didn't because it would have been like going from F.A.O. Schwartz to Walmart.  

Todd took many walks with Henry and Caroline over the course of this week.  He took them out individually, so he got close to 10,000 steps on his walks alone.  Josiah had me draw with him.  We watched an artist on YouTube teach us how to draw.  We did Jack Skellington and a young Robin.  As a family, we watched a different Christmas movie each day.  We got in all the favorites: Elf, Home Alone, The Santa Clause, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, etc.  

As Christmas approached, Caroline created a security alarm in front of her room.  It was quite effective for the grown folk who couldn't pass it, but the little folk all managed to squeeze by.  

We did not make it out to our church service for Christmas Eve, but we did watch it online.  Since they always light candles for Silent Night, we held birthday candles.  I don't know when we will go back to church, but I think it is going to shock our systems to sit for the whole service, to dress up nicely, and to pay attention.  We tend to have a lot of hot chocolate making, drawing, walking around, snacking, and lying on the couch during church-at-home.  

Henry wanted everyone to wear our green Family Fun Run t-shirts to bed Christmas Eve.  We only had two kid sizes left, so Josiah got to wear Todd's.  Todd wore his Calvinist Santa t-shirt which said, "Everybody's on the naughty list."  All the kids slept in Josiah's room.  Henry fell asleep first, followed by Josiah at 10:00 p.m.  Caroline was still awake at 10:30, but I was too tired to stay up any later, so we just shut Josiah's bedroom door and delivered the gifts under the tree.  Josiah, for the first time in his life, did not wake up at 3:00 a.m. Christmas morning.  Thank. Goodness.  I actually got up at 5:00 a.m. with Benson and was shocked to find everyone still asleep.  He and I spent some time in the backyard, but then went back to sleep ourselves.  Josiah woke me up at 5:55 a.m., which was pretty good.  And Christmas began.  The kids got Lego kits and doll clothes, games and clothes, video games, books, soccer balls, and candy.  So many things.  They wanted to put everything together all at once.  The boys disappeared to put together their smaller Lego kits while Todd made our traditional sausage balls.  Then after all the presents were opened, they went back and completed their larger Lego kits.  We got them a pogo stick as a joint gift to the 'Cool Kids' (the name of their stunt group).  My grandparents had one at their house growing up which I loved, so I was hoping they would like it, too.  Henry took to it right away and it wasn't long before he reached 100 jumps in a row.  Caroline continues to practice, but she's still in the single digits with her jumps.  The pogo stick is a little big for her.  I think she needs a bit more weight to get it working easier.  Josiah is practicing to get his number of jumps up, too.  And, since Todd says I am really a twelve year old trapped in an adult body, I reached 35 jumps in a row.  

And a few days after Christmas, we had our first pogo injury.  Henry said he was trying to do tricks on it already when it came up and hit him on the chin.  He had a circle mark on his chin and a busted lip.  We have reminded the kids that we just paid off Caroline's broken arm from a year and a half ago.  We really do not want to pay a medical deductible at the end of December.  If they have to get injured, could they at least wait til January?  

One of Josiah's favorite gifts this year was a fountain pen.  He kept talking about how much he wanted one because Charles Schultz had one.  We figured out how to attach the ink cartridge and he was a happy camper writing with it.  

Henry got a digital watch for Christmas and he has been timing everything with the stopwatch portion.  He timed Caroline opening the rest of her Christmas gifts.  He times everything.  Sometimes he just keeps the timer running and announces that it's up to three hours.  He really likes to push all the buttons on it and inform us all of the time.  

We had our traditional Christmas dinner of tacos.  Tamales are actually the Christmas tradition in this area of Texas.  The grocery stores were filled with them.  Instead of regular tamales, Todd picked up dessert tamales at the store.  A pumpkin cheesecake and a strawberry.  They were much too sweet for me, but the kids liked them.  We also made a birthday cake for Jesus.  Caroline's Awana leader dropped off a Christmas bag with all the things we would need to make the cake.  Henry was really against making a cake for some reason.  He thought it wasn't part of our tradition and he didn't want to change or add any new traditions.  However, I knew we had made a birthday cake for Jesus before because I had kept the email recipe from 2017.  I remember it distinctly because we were to make a chocolate cake - dark to represent our sins, with white icing which was Jesus covering our sins.  When we ate that particular cake, Henry remarked that he liked the sin part best.    

