Perspectives and Critiques

Lovely Locks

I got an early start Monday morning, waking up at 5:00 a.m. to watch Queen Elizabeth's funeral.  Despite Josiah's love for British bands, British accents, and British TV shows, he slept through the whole thing as did his siblings.  Later on, however, Josiah remarked that his hair was growing nicely and should be ready by Halloween.  His plan is to dress in his suit and go as a shaggy-haired Paul McCartney.    

We rang in the autumnal equinox with sunny 99° weather.  And, despite the temperatures, Josiah fought off a fall cold for most of the week.  Lots of sneezing!  Henry gave it to Josiah, Josiah gave it to Todd, and the ladies are trying to avoid the men.  Fall weather doesn't kick in until mid-December around here.    

Mid-week, the kids decided that they would judge my cooking (in)abilities.  At dinner, they spoke in posh accents pretending to be Food Network style judges and discussed their plates.  There is no greater joy than getting critiqued by three whose primary goal in finishing a meal is to get dessert.  At least they liked that meal.  

At CC this week, Henry and Caroline did perspective drawings in their fine arts section. Every year the kids have a perspective week and every year they have drawn one-point perspective pictures.  Typically, it was a road disappearing into the horizon with a tiny house or mountains in the distance.  This year, Henry and Caroline's classes both did two-point perspective.  (The project is completely up to their tutors, so it was a surprise to see they had done something similar.)   Their results were pretty impressive.  Two-point perspective uses the ruler a lot!  Caroline drew the building, which she named "Party Bombs," while Henry drew the barn.  (Henry didn't mean to crinkle his up in his backpack....)

In Essentials, Caroline's class started diagramming.  When her tutor saw she had done it correctly on her paper, she was volunteered to write it on the board as well.  Caroline is usually always eager to volunteer and writing on the white board is an even bigger treat.  Better than that, it was a sentence about the Bubonic plague.  

Meanwhile, Josiah read his paper on the astronomer, Kepler, in his class.  Josiah has a bit of an aversion to writing formal, boring papers.  Even though I probably discourage it too much, he likes to add humor into everything he writes.  He would rather write, Kepler, while studying the stars, ate some juicy bratwurst than anything monotonous.  Josiah completed his paper with this:  In conclusion, I believe Kepler's laws made planetary motion easier to understand for those of us who do not know what planetary motion is.  Since he has to read his science paper each week, his goal is almost always entertainment.  Always a performer that one.

Josiah has also experienced a resurgence of his Spiderman costume.  This was likely it's last resurgence as it has gotten a little more form fitting.  Still, Josiah happily walked to get the mail, waving at all who passed.  He said it was his way of spreading joy and bringing a smile to people's faces.  

Out of the blue one day, Caroline said we should have named Benson, "Old TV."  I asked her if it was because he was black and white.  Yes.  I think we missed an opportunity there.  We probably would have had the only dog named Old TV if she thought of that a year and a half ago.  This weekend she made him a Paws Hotel.  He wouldn't go into it at all.  He just stood beside it, looking out the front window.  Then, after she went to bed this evening, Benson laid down inside.  

Trampolines, Hatcheries, and Escape Rooms

A break week at last.  And how did it begin?  By doing school with Josiah who decided to put off his Friday work until Monday.  So Monday was a wash for me and my enormous to do list.  

Tuesday morning I woke up to Henry and Caroline making pancakes.  They've cooked them often enough at this point that they have the process down.    

Josiah spent time throughout the week drawing pictures of Whopper-ios so he could decorate the walls of his room.  

By mid-week, the pace of our days quickened.  Errands were run all Wednesday morning and then we met friends at a new place called Bounce Bounce.  It was a trampoline park and more.  They had bumper cars (unfortunately they were out of order), a zipline, and an area with human-size hamster balls in water.  The kids played and bounced for a long time.  They made their way through the obstacle course quite a few times.  They tried soccer and basketball, dodgeball and a foam pit.  They even got permission to do the maze area, which is usually reserved for kids 4 feet and under.  We like to go to these places during school hours when there are very few people around.  

All three kids tried the zipline which went the length of the facility.  It was really high up.  The kids said it was scary, but fun.  They could feel the wind on their feet because they were only wearing the rubber-footed socks.  Once they finished the zipline, they ran down to the trampolines to watch the next person's ride.

Henry

Josiah

Josiah

Caroline flying over her brothers

From the trampoline park, they went to their Wednesday night activities at church.  When we finally made it home, Henry's legs felt like jelly, Josiah was hobbling with a bad knee, and Caroline had muscle aches  from muscles she didn't know existed.  

