Finishing Up

On Monday, Todd came home from work with a box full of food.  His boss had a retirement party that day and he got to bring home a ton of leftover food.  Crackers, cheese, meats, prosciutto, olives, grapes, veggies, so much food.  The kids felt like it was a feast.  It was so much food that it lasted the whole week, making meals very easy.  What do you want to eat?  Get out the giant Ziplocs of cheeses, crackers, grapes, veggies, and pita chips.  Any day I don't have to come up with an idea for meals is a win.

This has been a week of finishing up.  The kids had their last Wednesday night at church.  They all had a good semester there and seemed to enjoy their classes.  Caroline was particularly happy that she got a snack this last week. Her class never gets snack, whereas Henry's class always seems to get a bag of chips.  Josiah is in the student ministry and they get pizza every Wednesday night.  So a snack on the last night for Caroline was pretty nice.  After picking up the younger two from their classrooms, we waited in the hallway for Josiah to come down from the jr. high/high school area.  He met us in the hallway carrying two Chick-fil-a sandwiches.  They had had a special night honoring the high school seniors.  At the end of it, Josiah asked to take two sandwiches for his siblings.  Very nice.  As we walked out of church and into the parking lot, both Henry and Caroline were opening their sandwiches.  I told them, Wait until we get to the car.  You wouldn't want to drop it and not be able to eat it.  Caroline took one bite and put the sandwich back in its pouch.  Henry turned and looked at me, I'm holding it with two hands.  It's not going to drop.  10 seconds later it was on the ground of the parking lot.  His little pouch had a hole on both ends.  Henry adheres to the 5-second rule, however.  He picked that sandwich up and proceeded to eat it.  That's how we build up our immune systems around here.

The following day, Josiah had his final day of Challenge A.  It was a day of blue book assessments.  For his science assessment this semester, he had to present on the respiratory system.  (Parents were allowed to sit in on this section, but we were told to stay silent. 😉)  He had to draw it for his classmates, describe all the parts and how they work.  I assumed that since it was a final assessment it had to be completely from memory.  So for the past two weeks, I've had him present it to me at home from memory.  He was the only one to not walk up with a notecard or something to read.  But at least he knows the respiratory system.  In his drawing, he ran out of room, so he put the diaphragm to the right of his lungs.  He got a chuckle for that.  When he was done with the main parts, he talked about the dangers of smoking as well as what happens in an asthma attack.  He did really well.  He says he gets nervous, but he always surprises me with how well he speaks in front of others.  He certainly does not look nervous when he's up there.  

Now that blue books are over, Josiah has a lot less on his plate, which he appreciates immensely.  He said that his favorite subject this year was the Reasoning strand.  He loved learning about fallacies (red herring, straw man, etc.) in The Fallacy Detective.  He also liked his Analogies book.  I asked him what he liked best after those and surprisingly he said science.  He had a great year.  

While Josiah was taking his blue books, the rest of us were enjoying the End of Year party.  We had a potluck and the kids played for hours and hours.  They were outside a lot.  They played a ton of card games.  I didn't see Henry and Caroline much at all.  Mostly we'd pass in the hallway.  I would ask them if they had eaten.  They had, though I didn't know what they ate.  

Not knowing what they ate at the party came back to haunt Caroline.  That night she woke up at 2 a.m. with a queasy belly.  She proceeded to empty her stomach.  The next morning, however, she seemed pretty okay, so it must have been the smorgasbord of foods she enjoyed.  

Last week, Henry was trying to get all his school work done by 7 a.m.  This week he realized that there was no benefit to that because then he would be bored for a good part of the day waiting for his siblings to finish their work.  So, he's relaxed on his 7 a.m. deadline, but still gets his work done the quickest.  He has filled his days with helping out around the house.  He's done the dishes, laundry, and picked up Benson's 'business' in the backyard.  He's brushed Benson's teeth every day.  He has helped cook many meals as well.  He's been a welcome help.  

Henry finally wore his new gi this week, too.  He's had it for a while, but felt it was still a little too big.  The other gi was a little too small, so we convinced him to give this new one a try.  

