Swim Success

We started off the week doing well.  Monday morning I mowed the front yard while the kids all played outside.  When the mowing was done, they helped sweep the clippings all over the driveway and sidewalk.  They asked to help and didn't complain.  Both boys with a broom and Caroline walking around with the dustpan and bucket.  It was great.
Inside we played Upwords, Yahtzee, and Uno.  We read.  We ate.  We were productive.

Tuesday morning the kids all focused their energy on making their cow costumes for Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-fil-a.  The boys made their signs and masks themselves which turned out really well.  As with every year, I always think we should laminate these signs so we can just reuse them next year, but then we go to CFA, eat, and the signs inevitably get juice or greasy fries on them.  No one feels like taking the time to do them again when we get home.  So next year it'll be the same scurrying around in the morning to make the costumes.  They ate their free kids meals and then played on the indoor playground.  There were about 20 kids in there playing, so it was slightly chaotic.  We left when I heard Caroline leading the girls in the "Boys not allowed!" chant at the top of the slide.

The kids finished up their session of swim lessons this week.  The last two days there were two instructors helping them, so I could see lots of progress.  They all passed the Yellow Starfish class and have moved up to the Pink Jellyfish.  They'll have two weeks in that and we shall see who moves up from there.  As promised, we went to our neighborhood pool on Friday morning so they could show me all they've learned.  I was very impressed with their skills.  Josiah could swim the full length of the pool.  It wasn't swimming as in freestyle or backstroke, but he was on his back with his hands above his head and his feet were kicking him across.  He did great.  He can float!  Henry and Caroline showed me all they learned with floating and diving for rings/torpedoes.  They all did so well.  I was very happy with their progress.  I cannot wait to see what they can do after another session of lessons.  They also went down the water slide what felt like 100 times.  Each time they got to the top, they'd yell down at me, "Are you ready?  Are you ready? [pause, pause] Are you ready?"  YES! I'm ready!!  I don't have many pictures of the pool, since I'm in the water with them, so here are the boys at break time.

The last 20 minutes we were there, Caroline attached herself to a little baby girl.  The baby was throwing the ball in the water and Caroline would pick it up and hand it back.  As with all babies, this went on for a very long time.  The mother was kind and let Caroline hang out with her baby.  Caroline really wants a baby sister.  Since that's not going to happen, she gets to play with others and carry around her baby Kevin.

Mid-week our church had a preschool movie night.  The boys were glad that Caroline was in pre-K and was invited to go.  This is the annual event that has the popcorn bar with all the fixins.  We were coming from swim and were late to arrive, so not wanting to be the parent who uses flash photography in the theater, I refrained from taking any pictures.  Needless to say, they filled their popcorn containers up with marshmallows, goldfish, gummy bears, and scoops and scoops of M&M's.  Seriously, including their second and third refills, they probably ate the equivalent of two packages of M&M's.  Not too surprisingly, two-thirds of the way through the movie, many of the preschoolers, hopped up on sugar, were up and walking all over the place not paying a bit of attention to the movie.  It is bittersweet that our kids will be too old for it next year.  With Caroline entering Kindergarten, we have officially finished the preschool years.

This weekend, the boys turned in their summer reading logs to Half-Priced Books and got their $5 book bucks.  Josiah decided fairly quickly on a Garfield comic book (to illustrate again) as well as a Star Wars activity book.  Henry spent the majority of his time reading baby board books, so when I gave the 5-minute warning he hadn't even looked for a book to purchase.  We were in the store for probably 45 minutes, so he had had the time.  He finally decided on a Build Your Own Minion punch-out activity book.  I'm not a big fan of minions, but at that moment I was a big fan of checking out at the register.  The boys have been making minions constantly.  I think Henry likes to make them, but Josiah seems to be the one playing with them.

Josiah has not only been illustrating his new Garfield book, but he's been drawing lots of Garfield pictures, too.  He's getting pretty good at them.  

