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!
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!
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