The following day we went on a field trip with our CC group.  It was to Sea Center Texas, which is a fish hatchery.  We had a great tour guide who walked us through the museum/aquarium portion, showing us all the many fish that are in this area.  They had a touch tank with blue crab, fish, sea anemone, and hermit crabs.

Then he gave us a tour of the hatchery.  They hatch flounder, red drum, and spotted seatrout.  Millions at a time.  They had three females and two males of each species in these massive containers. 

The water was constantly spinning because as they laid their eggs, there was fish oil on them which made them float.  The spinning water allowed them to be caught by a trough where they were collected and put in a different tank.  A 5mL cluster held about 5000 eggs.  The babies:

At the end, he brought us outside where they had many shallow ponds of water where the fish grew large enough to ship out and replenish the Gulf and bays.  We stopped at one specific watering hole where they allowed kids to fish (catch and release) twice a month.  Caroline said no thank you to that.  But they did get to feed the fish in that area and they were huge.  We were surprised by how big most of the fish were. 

Our favorite thing that we saw were the moon jellyfish.  They looked like a lava lamp.

Josiah wasn't able to come with us on the field trip because he had a yearbook meeting.  However, when we got home he said he was the only one who showed up.  Besides the two adult sponsors (and their two kids), Josiah was it.  So that was a bust. 

By the end of our break, the boys got back into their Legos.  Henry spent a good deal of time building a sandwich shop.  He had the assembly line for making the sandwiches, the kitchen in the back, and a fountain drink area.  Clever kid.  

Josiah finished out his break week going to a friend's birthday party at an escape room.  He had never done one before and they had 60 minutes to solve all the clues and get the door open.  They cut it down to the wire, but made it out with five minutes to spare.  The party continued at his friend's  house.  When I came to pick him up, Josiah asked me to hold on a minute.  He made his way back into the kitchen and reemerged with a handful of cookies for the road.  He did share with all of us, though, so he was very thoughtful in that respect.

Monday morning we are back to business as usual.  

Snakes in the House

We were dragging Monday morning.  Henry asked me to pour him a cup of coffee.  After pouring him half a mug, I got the creamer out.  Before a drop even hit his mug, he informed me of his preferences, Once it gets honey-colored, then I know it's good.  He then clarified that it needed to get honey-colored without any stirring.  The ratio of coffee to creamer is about 1:3.   

Some mornings Todd leaves for work before anyone is up.  That happened one day this week.  After waking, we saw this text from Todd, "Did Benson tell you we saw a snake this morning?"  No.  Where was it? (with the assumption they saw it on their walk) Then Todd proceeded to text a picture of the snake  In. Our. Foyer.  He thought it would be funny to then tell us he had chased it under the couch.  I don't know how he managed to get it out of the house solo, but we're grateful he did.  

At CC this week, it was our turn to do our family presentation.  Creativity has waned over the years as this was our 9th family presentation.  We came up with the idea of building triangles.  Or pyramids as Caroline called them.  We each had three sections.  The bottom section was our favorite activities.  The middle section was our favorite foods, and the top section was a job we did around the house.  We started with the bottom sections and let the audience guess which piece belonged to which family member.  When they guessed Josiah's food section was for Henry, Henry mumbled, "I'm offended by that."  After going through all three sections, they got Benson's pyramid completely correct.     

Here are the finished, correct pyramids.

For his presentation in class, Henry pulled out his old number trick.  He wrote his grid on the board and this time he asked for volunteers.  Each child picked one number from each row.  Only one number from each row and column could be picked.  Once added up (it equaled 34), he allowed another classmate to open the envelope revealing Henry had already written the number 34.  Amazing.  

We had many firsts this week.  Caroline had her first night back at church for their Wednesday night programs.  She also had her first night back at Awana.  She was looking forward to doing both, but was very excited to see old friends at Awana.  

This weekend, the boys started their LifeGroups.  Josiah is in his third year with his same group of now 8th grade boys.  This is Henry's first year.  He has been looking forward to all the things that the KSM/student ministry has to offer.  He was ready to move up!  His LifeGroup has many friends from over the years, so he is quite happy to be in this particular group.  His is made up of twelve 6th grade boys.  

Todd and I had to divide and conquer with the LifeGroups as they meet in homes and obviously the boys are at different homes.  I took Caroline with me to drop off Josiah.  It was too far to drive there-back, there-back, so we hung out for 90 minutes.  We got a taco and played games.  