Todd gave me the gift of new tires today.  We dropped our car off for the annual inspection and they took one look at my tires and said it would fail.  My first thought was, How can you tell that by just looking?  You didn't even do the penny test!  Then we looked at the front tires and were shocked to see how bald they were.  We were incredibly grateful for the protection we had to make it back from Virginia without any issue.

This coming week is supposed to be really hot.  There's another dust cloud from the Sahara that's hanging out overhead.  Apparently it acts like a ceiling keeping all the hot air in, with little chance for rain.  So, yeah,  a week of ridiculously high temperatures and minuscule dust particles in the air.  It'll be an indoor week for the most part.

And since there weren't many pictures this week, here's Caroline in her swim shirt and the shorts she put on to match.  This girl likes color.

Swim Lessons

When we drove into Houston from our trek across the country, we were greeted with an extremely hazy skyline.  The skyscrapers were just shadows in the haze.  We learned later that there was a big dust cloud from the Saharan Desert that had traveled across the ocean and passed through Houston.  We were also greeted with Houston weather - super hot and humid with lots of mosquitoes.   The buzz of mosquito spraying trucks late at night are always a welcome sound. 

The kids have had to adjust back to "house rules" after having "vacation rules" for quite a few weeks.  We're having a break from media and while they complained for the first few days, they've resigned themselves to acceptance (at least there's no media during the day - I can't control when Todd watches TV and they happen to watch along).  One day, I set a timer for reading time and it was very cool that even after the timer went off, they all continued reading.  That'll make your heart feel good.

This week, the kids all began swim lessons.  I put them all in the same class even though Josiah is older and has more experience.  The problem is, he still cannot float.  Floating seemed like an important enough skill in the survival department.  They have absolutely loved swimming lessons.  The first day went great - they were blowing bubbles, dunking their heads under water, and practicing floating.  By the second day, they forgot that they were taking swimming lessons and thought it was a "see what I can do" class.  We discussed the purpose of class and they did much better by the third day.  Now we need to bring them to our neighborhood pool so they can show me all that they've learned and to have a free playing time.

Waiting for their class on the first day.

Three in a row.

In the pool, Josiah tends to throw his body all over  - bobbing up and down in the water, throwing himself backwards, he's constantly moving.  Henry's far more reserved and less comfortable.  His floating was quite stiff the first day, but he's relaxed more each following day.

I'm exited to see each of them swim the length of the pool.  It may not happen for all of them this summer, but it will be a big accomplishment when it does happen.

The 4th of July hit mid-week and for us it was a very rainy day.  We tried our hand at Great Grandpa's 3-D puzzle that Great Grandma gave us.

What we learned was that Great Grandpa is a puzzle-master-genius and though we gave it a valiant effort over several days, we finally gave in and put it up, to be tried again in a few years.  It was hard!

Josiah showed up as John Adams and read the Preamble to the Constitution to us all.  While it was a good speech, we'll have to teach him the Declaration of Independence, slightly more appropriate for the 4th.

Caroline and I made a Patriotic cake.  What we envisioned was a layer cake with red on the top, followed by thick white frosting, and a blue cake on the bottom.  What we ended up with was a peachy colored top layer, a thin layer of white frosting, and a greenish layer on the bottom.  A bit more food coloring would have helped.  That, and we need to learn how to make our own frosting, so we can have enough to cover a two-layer cake.  She enjoyed helping make the cake...

...and eating it.  Despite its looks, it did taste good.

The rain made for a lazy day and Caroline fell asleep mid-day.  While she slept, Todd introduced the boys to the 80's comedian, Gallagher, and his Sledge-o-matic.  At the end of each of his performances, Gallagher brings out the Sledge-o-matic, a giant wooden mallet, and smashes it down on apples, heads of lettuce, mustard bottles, pineapples, anything really.  The boys found it hilarious.  They were cracking up, but they also repeated everything Gallagher said, so you could only hear about half of his routine.  Unfortunately, the two jokes the boys found funniest were the ones with innuendo that they didn't understand.  One in particular was about a lady in North Dakota who had 22 children.  She bought the Sledge-o-matic and never had a problem having children again.  Neither did her husband.  Ba-dum-bum. The boys think it's because she used the Sledge-o-matic on her own kids.  Not quite...  Of course, this was the joke they were relating on the drive to church this morning.  Don't share it in your class!!

