Thanksgiving Plans and Christmas Pictures

The first half of our week was incredibly busy completing all the projects that were due on our final CC day.  There were parties to buy for and chart projects to finish.  Henry's class had a party in the morning as well as the afternoon.  Both Henry and Caroline had cupcake parties for their Essentials class.  Henry, of course, chose a chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting.  Caroline chose a vanilla cupcake with vanilla icing.  Her side dish of toppings gave it additional flavor.  

Before the partying, the Essentials kids presented on their chart projects.  Henry chose to represent Interjections with his Lego creation.  He had all the characters on the Ferris wheel yelling out Interjections.  He anticipated kids touching the Lego figures, so he wrote a little card that stayed on the top.  It seemed to help for the most part.  

Caroline presented on her arcade game of prepositions.  She really wanted to do an old school arcade game.  She chose Super Mario Bros because 'everyone knows that.'  On her game screen, she added all the prepositions she could.  She then had to explain how she incorporated the prepositions to her classmates.     

Henry and Caroline are finished with their CC semesters so they have a long break until January.  They still have all their other school.  Basically, they have a break from writing papers and weekly presentations.  We do have a Market Day coming up after Thanksgiving break.  It will be a potluck as well as a time for kids to sell homemade wares.  From our crew, only Josiah is interested in selling.  He has been busy preparing more drawings to sell.  This past week he drew a few from Space Jam. 

He also drew a few for himself - Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney.

One evening, the kids did one of their typical challenges. They gave themselves the task of cutting out pictures from magazines and advertisements to represent their future families.  

Josiah's 

Henry's (Apparently his wife's name is Amy.)

Caroline's family included a lot of foster and adopted kids because she is really interested in doing that.  

Josiah earned a stripe at jiu-jitsu this week.  He was quite happy that he was the first Cockrell to get a stripe at their new facility.  And, because they are in a new location, we needed a closer celebration place.  Smoothie King was now too far away. The kids were quick to spot that two doors down there was a Bahama Buck's, so that is the new "stripe" place.  

By the end of the week, everything school related had calmed down considerably.  We took advantage of that and did our Christmas picture.  

We tried to recreate an old picture from when Caroline and Josiah were 3 and 7.  

Josiah had a good weekend adding to his quest for the best chicken fingers.  Todd took him to Cheddar's and their chicken fingers jumped up to his all time top three.  To quell any animosity from the younger two siblings, they made a stop on the drive home and brought sushi for Henry and Caroline.  

The kids have requested a very traditional Thanksgiving meal.  We sat down this evening to get everyone's input and they'll get their mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, green beans, and pie.  We did swap out the turkey for Cornish game hens.  Those were incredibly juicy the last time Todd cooked them.  

Now we look forward to a much more relaxed week ahead.