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.