Not A Dry Week

Caroline had taken it upon herself to clean Josiah's room this week.  She would go in there on her own volition at different times of day and clear spots of carpet.  After she filled up Josiah's tiny trash can, she brought in a trash bag.  When Josiah saw it, he said, "Whoa.  Can I at least go through it first to make sure it's trash?"  Caroline replied with a blunt, "No."  And that was that.  Josiah didn't protest.  Each day she continued to make progress.  More than one trash bag sort of progress.  Henry helped some and they would vacuum the cleaned-out spots as they happened.  Henry went in one evening to clean Josiah's dresser.  Josiah could not understand the desire to clean his room, but he was very appreciative.  Unfortunately I never got a picture of the finished product.  It was clean for Thursday evening when Josiah had a friend sleep over.  After that, Josiah immediately took on a new project which has taken over half the floor again.  We almost had a good 24 hours of clean carpet.  

Josiah's new project is "Rat Town."  We have had a spot on our wall where Benson messed with the drywall years ago.  Josiah drew a picture back then and it covered up the spot.  This week, the tape finally lost its stickiness, so I commissioned Josiah to draw another picture for that spot.  Did he follow through!  He covered the spot:  

Then he got Rat-Town-happy.  He added a bay window, rats sleeping, rats showering, rats drinking coffee.  A sign for Rat Town was made.  He has lots of ideas and plans to cover as much wall space as he can.  

Josiah had a good start to his week, too.  He earned his third red stripe in jiu-jitsu.  Todd joined in our Crumbl Cookie celebration, so we got a box of six this time.  The kids have a very particular way of eating them.  Each of them gets half the cookie they picked out.  The other half is cut into four pieces and then divided up amongst the family.  NO ONE can eat the cookies though.  You have to sit down with a full cup of water.  Caroline is very adamant that they all try the same cookie at the exact same time.  After each flavor, they discuss its taste, presentation, and whether they would get it again.  Water is sipped to cleanse the palate before another cookie is selected.  There was one week that I tried to follow along with them, but I didn't have the patience to go that slow.  Plus, I wanted to eat them in the order that I liked.  Save the best for last!  

We had quite the day at CC this week.  Caroline has science as the last strand in the mornings.  This quarter they have been building a lot - paper airplanes, straw bridges, straw towers, (catapults and egg protectors are coming up).  Her class has continued working on their projects even after they are free to go to lunch.  So at lunch, the other classes have wandered in to check on their progress.  That happened again this week - a child came in to check out their straw towers.  He's the type of child that greets everybody, so when he walked in, he saw me and said, "Hi Mrs. Cocktail."  Well, that's a fun name!  

Later in Caroline's Essentials class, they did something called expanding the sentence.  They start with a short sentence, "The dog barked."  The tutor goes around the room and each child adds to the sentence to make it quite long in the end.  Caroline added first - "The dog barked at the flamingo wearing a sombrero."  When it came to one girl's turn she added, "The dog barked at the flamingo, who was drinking tequila."  Her mother, who adheres to a very strict diet and in no way drinks tequila, was a bit horrified and said, "WHAT!  You don't even know what that is!"  to which her daughter succinctly replied, "Yes I do."  'Non-alcoholic' was added to the tequila to appease the mom.  The final sentence became:

Clearly it is the end of the semester for the kids too...

Josiah's friend spent the night after CC.  They played all sorts of games together including one in which Josiah dressed up like his sock puppet, Socky.  The next day, we had to drop the friend off at work.  He just recently got a job at the store Bricks and Minifigs, which buys, sells, and trades Legos.  The store is not open to the public yet, so Bobby has spent a lot of his time sorting Legos for them.  Josiah has asked many questions about the job and has expressed interest in applying himself.  He thought it sounded great to get paid for sorting Legos.  Henry, Caroline, and I quickly reminded him that he could sort his Legos in his room all day, every day.  Not amused.  He was not amused.  

Todd spent Saturday at a martial arts seminar.  It was at the same dojo where he takes Krav Maga.  He was invited back to his instructor's house for a fajita dinner.  Bring the family!, he was told.  This was the same house that had the crawfish boil a year ago.  We went and the kids ate their weight in fajitas.  They were very good.  They remembered the fun chair outside, too.  Caroline cheated on Benson a little and loved on their dogs with their big long ears.  

Henry was not keen on pictures that evening, but we did find him in his natural habitat drinking the lemon-lime bubbly.  

It was a very full week and weekend.  Henry has some intense weeks coming up as he finishes his end of year faces of history project and works on his memory master.  

A Spring Break Friend Fest

We squeezed in a lot over our spring break.  Monday started off sort of a wash because we were so tired from the time change.  (At least I was.)  Josiah and Caroline set out to make one movie a day over the break.  They do a lot of transitions - they'll snap their fingers and appear in a different room.  It requires a lot of planning as well as a lot of ad libbing, but they love to make them.  Josiah was in charge of the transitions, Caroline was in charge of editing - she adds words and sets it to music.  

Josiah got to help demonstrate the move at jiu-jitsu early in the week.  Sensei Matt demonstrated a trip. 

Monday evening was good for Henry.  He earned his solid grey belt in jiu-jitsu.  It's been a long time coming - 19 months!  He could not receive it the day it was earned because he needed a blackbelt to put it on him.  The next evening, Professor Mike was there and he got it.  A new belt means you get flipped, too.  It also means a meal out, but Henry's still mulling over the restaurant possibilities.  

By mid-week we were in the swing of things.  Wednesday afternoon we went to a new park to play with friends.  This was a very duck and bird-friendly park.  There was an inaccessible island in the water next the park that was filled with fowl.  

Thursday we drove out to Galveston and saw the Gulf of Mexico.  We went to the Galveston Naval Museum with our CC group.  When we arrived, it was a bit chilly and very windy.  We were regretting our clothing choices, but fortunately the sun came out and warmed us up.  The wind stayed strong the whole time, but I suppose that was to be expected.  At the start of our tour, our guide asked if we had anywhere to be later.  We all shook our heads no, and then he proceeded to spend the next three hours with us.  He was a great tour guide and shared a lot of information about the two boats that we saw.  Our tour started on the USS Stewart, the "President's Escort."  In October 1943, this boat escorted FDR to the Tehran Conference with Churchill and Stalin.  We were told that an aircraft carrier would be flanked by 4-5 of these escort ships on each side.  We learned about the depth charges and the gunners.  We saw the sleeping quarters - three high.  They even had an ice cream machine in the mess hall.  It was put there as a replacement for alcohol to keep the men sober.    

From the ship we went to the sub, the USS Cavalla, which was stationed in the Pacific in WWII.  She was known as the Avenger of Pearl Harbor, and became famous for sinking the Japanese Navy Carrier, SHOKAKU, that attacked Pearl Harbor.  We started off in the torpedo room.  It held 8 torpedoes in the bow and 8 in the stern, each one weighing in at 3500 lbs.  He showed us how they would slide them into the tube to be fired.  Interestingly, it had to resurface every 12-48 hours.  During its nightly surfaces, it would run its diesel engines to recharge its batteries.  So, it would go up and down nearly daily.  It could only go 400-450 feet deep, too.  If we thought it was tight to walk around the bowels of the ship, the sub was an incredibly tight squeeze.  Even single file, there were many hallways where your arms easily hit both sides.  And gauges, valves, pipes were everywhere, which we were emphatically warned not to touch.  There were several rooms with bunks three high again, but to accommodate the whole crew, some cots were right next to the torpedoes.  

Tube to launch the torpedo

Not the cot I'd choose.

Todd's favorite part was the symbol used for the USS Cavalla.  It was named for the cavalla fish which is wearing a sombrero and holding a torpedo.  

Immediately after getting home from the Naval Museum, we dropped Josiah off at a Challenge B Game Day at his friend's house.  A few days prior, Josiah mentioned to me that if he lost a game of his choosing, then he would get a hair cut.  I mentioned this to the mom so she could make sure he lost a game and I knew about it.  Later, at pick-up, I learned that all his friends rallied around him and made sure he was on everyone's team so he would never lose.  It was very sweet, but he still needs a trim in the hair department....

The following day, we had friends come over from our CC group.  The mom has a small baking business on the side, so she came to teach us how to make cake pops.  At first taste, they were immensely better than the time we tried to make them on our own.  Learning the proportions made a huge difference.  Caroline and her daughter had a lot of fun decorating them.  They had triangle sprinkles, so there were many cats, dinosaurs, and other triangular-eared animals made.  Josiah made a chicken.  By the end, sprinkles had found their way to all parts of the kitchen.  I also could not find the lollipop sticks to make them cake "pops," so we had cake "balls" which were just as good.  Our cake pop instructor would not like to be shown because our creations were closer to Pollock and Picasso, while her creations are closer to the pretty pastry chef side of things.  They spent the whole afternoon with us, so we had a very full day.  

To close out our break, Henry spent Saturday afternoon at a friend's house.  He likes this friend a lot because they play outside - climbing trees, playing tag, and playing on a tree swing.  Henry would love for his siblings to play outside more.

Sunday afternoon all three kids hung out with their neighborhood friend.    

It's been a friend fest spring break.  

As much as I would love a second spring break to get all the things completed on my to-do list, we have to hit the ground running tomorrow morning.  All three kids have year-end projects that need a lot of attention put towards them.  I've put out my warning that all schedules need to be stuck to and completed.  There are no changes, no substitutions, no compromises.  And definitely no one can get sick.  

Smiles on the surface.  "Henry, stop touching me" under their breath.

Done With Single Digits

At the beginning of the week, one little girl was quite excited to be turning double digits.  We memorialized her last jiu-jitsu class as a nine year old.  

The night before her birthday, she let the boys move in.  They played games on her loft (geography bingo) and chatted until it was late.  One brother got the cot and the other the mattress.  Dark circles under Henry's eyes the next morning indicated who got the cot!   

Like her brothers, Caroline wanted her gifts hidden, but she did say she didn't want her clues to be as hard as Henry's.  We made them tough enough to make her think.  The hardest was the clue with five math problems whose answers corresponded to a letter of the alphabet (1=A, 2=B).  Then she had to unscramble the letters in order to figure out the word.  Putting them in order proved hardest, so we did it Wordle style - I told her what she had in the right spot with each guess.  The word was DRYER because her gift was next to the dryer.  Actually, it was behind the door because I was doing laundry the night before and forgot to move it.  But BEHIND THE LAUNDRY ROOM DOOR would have been too many math problems on a birthday morning.  

Before she opened her gifts, the boys gave her their card.  In it, they had more division problems that they said had to be completed before the first gift was opened.  At least they were easy ones.  She did them all without a single complaint!  No Tears, No Fears!

Her gifts were a plenty.  Almost all were decorations for her room, which she loved.  Fake plants and a wall collage, a marquee sign and a Smores Squishmallow.  The big gift was a LED sign that spelled out her name.  She was quite happy to get that up on the wall.  Now it stays on every night and she uses it to read/sleep by.  

Birthday breakfast was not sugary!  She chose Canadian bacon, egg, and cheese English muffins.  They were so good.  We stopped making them when Josiah got braces because I thought they'd be too tough to eat.  I was wrong and they were delicious.  They're back on our breakfast-for-dinner menu.  

All morning the kids played games.  Benson and I got a nap in because it was so quiet!  Sushi was the lunch request.  Caroline likes the California rolls.  She is a huge fan of sticky rice.  Todd had bought two packs of sushi, so it was quite a bit.  I asked them to leave some for Todd.  Originally, they did, but then they kept snacking on it throughout the day.  The next day when Todd went to have some, he discovered one package had one piece of sushi left.  The other pack contained only the strip of ginger.  You've got to be fast around here.  

