Chalk Festival

The kids have started puppet shows again.  They hadn't played with the puppets in quite a while, but one afternoon they came up with a whole story line.  It wasn't the most wholesome of storylines, but it did have a beginning, middle, and conclusion.  Basically, Josiah and Caroline were kidnappers.  They kidnapped their puppets, Al Dente & Sandra.  Henry's puppet, Officer Frank, was on the job to find the missing puppets.  Officer Frank was just a few steps behind until they all ended up on the subway together.  Frank sat next to Caroline who was pregnant.  He became suspicious of her pregnancy and it was discovered that she was hiding Sandra under her shirt.  At least Officer Frank was the hero in the end and rescued the kidnapped puppets.  He was quite lenient, however, letting them off with a warning.

The Subway Car

Josiah had an orthodontist appointment and the orthodontist gave him a look over and said we were coming into the final stretch.  They are going to do a lot of work on him next visit to finish up the alignment.  They put a four-strand rubber band across his top four teeth to close the gap that had been created when they moved his teeth back.  He definitely felt the pull by day's end, but he was also very encouraged by the words, "final stretch."  

When we went to CC this week, Josiah was wearing a hat that he puts on to pretend to be Michael Jackson.  I didn't think much of it.  Josiah is always accessorizing.  But at lunch, we were invited to watch skits from the Challenge A kids.  They were acting out the fallacies they have learned in Fallacy Detective.  Josiah played Michael Jackson in his skit.  A little bit of a moon walk.  A glove on one hand.  He takes his character acting seriously.  He also has quite the eclectic taste in music.  His current favorites are Michael Jackson, The Beatles, & Queen.  Lots of Bohemian Rhapsody listening around here.  

Henry is working on his Memory Master right now.  He's passed his Parent and Peer Proofs already.  This coming week he has his big Tutor Proof where he has to say everything from all 7 subjects for all 24 weeks with zero errors.  We have been doing Ancient History this year, so the history sentences and geography focus on that time frame.  He should do fine.  The hardest part for him is going to talk at a speed that people can understand.  It often feels that his goal in life is to do everything as quickly as possible.  

When Todd vacuums the living room, he take the job seriously.  Benson is always giving us reasons to vacuum.  

The boys did jiu-jitsu Saturday morning.  They took a break from their normal warm-ups and did shuttle run races.  It was three to a race, but because of the odd number of students, Josiah was left to go by himself, so the Professor had two other coaches race against him.  Josiah's youth and ability to change directions quickly helped seal his victory.  Then all the winners from each heat went against each other for an ultimate winner.  Henry beat out all of the kids, but the final race was against Coach Claudia and Professor Mike.  When they lined up, Professor Mike let the class know that he was his middle school's Shuttle Run Champion.  Prof Mike still had it in him and eeked out the win, but Henry made him earn it.

Josiah's first race:

Henry's first race:

Henry's last race:

This weekend we went to a Chalk Festival.  I thought that Josiah might like it since he has done a lot of chalk art.  We got there towards the beginning, while many of the artists were still working on their artwork.  They were pretty amazing, though.  

The had an area for the kids to try their hand at it.  They had regular sidewalk chalk as well as pastels.  Josiah and Caroline chose pastels, which gave them a much more vibrant picture.  Henry did not want to get his hands dirty, so his shadow pretended to draw on Josiah's Peely art.  Instead, Henry sat on the curb with me and played with dirt and dried leaves.  Because he didn't want to get his hands dirty...  

Henry's shadow hand 'drawing'

Caroline drew a sunset over the ocean. 

She drew another one the next day on our driveway. 

This past week the pollen has been crazy.  Everything is yellow.  The weather people said that the oak pollen count is typically between 3000-4000, and that they've never seen it go above 6000.  This past week the numbers each day have been 9000-10000.  The weather guy said that meant there were 9000 pollen particles floating around an area the size of a washing machine.  They called it insanely high numbers.  Todd feels it!  We would love a bit of rain this week to clean out the air.  Oak trees are everywhere here. In all the planned neighborhoods (which is most of them), they plant two in each front yard, four in each corner lot.  (That would also help explain why everyone around here eventually has foundation problems...)

This girl loves her dog.  It is amazing that she has come from not wanting him, to not being able to keep her hands off of him.