The kids have stayed up late throughout the week playing Apples to Apples.  They have their own set of rules, which involves using about three times as many cards, but they've had a lot of fun and surprisingly little arguing.  

This week we're taking a much needed break week.  It has been a very intense start to the semester.  I have a long list of things to catch-up on and the kids are looking forward to having a breather.  We  have a field trip planned with our CC group, which should break up the week nicely.  

Drumming with Copernicus

Josiah's astronomer of the week was Nicolaus Copernicus.  The assignment was to pretend he went back in time and interviewed Copernicus.  Instead of doing it solo, he paired up with his friend, Bobby, and they had a good time filming their interview.  Bobby was Alexander the Great Reporter from Good Morning Greece.  Josiah was Copernicus.  When they first started talking about the project, they were tossing ideas around, many with a Greek theme.  Then, when they looked up Copernicus and saw he was born in Germany and lived in Poland, they worked that side in as well.  When all was said and done, Bobby was a reporter from Greece and he was interviewing Copernicus there.  They wrote all the interview questions and answers themselves.  There was a lot of improv by Josiah, but they had good banter back and forth.  At the beginning of the interview, Bobby said he was going to speak with his good friend Copernicus and Josiah responded, "We're friends?  I  just met you!" When Bobby asked Josiah about his background, Josiah looked at the set behind him and said it was a brick wall.  Since it was set as a morning talk show, they had a commercial break.  Their first commercial was for Lil Augustus' Pizza (a nod to Copernicus' German roots).  Henry starred as Augustus, while Caroline was a pizza loving customer.  We froze a pizza the day before so we could get it to stand straight on the pole like Little Caesar's logo.  Between takes, Henry kept nibbling on the crust.  After their commercial wrapped, Henry asked to eat the whole frozen pizza.  After one or two bites, he realized it wasn't as good as it looked.  Their second commercial was set to be like those "Were you exposed to asbestos?  Call this number for legal compensation."  Since they were in Greece, they talked about still being afraid of horses because of the Trojan War.  They had a lot of fun and packed it all into two days of filming.  Bobby spent the next day editing their footage before presenting to their class.  

Josiah had a little dream come true this week when his drum set arrived.  We unpacked two giant boxes full of drum parts and not a set of instructions to be found.  YouTube to the rescue.  He was insistent that he wanted to build them completely by himself.  We watched the instructions with him to make sure all was done correctly, and several hours later, his drums were set up.  They said tuning them can take years of practice, so we did our best in that department.  Josiah is loving being a drummer.  He purposefully picked out the same brand that Ringo Starr uses.  His siblings were happy when they got to try their hand at them, too.  Ear protection is a requirement.  Not only for the drummer, but for all members of the household who need to stop the ringing in their heads...  They are loud.  We did offer him official drum lessons, but he declined saying it was a busy school year with mock trial (spring semester).  So, Todd signed up for instructional videos which will teach Josiah the proper technique.  

Later in the week, his friend Bobby came back over and they jammed together.  Bobby plays piano and they're going to work on Hey Jude together.  

Jiu-jitsu stripes were earned this week.  Smoothie King was consumed.  

Caroline read her first paper in her Essentials Class.  The topic was Justinian the Great.  She did very well and was happy to share all the -LY adverbs she added in her paper.  

Caroline also went grocery shopping with Todd.  She put all the items she enjoyed eating at the head of the cart.  The lesser food went in the main basket.  In her section she placed fresh tortillas, refried beans, and sushi.  

It has rained every day this week.  We have been so happy to have the grass grow again and things are back to being green for the most part.  Benson's favorite part are the puddles of nice cool rainwater.  He would bark and whimper at us to let him out.  We'd feel bad that he would have to go out in the rain to do his business, and then instead of taking care of business, he'd walk over to the puddle for a good long drink.  Our least favorite part has been the return of the mosquitoes.  They laid low throughout the drought, but they're making up for lost time at the moment.  

Benson has also tried to make friends with the new baby squirrels.  We saw them emerge from their nest one day - three of them scampered up the tree after their mother while the last stayed in the nest watching.  One keeps landing itself on the shed roof where he has staring contests with Benson.  He leans really far over the edge of the roof making us very nervous.  Benson watches with great anticipation, but fortunately this particular baby has kept his balance and not fallen off.  

It's hard to tell from the picture, but he's a little guy.

Much to Josiah's chagrin, we're working through Labor Day.  Once we get through this week, however, we'll have a break week from CC and take some days off.  I keep telling the kids it'll be worth it.  They're not buying it just yet...