Crawfish and Rain

Monday afternoon, Henry was able to complete his Director Proof over Zoom.  He became a Cycle 1 Memory Master!  He worked really hard this year to memorize all the subjects.  Many weeks he took the initiative and studied the material on his own.  He has always been crazy good at memorizing information and retaining it!  I think half the reason he does it, however, is for the special dinner at a restaurant.  A few years ago, he decided to not do the memory master and at the end of that year he said he really missed not being able to go out to eat.   

To celebrate completing his memory master proofs, we made him a chocolate cake.  It was our intention to bake it for him, but he wanted in on the action, so he basically baked his own chocolate cake.

That same celebratory evening, Josiah regaled us with a very unique concert.  He had a song playlist that included Queen, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Europe, and Sesame Street.  Instead of himself lip-syncing the words, he had his puppet, Al Dente, do the singing.  They say there is nothing new under the sun, however, I would be very surprised if any other child has had their chef puppet perform We Are the Champions and Bohemian Rhapsody.  When Al Dente had finished his numbers, Josiah danced to Michael Jackson's Billie Jean.  It was quite the event.

This was our last week of CC for Henry and Caroline.  Henry received his Memory Master medal, which he wore all day.  Caroline had a pizza party in her class because some of her classmates were moving up to Challenge A.  

After lunch, Henry's Essentials class did Faces of History.  Henry was Alexander the Great and he stood up on stage and gave a very excited, very rapid and energetic speech about all the lands he conquered.  Since they spoke in first person, at the end of their speech, they had to say, "Who am I?"  Then the audience was able to guess.  

They finished it out with their traditional ice cream party.  It was a good day, albeit exhausting.  Josiah still has two more weeks of classes, but his last week is just exams, so he's nearing the end, too.  

This was the last week of Awana as well.  Each week at opening ceremonies, we say two pledges - to the U.S. flag and to the Bible.  Caroline was picked to say the Pledge of Allegiance this week and I was there to capture it.  She did a good job of speaking at a pace the rest of us could keep up with.

This weekend we went to our first ever crawfish boil.  It was at the home of Todd's Krav Maga instructor.  This is something he has annually, which made our family the clear crawfish-eating amateurs of the afternoon.  When we first walked up the driveway, we noticed the two giant pots, but then a few feet beyond the boiling pots, were the fresh crawfish just waiting.  He had bought 100 pounds of crawfish!   When they were cooked, he put them on giant trays.  To our untrained eye, this looked like a massive amount of crawfish per person.  Todd and Henry took a tray and sat down with some seasoned eaters.  They were taught to twist off the tail, suck the head (but it's really the abdomen), take off the first segment of tail shell and then push up from the bottom of the tail to eat the tail meat.  They both got into it and easily ate two trays of food.  It was a lot of work for a little bit of meat.  I did try it, but will probably stick to shrimp - much easier!  Josiah and Caroline were a no-go to try it.  There was also jambalaya, which was very, very good.  The man who puts it on is originally from Louisiana, so it was the real deal.  

Right after the crawfish boil, Josiah and Todd had to get ready for their concert.  We had bought tickets to Rain years ago.  The original concert was for April 2020, which was at the start of all the lockdowns.  After several postponements, they finally got to go.  They are a tribute band for the Beatles and Todd said they did a phenomenal job.  They started off dressed as the Beatles in their suits, singing their old stuff.  They they gradually would change costumes and hair and sing the later songs as well.  It was 34 songs in total!  Todd said they even sounded like Paul McCartney and John Lennon when they spoke.  Todd's favorite part, however, was at the very beginning.  They did the usually announcement, with a small addition.  "There is no flash photography, no video recording, and no smoking......ANYTHING."  The adults got a laugh out of that.  

They got home late and Josiah fell asleep the minute his head hit the pillow.  He is very much an early bird, but he cannot do nights.  

Josiah did a little chalk art this weekend as well.  

Agent Peely (Fortnite)

It was a good busy week.  As much as we enjoy our activities starting up in August and September, we are equally joyed by them ending in April and May.  Now we just have regular school for the next few weeks to finish out the school year.  

The Presidential Library

At the beginning of the week, we made salt dough to go with our science lesson.  They were supposed to make a model of starfish since we read about echinoderms.  They made puny little starfish, set them to the side, and then played with the salt dough making all sorts of things.  It had the consistency of playdoh, but with a salty/grainy texture.  They were even nice siblings and each gave Josiah a portion of the dough.  The three of them have played with it a lot throughout the week.  

Mid-week, we headed to CC so Henry could complete his Memory Master Tutor Proof.  There were only three kids proofing that day.  Two were in classrooms, but the woman Henry was with sat two chairs in the hallway.  It would have been fine since the church was otherwise quiet.  But then, a few minutes into the proof, plumbers showed up.  They were walking down the hallways, talking at a normal volume.  I was a little worried for Henry because he prefers to proof/test in quiet environments with zero distractions.  He did it, though.  It took him about an hour.  After that we played outside until the last child finished.  Tomorrow he has his final Director Proof and then he's done!

