Fossey & Prom

Caroline got to spend her Monday afternoon at a friend's house while Henry was in Latin tutoring.  The four girls each have a piece of mulch that they have named and they keep their respective mulch pieces at their respective homes.  The one piece, Bob, is the main one taken on all their adventures.  He rides on the skateboard with them and plays games outside.  One of the girls' younger sister lost Bob for a day and she was bawling that the others would be mad.  They wouldn't have been, mainly because there is a playground full of Bobs at the CC playground where his friends were found.  

Caroline had a good start to her week.  She earned another stripe on her belt.  She's slowly creeping up to Professor Mike's height.  

For the first half of the week, Caroline practiced her Faces of History presentation a lot. She has worked on memorizing it bit-by-bit over the past three weeks.  The night before CC, she said she was really nervous.  She was nervous she would forget the last little story about her favorite gorilla, Digit.  But she had done all the preparation she could.  She had spoken the presentation to us countless times a day.  FOH came and she was 5th in line to go (out of 20 kids).  She got on stage and proceeded to crush it.  She had instructed me beforehand not to look at her because it would make her smile.  I was only allowed to look at my phone as I was recording her.  At one point, I looked up at her, just a quick glance, and she smiled, so I quickly diverted my eyes back to the phone.  Her performance was better than any of her practices.  It was so awesome to watch her.  She spoke in first person and at the end asked, Who am I?  

One hand went up.  

Chicken nugget?

No.    

In that child's defense, whenever she was asked who she was going to be, Caroline always responded, Chicken nugget.  

One mom got it.  
Dian Fossey.  The Gorillas in the Mist lady.  The best part of Caroline's speech was the end when she said she was killed by an unknown assailant who hit her over the head with a machete.  

It is a relief to have that project completed.  Afterwards, her Essentials class had their traditional ice cream party.  

It was also Caroline's last day of CC.  She was sad before it was even over.  She enjoyed her class and her tutor so much this year.  It was a good group of kids.  Next week is the campus end of year party, so she will see them again soon, but we're entering into all our lasts around here.  It's all bittersweet. 

Josiah presented on his Stock Market Venture project this week.  He did another PowerPoint presentation.  He used the America's Got Talent theme and had the judges give his Nvidia stock the golden buzzer.  He gave a very fun, but informative, presentation.  He came in third place in the competition as well.  The funniest thing was listening to some of his other classmate's presentations.  Two classmates picked some of their stocks based on their stock symbol.  There was BROS (Dutch Bros coffee, which actually did well), DIG, DUG, BOOM, DOG, DRIP, EAT, HOPE, JOE, TY, UPS, YOU, among others.  What those kids learned was their strategy was not the best way to make money in the stock market.  The kids that had the Nvidia stock had the best results.  

Henry's class dissected a sheep's heart this week.  I thought it was very interesting and asked if he was able to see the chambers and the valves.  Yes, yes.  The part they liked best was seeing how deep they could shove their finger in the aorta.  That's fun.  I'm still waiting on pictures.  

Josiah was a huge help to me earlier in the week.  We were helping one of his classmate's understand how to write a comparison essay.  I had the mechanics, but Josiah was the idea man.  I was very appreciative of his help.  When we left, he was rewarded by going suit shopping.  He had prom at the end of this week and was in need of a larger suit.  We tried Kohl's this time and scoured their racks for the smallest sizes possible.  I was shocked by the conservative tie he chose, but the whole ensemble looked very nice.  

Prom was Friday night.  It was a large crowd of homeschool students from all over the area.  Most of Josiah's class was able to attend.  The best part was it was on our side of town.  That made the 11 pm pick up much better!  At the end of the night, Josiah walked down the stairs and his first words were, "I'm exhausted.  Let's go."  He did have a lot of fun.  The boys in his class had all sorts of plans.  One kid bought a bunch of containers of Tic Tacs.  He went around and asked people, Do you want a Tic Tac or double it and give it to the next person?  Most people doubled it, so the number of Tic Tacs grew exponentially.  Another friend had a bunch of Mentos.  He went around and asked, Do you like Men Toes?  Then he would offer them a Mentos.  When Josiah told Henry what the guys were doing, Henry thought it was hilarious.  9th grade boy humor.

 

Our church had their International Festival this weekend.  We went for the first half of it.  The kids felt they were too old for the bouncy things.  That did not leave much for them to do.  They had vendors selling their wares, but we're moving so we're not in the market to buy much right now.  The stage had different acts performing music or dances.  We saw the Scottish bagpipes, the Hawaiian dancers, and the traditional Turkish dancers.  What the kids did want to do was eat.  Josiah went Italian (shocking!) and ordered himself a brick oven pizza.  They actually had a food truck brick oven.  Josiah took the box and went off with his friends, but he said it was very good.  Henry and Caroline went Jamaican and had jerk chicken.  Henry had the wings, and Caroline had the tacos.  It was spicy, but good, and very messy to eat.  Nearly as soon as they were done eating, it started to sprinkle and we headed home.  (It was forecasted to storm.)  

 

This evening, the boys had their last LifeGroups. They both had pool parties, but a cold front moved in last night and it was 68° outside.  Both of the families with the pools said they would heat them, but 68° is still cold to go swimming.  Upon pick-up, Henry blasted the heat in the car.  

Josiah has his big science research paper due this week.  It is supposed to be between 10-15 pages and has specific guidelines for research.  Josiah typed it up over several days last week, printed it out, and handed it to me.  

This is the rough draft, right?  

J - I don't do rough drafts.  I just do final papers.

So, tomorrow is looking to be fun...