Christmas happiness:

Henry's gift to Josiah was a model of the Red Baron.  Henry was incredibly excited when Josiah opened it.  

Nothing beats art supplies for Josiah.

Even Benson got some treats.  Grandma and Grandpa didn't forget about him.  

And this is how we're going into the new year.

Future Rockette

Henry's week did not start off well.  He woke up Monday morning having had a bad dream.  He relayed it in full detail.  He was outside playing.  He decided to dig near our fire hydrant in the front and dug up Roosevelt's bones (I did not ask which Roosevelt.  It didn't seem polite to interrupt.)  It wasn't just his bones, but his intestines were present, too, which he described as really gross.  Then Henry kept digging and found Roosevelt's maid buried with him.  He knew it was a maid based on the clothing over her bones.  There was a book with them that he picked up and brought inside.  He didn't go into detail about the book, but after he finished his story, Caroline and I both asked, Why did you bring the book inside?!!  Gross.  In the end, he refused to play out in the front yard for two days because he couldn't get the dream out of his head.  

Henry did learn how to make his own breakfast this week.  He has cooked eggs in the past, but this week he took it to a whole new level.  He does the entire process completely on his own.  As he was cooking his first egg of the week, he asked me how to flip the egg. When I explained how I flipped mine with a spatula, Henry meant he wanted to flip it like a chef.  And then he did.  He just took the pan off the stove, held it in the air, and flipped.   No fear.  It flipped, too, because that's Henry.  He's done that several days this week.  He definitely has an independent streak in him.  

Caroline is ready for Christmas.  Actually she has had an outfit sitting on her dresser for two weeks now.  I asked her about it wondering when she was going to wear it.  She is saving it for Christmas and she hopes it's cold for Christmas because it is a long sleeve shirt, long pants, and gloves.  We are actually supposed to have one of the coldest Christmas's in a decade around here, so she should have her wish.  We were supposed to be in Virginia for Christmas, but the spike in COVID changed those plans.  However, the forecast there indicates they may see snow, so the kids are doubly disappointed.  They are desperate for snow.  Especially Caroline.  

Caroline may see more snow than she can handle if she follows through with her new career choice as a Rockette.  We watched the Rockette's Christmas special on TV and she said she wanted to be one.  I looked up the requirements and was surprised to see they had to be between 5'6" and 5'10.5" (and a bunch of other things).  I expected them to be taller.  Now she wants dance lessons to increase her chances of making it in New York.  

Clearly I never could have made it as a Rockette.  Not just the height requirement, but I don't have the looks either.  This was an observation Caroline made one evening.  

Caroline, "Mommy is pretty...."

Todd, "She is."

Caroline, "...-ish.  I don't think she's that pretty."  

[Me, exiting the room and unwrapping all her Christmas gifts to return them to the store.]  

Josiah is living it up on his winter break.  He seems to feel that the world is his oyster when he doesn't have to do schoolwork.  He casually goes from room to room and says he can disappear and play Legos whenever he wants for however long he wants.  (He may have had issues disappearing on school days to go play Legos...)  He has been spending a lot of his time on art.  He has taken several of his white t-shirts and markered them up.  He created a new comic character and drew him, Nathaniel Narwhal, on his shirt one day.  (Again, he has zero cares for spelling words correctly.  I think he does it to passive-aggressively frustrate Todd and me.  )  The black is in Sharpie, but the colors were washable.  Another day Henry and Caroline wanted him to wear a red shirt.  He came downstairs wearing a white t-shirt with "Red Shirt" written on it in red marker. 