We didn't see too many fireworks this year, unless you count A Capital Fourth on TV.  I'm guessing it was because of the rain, but we let the kids stay up til 9 p.m. hoping there would be more to see.  They weren't happy to go to bed, yet fell asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow.  A little after 9, the fireworks really got started.

Henry finished out his week earning a new belt in karate.  There were only three kids testing so Henry had Mr. Gregory testing him the entire time.   I wasn't sure if we should have put off testing for a while since we haven't been to karate in a month, but Henry wanted to do it.  It was a lot of work and a lot of moves/kicks/hits/forms/self-defense that he had to remember, but he did really well.

He easily broke all three boards on the floor at the end.  This time they held a board up in the air and he had to try and kick and break it.  He wasn't able to do that, but he gave it a good try.

Saturday morning, Josiah busied himself with summer school lessons for Todd and I.  All three kids were busy in the dining room getting things set up.  When they came out to get Todd and me, Josiah said, "Don't gasp when you walk in."  That wasn't a comforting thought.  He had taped up dinosaur pictures on our blinds.  I think that was the gasping moment.  (We don't like to tape things on our blinds because we've had blinds break...)  They gave us a few math papers to do and we each had to draw a picture before it devolved into all three kids talking at once and there was no order to anything.  We deemed summer school over, but I did offer to do some school with the boys if they were interested.  They weren't.


Josiah has gasping on his mind, because when I came downstairs this morning, Josiah said, "Don't gasp when you walk in the school room."  Hmmm.  You do know how I like to start my mornings. Apparently the kids had an early morning painting session, and they hadn't exactly cleaned it up yet.

Next week is just a nice, easy week, just swim and karate.  I'm hoping to get a few closets cleaned up, assuming I don't have too many helpers around trying to get me to save everything from the trash bin.

While I'm sitting here writing this blog, Todd and Caroline are playing Guess Who? behind me.  I heard Caroline say, "You look like this guy, Daddy, and Mommy looks like her."  When I saw the pictures I laughed out loud. 

Vacation, Part 3

The kids have loved kicking me out of Grandad and Nana's house.  Caroline asked me if I would go back to Texas with Todd so that Grandad and Nana could take care of them.  The boys didn't really care where I went as long as it was out of the house.  Josiah kept asking me if I wanted to take a walk; not a lovely stroll together, just me...leaving.  The love for their grandparents was palpable.  Not so much the love for their parents.

They got to do many of the same things that they look forward to, baseball and bubbles in the backyard,

Caroline giving Grandaddy the stare down. 

lawnmower rides with Grandaddy,


playing with the big red wagon, and relaxing in the backyard.

Caroline picked flowers with Nana.

Henry played catch with Grandaddy.

Josiah still loves and asks for Nana's pork chops, and we all love her mashed potatoes.  They had dessert every day to their delight.

We went out to Golden Corral one afternoon.  Caroline had never been and really enjoyed her buffet experience.  She did compare most of the foods she ate to either Nana's or my food.  Nana's mashed potatoes are better, my cornbread (from a box) is better.  I'll take whatever I can get.  The best part of the buffet, for all the kids, was the dessert bar, especially this one with a chocolate fountain.  Caroline had sprinkles, a giant cupcake, and a chocolate covered marshmallow.

Josiah chocolate-fondued his dessert, and Henry had an entire plate of chocolate - brownie, cake, and chocolate fondue.  He left happy, and with chocolate all over him.

We got to see the "claw" trash truck that is one of the perks of living in Hampton.  You can put anything out on the curb and that claw will come around and pick it up.  This driver let the kids help guide the claw to pick up the trash.  They were ecstatic to help.