Todd planned a little weekend road trip.  The original plan was to go to the Blue Bell ice cream factory, then two different museums.  We piled in the car Friday morning, Todd pulled out his phone to do the GPS, and we discovered the ice cream factory was closed for Good Friday.  So we went to our second stop first.  We headed up to College Station to visit the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library.  When Josiah was obsessed with presidents a year ago or so, he mentioned that he would love to visit a presidential library, so we had kept this leg of the trip a surprise.  College Station is home to Texas A&M which has 70,000+ students.  It was no small campus.  The Presidential Library was at one end of the campus.  It ended up being a really neat place to visit.  I always like hearing people's stories, so reading about his early life/growing up was interesting.  There was also a section that housed all the gifts he had been given from different countries.  That was even more enjoyable because Josiah has learned cartography this year, so we recognized all the countries and knew where they were.  The kids' favorite part was sitting in the replica of the Oval Office.  They also liked the real WWII plane and limo.  The presidential limo was a bit smaller than today's Beast.  Josiah browsed the gift shop several times.  He really wanted a $60 pen, but settled on a $5 pen.  I added to my pencil collection.  

From there we found the Texas Bucket List store and studio.  There is a show we watch most weekends called The Texas Bucket List.  The man travels around Texas trying different local restaurants.  The store is where they shoot some of the footage for the show.  It was not a big place, but it was full of Texas gear.  This is where the kids got their souvenirs.  Josiah and Caroline each picked out a mood ring in the shape of Texas.  Henry opted for a t-shirt that had all the major cities of Texas on it.  When we left that store, we had a 50 minute drive back to the hotel.  Every two minutes, Caroline let us know how she was feeling based on the color of her mood ring.  She was often happy, loved, romantic, or calm.  Once she was 'stressed,' but then had to ask what that meant.  

For dinner that night, Henry said he needed something healthy and ordered a giant Caesar Salad with shrimp.  He even let Caroline and I eat some of his greens.  

At the hotel, the kids were happy to find out we got two adjoining rooms.  They claimed the one with two beds for themselves and got nice and comfortable on the bed watching Cartoon Network.  The only trouble was, they could not fall asleep.  They kept coming to the second room to tell me so.  But they could wake up.  I was awakened at 5:36 a.m. to hearing them chatting in their room with the TV on.  I got up and asked them to turn it off and go back to bed.  If I was wearing a mood ring, it would not have shown 'happy' or 'calm.'  They were so excited for the hotel breakfast, that they wanted to make sure they would get first dibs.  Breakfast started at 6:00 a.m.  

After checking out of the hotel, we drove up to Washington-on-the-Brazos to see where Texas declared its independence.  This is where Todd and Josiah went on his 13th birthday weekend.  This day they had people dressed in period pieces outside, so we could ask them questions.  We stopped at the woman washing clothes first.  Caroline was eager to wash clothes and really liked this station.  After the washing and rinsing, they laid the clothes out on the grass.  They said the oxygen released from the grass coupled with the sun shining down bleached their clothes.  From there, we stopped at the printing press, then the blacksmith.  The poor blacksmith was having trouble getting his fire started, so we moved on after that.  Our favorite station was the tailor.  He gave a ton of good information and showed the kids exactly how he sewed the clothes.  We went back to him a few times with questions.  What you cannot see from the pictures was there were tons of caterpillars there.  They were constantly dropping from the trees, so we had to pull them off our clothing a number of times.  We were very glad we were wearing hats!

  

Josiah browsed this gift shop as well.  He really wanted a genuine $80 top hat.  Alas, we left with only our memories from this venture.  

From the tailor, we walked to the Star of the Republic Museum.  That was a very fun museum filled with artifacts from the 1800s.  Josiah and Caroline's favorite part was the playroom where they got to play with all the 1850s stuff.  I found a bench and sat down knowing we would be in there for a while.

  

We had one more section to visit - Barrington Farm which was the home of the last president of the Republic of Texas.  Todd said it was a mile down the road.  All the kids asked to drive to it.  But looking at the map, it was 3/4 of a mile down a footpath.  None were too happy when I said we could walk it.  We had to work off that hotel breakfast.  Once we got walking, however, the boys skipped ahead as happy as could be.  There were giant cows along the path, so that made it fun.  The weather was perfect - low 80s and overcast. 

At the house, we were able to walk through the rooms and touch everything.  In the backyard, the kids tried their hand at 1850s toys.  Caroline ran with the hoop like she had been doing it all her life.  

If the kids had been wearing their mood rings on the walk back to the car, they would have shown, "tired, agitated, hangry, and profoundly cranky."  

All of our drives took us down two-lane country roads.  They were hilly roads, too, so at some points the kids put their hands up like a roller coaster when we went up and down.  Houston is so incredibly flat, that even the hills were an exciting part of the trip.  There were no crops, only cattle.    

We got home Saturday evening and we were tired.  Sleep came quickly.  We actually had to rush a little bit to get to church this morning because all slept in later than usual.  It was a hurry-up-and-wait situation.  We made it to church with 11 minutes to spare.  We left Todd to save our seats and the kids and I went outside to get some Easter pictures.  I've always told them, it'll only take one minute if they just smile.  Pose they did, and we got some good pictures.  

Happy Easter!