I have had boards in our garage for some time now.  Originally they were bought so we could make string art pictures.  I have great plans to make a cactus one.  Josiah has been itching to use those boards.  He asked to use one to make a family Christmas present.  He painted a Welcome sign for outside our front door.  The word, Welcome, was made blob-art style so it was good he did it a week before Christmas.  It may need that much time to dry.  On a different day, he was outside with Henry and made blob-art/splatter-art pictures.  He invited me outside to see their finished work.  I was happy to see those, but then he wanted to demonstrate how it was created and I cringed and bit my tongue and told him it was more than I could handle.  They squirt out giant blobs of paint on their cardboard box squares, then either use a paint brush to move the paint blobs all together, or they picked up the square and moved it around (not too carefully) to mix them up.  It was all very abstract and very messy.  

We had a Christmas concert Saturday evening.  Josiah's puppet, Al Dente, was the only storyteller that evening, as well as the only soloist when it came time to sing Christmas songs.  His back-up singers were not happy that they were not showcased as much as they'd like, so we have been told there will be more concerts in the future.  With singing.  

Here is how I plan on spending my few days before Christmas.  ;)

In the Middle

 In science we have moved on from the digestive system to a unit on nutrition.  It's been a good read.  Very informative!  We started off learning about proteins, fats, and carbs and how our body stores them and how our body uses them.  Before moving on to vitamins and minerals, we did an experiment with fats.  We cut up a piece of construction paper.  Each one got a different food of the kid's choosing.  They had to rub their food on the paper for 20 seconds and then leave it sitting on the paper for 2 hours.  After 2 hours we took the foods off and let the papers dry (for another 2 hours) to see the leftover fat.  The stick butter and the peanut butter clearly were the big fat winners.  (Of course we did have to say that they were a better fat than the Twinkie on the top right.)  From top left it goes: Coconut pecan, banana, mint chocolate Twinkie, Ritz, corn beef hash, Hershey Kiss, shredded cheddar, peanut butter, stick butter.

This was our last week of CC for the semester.  The boys had to do a chart project.  In the grammar portion of their class they have lots of charts.  Each chart has to do with a part of speech.  Essentially they are supposed to memorize the charts during their three years in Essentials.  To celebrate what they've learned, they have to pick a chart to display in either poster form, diorama, poem, song, etc.  There was a lot of freedom in how to share the chart.  Josiah got to work on his immediately and created a Snoopy Interjection scene.  Technically, interjections were covered at the bottom of the Prepositions chart, however, I let him roll with it.  

Josiah said he posed like that so it looked like he was thinking all the thought bubbles.

Henry got to work painting lots of boxes green because he wanted to do some sort of Minecraft theme with the Noun Chart.  Frustration grew quickly when the boxes didn't turn out the way he wanted and he couldn't figure out how to display them, etc.  So we switched gears and I suggested he write a poem.  He took to that idea, but still kept his Minecraft theme.  He entitled it: Noun-Craft.  (He also wrote, By Anonymous.) Here is the first stanza (he was going through the noun definition - a noun is the name of a person, place, thing, activity, or idea).  He said sometimes you had to say the words a little funny so it would rhyme.

Noun-Craft

Nouns are a person, just like Steve.

And like everybody.

Places like the jungle.

Are made to rumble.

Things like grass.

covers great mass.

Activities like chopping.

and like mopping.

Ideas like planning.

Do it jamming.

It was also our last day of tin whistle at CC.  Every six weeks we do something different for fine arts.  This six weeks was tin whistle's turn.  Caroline practiced Mary Had a Little Lamb, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and Yankee Doodle to perform in front of her class.  All the kids in her class performed a song for each other.  Some could play the whistle really well and the tune was clear.  Others had zero tune, zero rhythm, and were just screeching on it, but still they were proud to perform.  Caroline played well.  She had Mary Had a Little Lamb down really well.  After our winter break we'll study great artists. Personally the art projects are a lot more fun.  

