Caroline is Nine

Caroline turned nine this week.  We have now entered the year of the odd numbers again.  13, 11, 9.

Like Henry, Caroline asked for a scavenger hunt for her gifts.  We had to do different places than we did for Henry, so we struggled a bit with locations.  Caroline had some gigantic gifts this year.  We used quite a few closets for our hiding spots to accommodate size.  She had a lot of fun running around and finding the gifts.  She was super excited to find a giant koala bear from the boys.  She received a lot of fun gifts and has said throughout the week that it was her best birthday ever.  Before breakfast, she opened up balls full of miniature foods.  The coolest part to her was that they were real food items from real brand names.  She said the bacon and hot dogs were her favorite.  She does like those foods for real.  

After a healthy breakfast of mini powdered donuts, she started in with her Plush Craft husky.  She loves these kits - basically you just push a piece of fabric into a hole with most of it sticking out so it looks like fur.  

She played for most of the morning before we met up with Todd for her birthday lunch.  She wanted Spring Creek BBQ, specifically the summer sausage and fries.  Whether they claim it or not, frying is their specialty at Spring Creek.  I got the okra again and it is definitely the best fried okra we've ever had.  We all enjoyed that basket of okra goodness.  Josiah was still recovering from his stomach bug, but he enjoyed several of their fresh baked rolls.  

After lunch, Caroline started in on her diamond art.  At first glance it looked hard, a bit tedious, and maybe a little above her age.  But as she stuck to one packet of colored jewels at a time, the concept seemed easier and she really got into it.  She liked it more than expected which was a pleasant bonus.  She spent the remainder of her school days this week doing diamond art, a little math, diamond art, a little English, more diamond art.  It does take a long time to complete a picture, but she loved the result.  Her goal is to finish the four from the kit and put them in a frame for her room.

Of all the gifts, however, I think her new jean jacket was the favorite.  She wore it her entire birthday and for several days since.  She loves the look and the feel of it.  She loves how she looks in it and it makes her happy. It was a little bittersweet, though, because it seemed like a much more grown-up gift.  

For dinner, she chose her usual fare: crispy chicken, black-eyed peas, and cornbread.  Then it was cake for dessert.  Even her cake choice was more grown up, opting for flowers instead of a character.  

As with all birthdays in this house, they start early and they tend to end early.  Waking up at 5:00 a.m. makes one tired by 8:00 p.m.!

Throughout the week she has worked on her new Lego kit.  She has not completed it yet because she likes to pick the hour before dinner to work on it, and she likes me there in official capacity as Instruction Book Page Turner.  We are about to start Bag 4 of 4 tomorrow.  However, she told me today that she is already on page 200 in her new birthday book!  She does love to read.

Birthday season is officially over in our household.  Whew!

Benson has had a rough week with his nose.  We have neighbors two doors down that have a new dog.  This dog has somehow figured out how to get from its backyard to the backyard next to us.  She then stands on the other side of our fence and barks.  When this first happened, Benson barked so much and sniffed at the fence so intensely, that he came back inside with a bloody nose.  This continued to happen several days this week, so now we have to check before letting him out, or take him out on a leash (which is not ideal since the backyard is his area).  Benson also gave me a shock, because one evening while I was trying to corral him away from the fence, he had gone to the side of our house and jumped so high that he could see over our fence into the neighbor's yard.  He was not scaling it, he literally just jumped 6 feet in the air.  I could not believe how high he had gone.  It was impressive and slightly scary at the same time.  

His nose all red - he wore off all the black.

We had a good week at CC, but the most fun came after.  We had a going away party for a family that is moving to Baton Rouge.  Our CC group met up at a park and the kids got to play on the playground for 2.5 hours.  They played hard!    

This Friday was the last day of school before spring break.  The level of focus was about what you would expect for the last day before spring break.  School work was completed.  I cannot say how much was retained.  

Because we only went to jiu-jitsu once this week, Todd took the kids to the Saturday morning competition class.  This class focuses more on points and scoring for tournament matches.  While our kids do not necessarily want to compete, they have enjoyed the class.  Caroline said she came in second in her group, defeating two opponents, before getting submitted by the third.  Henry finished the class with his fourth white stripe.  There is significantly less complaining about doing a class on a Saturday morning when they know they'll get Smoothie King after in celebration of a stripe.

Finally, Henry decided that Todd and I grew up in the dark ages.  The kids were watching old Disney trailers this afternoon.  When they watched the original Toy Story trailer, Henry told Caroline, "I think this was the first movie in color."  1995 Toy Story came out.  1995.

And poor Josiah didn't make any of the pictures this week.  Here he is coming home from church today.