Celebrating Caroline

At the beginning of the week our new refrigerator was delivered.  We had used a little dorm-size fridge for the past two weeks, which has been fine, but it was pretty nice to get a big one again.  I think we missed the water and ice machine in the front the most.  Benson had definitely missed our ice machine.  When we had the old fridge just sitting there all dead and warm, Benson would sit in front of it and whine.  It was his way of saying he wanted ice.  We'd look at his sad eyes and tell him, Sorry, buddy.  No ice.  He now has his ice back.  He loves to chew on it.

For CC this week we finished our study of Great Artists by studying Roy Lichtenstein.  We painted in his Pop-Art style using Benday dots.  It was a fun project to finish out the quarter.  Now we move onto orchestra for the last six weeks.  

Henry's on top, Josiah's on the bottom.

Caroline's

The day before Caroline's birthday, Josiah had a "Tribute Concert" in her honor.  He serenaded us with many Beatles tunes.  After a while, Caroline went up and sang with him.  Concert season is strong around here.  We attend several a week.  

Caroline turned eight this weekend.  As always, she got some great gifts.  She was gifted many crafts, which she loves, and she started nearly all of them in one form or another.  She played with her new Barbie set.  Henry helped her put together her new Lego set.  But the one gift that all three kids played with all day long was the singing machine.  When we bought it, I was under the impression it came with songs already loaded.  That wasn't the case, but it did come with different voices.  They had a radio voice, chipmunk voice, robot, female, and the one the kids liked the very most, the male voice.  The kids thought they sounded hilarious.  When Todd spoke into the microphone, it made his voice sound incredibly deep.  When the kids did it, it sounded male, but more like an I'm-still-going-through-puberty male.  Now Caroline wants to find some karaoke apps so she can sing along.  

For her meal selection, Caroline did not have an international affair as did Henry, but firmly stayed in the south.  She chose tacos from Taco Cabana for breakfast.  She likes the bean and cheese tacos as well as the bacon and egg.  They make their own fresh tortillas, which are really good.  For lunch she chose pigs in a blanket.  Then for dinner she solidified her southern roots and had crispy chicken, cornbread, and black-eyed peas (her very favorite vegetable/bean).  

She had very specific plans for her cake.  She wanted it pink-purple-pink-purple (so that when she cut her birthday slice, she could have both colors of frosting).  She wanted "Happy Birthday Caroline" written in alternating colors around the side of her cake.  She wanted the number '8' with sprinkles around it on the top of her cake.  I wasn't sure she realized the lack of cake decorating skills I possess, but we got to work.  She helped every step of the way.  We baked the cakes, which of course had sprinkles in the batter.  I asked a baker friend from our CC group for a frosting recipe, so we made a real buttercream frosting.  According to Caroline guidelines, we tinted half of it pink and half of it purple.  Todd got the pink one just right.  We had a tougher time getting a bright purple.  I attempted to make four triangles on the top with the icing.  Fortunately Caroline is not a professional pastry judge and thought it looked great.  Then it came time to pipe the words.  I put the frostings in two separate bags, but I cut the holes slightly too large, so the words came out quite fat and 'rustic.'  Caroline did the '8' on top and she thought it was fabulous.  And what could we have with this very girly cake?  Unicorn Swirl ice cream of course.  Because that's a flavor.  

 

Benson spent Caroline's birthday whining at our back door.  Nearly all day long.  He did not have freedom to be in his backyard.  Our backyard neighbor's nephew came to fix the fence posts on the shared back fence.  Because of that, they needed to take down the fence and rebuild it back up the right way.  We were thrilled that he was able to do it, because the fence has been leaning for some time.  We were not keen on replacing the whole fence, however, because it was just the posts that were in bad condition.  It was a huge blessing to us that he was able to fix the posts.  Also, he works in soils so he knows the horrible soil we have here and how to combat it.  He finished the back row today and is coming back tomorrow to fix our leaning side fence.  Fences here are incredibly frustrating.  They require wooden fences in the neighborhoods, but with the humidity and the sinking soil, the fences rot so quickly.  It feels like a constant battle to keep them in good shape.

With the fence taken down behind our shed, the opossum that had been living there moved up toward the front of our shed.  Fence Man saw that she had 6-7 babies on her.  We knew we had an opossum.  We did not know she had a big brood of babies.  After the fence was put back up, she continued to stay near the front of our shed.  However, I did not know just how close to the front she was when I brought Benson outside after Fence Man left.  He went right up to her and got in her face and she furiously hissed at him, showing her teeth.  It was quite the scene.  I kept looking back at her to make sure she wasn't going to strike at me, and then back at Benson trying to shoo him away.  And then furiously trying to find something to block her in/block Benson out.  I hope she moves back toward her original home in the back of the shed tonight.  We like having her around because of all the bugs she eats.  

Now that birthday season has ended around here, we feel a bit like this: