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.