For dinner, Caroline chose Smashburger, which is the best burger ever.  At home, she helped decorate her cake.  She chose a white cake with cookies and cream ice cream in the middle.  We tried a different buttercream recipe because she said Henry's was too sweet.  After mixing it together, she changed her mind from white frosting to purple.  I tried.  I only used 3 drops of blue and about 25 of red.  Even still, we were always trying to get it from looking like the color of cement.  It was purple, just not a very vibrant purple.  We both worked on the lettering and she placed the candles just so.  

The next day we headed to Rodeo Houston.  Todd, Henry, Caroline, and I walked around together.  Josiah stayed with his Challenge B group for the entire day.  It had been four years since we had been, but it remained the same - even the rides.  We got there early and right off the bat, Caroline wanted to try the first roller coaster we saw.  She rode solo because Henry was still warming up to the idea of spending the day at the rodeo.  

Todd took them both on a very high Ferris wheel next.  

They rode the swings.

We met up with Josiah and tried the Hall of Mirrors and a second Ferris wheel.  

We headed over to watch Mutton Bustin' which was quite the experience.  We watched 25 kids ages 5-6 try their hand at hanging onto a sheep as it 'ran' the distance of the pen.  Three kids made it all the way to the end.  Kids fell off at any point and while some stood up with smiles on their faces, there were quite a few tears as well.  We were slightly reassured since they wore hard vests and helmets.  

While we waited for our lemonades, we noticed what else the food truck sold!  Pickle pizza was at quite a few stands.  Todd settled on Tex-Mex, but said if he could do it over, he'd try rattlesnake or alligator.  The sun had zapped our energy by the time we ate, so we made it a leasurely meal.  

There is a extremely large building that houses the animals and shops.  We walked through there, but what the kids really wanted to do was ride the escalator.  There was really nothing on the second floor that would interest them, so we rode it back down.  Cheapest ride ever.  

As we were heading towards the end of our time, we passed a giant screen where, if you stood in a particular spot, you could see yourself.  Caroline tried it out.  

We had enough tickets left for one more ride for the two kids.  Caroline was saving it for the battering ram type ride, but when we got there, it was closed (for maintenance apparently, so I'm glad they didn't get on that one).  Nothing was the right amount of tickets, until we came to the end of the carnival section and found the flying ride.  That was how they finished out their time at the rodeo.  

Josiah's group stayed for several more hours.  He had a great time with his classmates.  He even came home with $5 left over which was a bit shocking that he didn't find something to spend it on.  

We had CC the next day and quite a few families from our campus had been at the rodeo.  We all sort of straggled in.  Thank goodness it was our last meeting before spring break.  For science we made straw bridges and tested their strength by placing weights on them.  Plank bridges made out of plastic straws and masking tape were incredibly strong.  After proving their strength, the kids in Caroline's class got creative.  One added a slide to her bridge, flags were added, one added trusses and made it a suspension bridge.  Next time we meet, we'll take the straws and build as high as we can.  

At lunch, the Challenge 1 class came around to show us the oobleck they had made.  It is just cornstarch and water, but when put together with the right proportions, it hovers between solid and liquid.  If you walk your fingers across it, it feels solid, but if you let your finger rest, they'll start to sink.  They let the kids hold some in their hand.  They would break a chunk off while it felt solid, but then it would 'melt' in their hands and drip down.  It was such an oddity and Caroline really liked it.  This weekend, while we were eating dinner, she asked if she could make it.  In typical fashion, I said, Sure, we can do that sometime.  And then she got up, googled a recipe, and started measuring things out.  She did it all herself.  Then she and Josiah played with it after dinner.  Fun was had.  Messes were made.  

This weekend Caroline said I had a 100 IQ.  She meant it as a compliment.  That's the highest score for a math test after all.  Todd has taken my average intelligence and run with it.  He finds it hi-larious.  So that's been fun.  

Henry has reached a milestone of his own.  This past week his weight hit 100.0 lbs.  He was pretty proud of himself to get to triple digits.  Josiah said he wanted a party when he hits 100.  He has four pounds to go.  

We are now officially on spring break.  Henry still plans to work on his year-end paper.  Caroline has plans to clean all the rooms in the house.  Josiah plans to relax and not do any sort of school work.