This year, Josiah was going through Todd's old piano books and saw the Star Wars theme song.  So, he spent time every day practicing the tune on the piano.  By the time Todd came back to Virginia, he had gotten it down pretty well.

They loved all their gifts and treasures from Nana and Grandad.  Dresses and remote control cars and princesses and light up jewelry and lightsabers.

We spent time with friends, too. We were able to meet up with some friends at a playground.  It was a huge playground with a ship theme.  For the first half of the time there, all the kids were playing Titanic.  They asked us parents if we wanted to play, too, but knowing the outcome, we declined.  It was great to see old friends again.  We all had a lot of fun.  Henry asked to text them the minute we got in the car.

We were able to go back and see Great Grandma.  I figured we wouldn't get much of a chance to talk during her birthday bash, so we wanted to make sure we saw her again.  The kids presented her with her birthday gift: half of a hollowed log filled with painted rocks.  They were proud of their rocks and wanted to explain them all.  The kids have a bit of that rock-hound blood of Great Grandma.

They loved Great Grandma's dessert portions - ice cream, cake, and berries on top.  Yes, please.

While in the D.C. area, we went to the Air & Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA.  The  morning of the museum, the kids happily filled up on waffles, doughnuts, and Lucky Charms at the hotel's continental breakfast.  Nothing like massive amounts of sugar and then setting them free in the museum.  We stopped at the front desk and they gave each of the kids a scavenger hunt.  It was pictures of planes with clues.  Each plane name was the name of an animal.  I don't know if it was the sugar in their bodies or solely due to the scavenger hunt, but they were on a mission.  They were so focused on their clues, that they didn't really experience the museum.  They read none of the information boards at the planes.  It was slightly frustrating until I just went all-in on the scavenger hunt with them.  It wasn't the easiest hunt and we walked the museum a few times trying to find specific planes.

Josiah with "Skipper" from the Disney Planes movie. 

Caroline was tuckered out by the end and provisions at the museum's in-house McDonald's was where we went.  McDonald's is half the reason they like being on vacation, because I don't like to buy it otherwise.  After a nutritious Happy Meal we stepped into the gift shop where it took a billion minutes for a certain child to decide what to buy.  The two younger kids decided on an astronaut bear somewhat early on, but the remaining child had to try every pull-back plane before deciding on just the right one, then changing his mind and trying them all over again.

We saw Great Grandma again before heading out of town and she gave Caroline a very real looking baby doll.  Caroline dropped the name "Mikey" and christened it "Kevin."  She loves Kevin and is fascinated by his real diaper and clothes.

My Aunt Kathy gifted us her violin.  The kids are very excited to get to play it.  So now we are searching out violin lessons.  I'm excited to see what comes of it.  I've always wanted them to at least try music lessons.

Before leaving Virginia, and when Todd got back in town, we headed over to the Virginia Living Museum.  It is full of living animals that are native to Virginia.  However, they also had a dinosaur exhibit that the kids loved.  They had large areas of fossils covered in sand/pebbles with paint brushes for the kids to uncover the bones.  I think Josiah needs a paint brush, sand, and a few hidden bones for his next birthday - he could have done it all day.

They loved the veterinarian area there, too.  One section had a microscope that you could pick up and look at slides.  The image would appear on the computer screen in front of you.  Henry didn't have time to look at slides and immediately put the microscope up to his eye.  A giant eye appeared on the screen.  Then all the kids did it.  Of course, that led to them looking up their noses and down their throats.

The Living Museum was a good experience until the end when we were horrible parents who wouldn't buy them overpriced food in the food court or a souvenir in the gift shop.  We were literally 15 minutes from Grandad and Nana's house.  They weren't going to starve, whether they believed that or not.

Towards the end of the week, we headed back home to Texas.
25 days.
4293 miles.

And last, but not least, Caroline doing her thing.