One morning before school I had the kids dress up in their Christmas red so we could take a picture for our Christmas cards.  We did the formal pictures in our side yard where the light was best.  We always have to take three sets with each child getting a chance to be in the middle.  In the middle is a very important thing around here.  After we got some good pictures, the boys wanted to recreate poses that they've taken in years past.  It was a chilly day, so we tried to make it quick and get inside.  As soon as we walked in we were greeted with Benson.  The kids begged, Can we pleeeeeease get a picture with Benson?  So we went to the fenced-in backyard for this picture.  The kids stood by their tree and Benson went nuts.  I instructed that the three of them needed to look at me at all times with a smile on their face so that when Benson jumped in the frame I could snap the picture.  I think we got the best shot of the day.  The kids had big grins because they had been watching Benson run like crazy, and Benson got to display his puppy personality.  After catching him we put him on a leash and tried to take pictures at a different tree, but none were as good as the crazy dog running at top speed.  

I sent the pictures off to be developed.  Typically they only take a few days, but unfortunately, I waited too late in December.  They'll be delivered anywhere between December 17th and 24th.  Whoops.  So, we'll be sending out New Year's cards this year....

The following day we put up Christmas lights.  Grandpa had gifted us lights several years ago and, while we had hung some up in Caroline's room, we had yet to open the final box.  Usually the kids spot them as we pack up our Christmas things each year and ask why we never put them up, so I was determined to get them out this year.  There was some disagreement among the ranks - one child thought they were exclusively for them and therefore only they could have the honor and privilege of hanging them up;  a second child was sure they were for the family and all had a right to hang them.  We compromised - one child hung them from the ground to halfway above the front door.  The other child got from the top half of the front door to the ground.  The third child was photographer turned videographer.  Yet when we watched the film of us hanging the lights, it showed one child starting to hang them.  Then you hear a small airplane fly overhead and the camera pans to the plane and follows it as it flies across the sky.  The video then briefly comes back to the front door before abruptly ending.  Like a dog spotting a squirrel.  After they were hung, the kids wanted pictures with the lights.  Again, each requested a turn at the top of the ladder, because they all  needed to be in the middle.  For their final picture, Henry said they should all pretend they were falling.  Sometimes it's quicker and easier to just take the picture than to question why.

Our pest man came this week for our quarterly service.  The biggest reason for the pest services in this area is to keep the ants at bay.  Ants here are just crazy.  Fire ants, ghost ants, tiny black ones that can squeeze into microscopic cracks, and many other varieties.  We are always at battle to keep them from building up residence either in our house or in the yard.  Josiah's been in a drawing mood (basically since he was 2) and he drew Snoopy as the pest man.  It was quite clever.  We also have had the same pest man for many years, so we feel like we know him a bit.  

Whenever we are in the car we have been listening to Christmas music.  Henry has claimed the song, Feliz Navidad, as his song for many years now.  He has always loved it and he loves it even more now that he's learning Spanish.  In the car, the kids have this thing where they lip sync the songs.  One child gets to be the main "singer," while the other two will play air guitar, air drums, air trumpet, or air violin depending on what's going on in the song.  Usually this works well, except when it doesn't.  We were on our way to Awana when Feliz Navidad came on.  Caroline jumped at the chance and called, "I get to be the singer [lip sync-er]."  Henry was not having any of that.  This was his song.  He was going to be the singer.  So he yelled at Caroline that he was the singer and then he spent the remainder of the song turning around to see if she was lip syncing or playing air trumpet as she was supposed to.  Of course, she wasn't playing trumpet.  She was mouthing the words.  So they spent the entire song getting mad at each other regarding who got to pretend to sing.  Insanity!

In Benson news, we were wondering what had happened to the 18 tennis balls we had bought him.  We hadn't seen any in quite some time.  We searched under furniture and found four.  He was excited to have them again, but has since taken them and systematically torn off the outer fuzziness leaving them bald.  We have to throw the baldies away so he doesn't try to eat the rubber.  So now he's down to one (inside) ball again.  He keeps trying to bring in a ball he's had outside that is completely filthy and currently water logged.  Each time he comes to the door to come in from outside I have to take it out of his mouth and drop it back outside.  Oh, dog.  

We are down to our last week of school before our winter break.  We're all a bit cranky and tired and impatient.  I'm just praying we make it through this week and learn a little something. 

And a funny meme.