At the end of the week, Caroline had her Awana Award Ceremony.  She had completed her book and earned all the awards and patches that went with it.  She was happy to receive her envelope of goodies.  After the ceremony, they always have cookies and lemonade.  Someone was not too happy that her brothers, who did not participate in Awana this year, were still allowed to have a cookie.  Someone said that if you didn't do the work, you didn't deserve a cookie.  That same someone was reminded of all the times she was able to get Dairy Queen or McDonald's when Henry got Memory Master in years past.  But apparently they were not an equal comparison in her mind.  

This weekend we celebrated the kids finishing CC at Outback.  Caroline spent a few minutes getting her area just perfect.  

The food was good.  Both Henry and I got steak and shrimp.  The boy can eat!  

For Mother's Day we got breakfast tacos.  Caroline put her stamp on the box.  

I also got a clean car - Caroline vacuumed the inside and we took a drive through the longest car wash in the United States after church today.  We like this car wash - we feel like we're getting our money's worth.  

Josiah has been drawing a lot before bed.  He's colored a good bit in his Garfield comic books, but one day he got inspired to draw all the presidents on index cards.  It took two nights to complete the set, but he did well.  He really captured their faces and expressions well.

We should have a nice easy week coming up.  The kids will be excited when they see their lesson plans for the week.  Since we have so much extra time, we're going to deep clean one room a day.  Yay for me.    

And Benson, getting a better look at the neighbor's cat.

Music for the Soul

Henry started his week out on a high note.  He had his memory master dinner, which is his favorite part.  He loves eating at restaurants.  He's really into salads right now and he ordered a grilled shrimp salad, which looked really good.  He sat with his friends, ate, played games, and had very lively conversations.  We stayed til closing time, so it was a late night.  We took the obligatory pictures as well.

Now that Henry and Caroline are finished with CC, Henry sees it as his mission to finish as much school work as possible before 7 a.m.  He does not appreciate late risers when it comes to the things we do together (history and science).  

This week has been a long one with regards to Josiah's school work.  He has his blue book assessments coming up and the days have been long.  He and I have differing views on the necessary amount of time to study/prepare for said assessments.  My suggestive study time is significantly longer than Josiah's estimates.  The struggle is real.  For science, they have been learning the body systems this semester.  On the assessment, he has to teach the respiratory system to his class.  He has to draw it, name all the parts, and explain how it functions.  He's practiced that quite a bit and does a good job with it.  He even tells his classmates not to smoke.  Bonus.  (Although at $7-8 a pack, it's amazing anyone can afford to smoke anymore.)  In his cartography strand, he has to finish drawing the world.  He has to complete all of Asia, Africa, and the 'Nesias (Polynesia, Micronesia, etc.).  Latin is going to be the biggest hurdle for sure.  While we practice vocab daily, we rely heavily on his books for the noun declensions and verb conjugations.  It is a bit like solving a math problem with each translation.  Josiah highly favors translating Latin to English.  We shall see how he fairs without the books to help.  Even so, he's learned a lot of Latin this year.  He actually starts the same Latin books over next year, but moves at a quicker pace and gets further along.     

Todd kept asking Josiah to study for the blue books this weekend.  Josiah, however, stimulated his mind by spending a lot of time at the keyboard.  He was on the same page as Ross Geller with his keyboard skills.  He lets it play a tune on loop and sings his own lyrics to the music.  We've heard the Here Comes the Bride and Lionel Richie's Say You, Say Me about a billion times this weekend.  He just loops it.   

To soften the never ending music, Josiah made us all pancakes for breakfast Saturday morning.  He did well; not a single chest hair was singed.  Henry and Caroline told him they were very fluffy.  

Both before and after their breakfast, all three kids engaged in an intense battle of The Floor is Lava.  After playing for a good long while, they each got dressed in their own team's colors.  Making it so official, however, dampened the spirit of the game and they quickly stopped playing.  

To stave off the constant requests to play video games and watch videos on YouTube, we had a paint night.  Caroline worked hard on a waterfall.  

Josiah went for rockets.

Henry had a hard time finding inspiration.  He settled on a night sky.  

Josiah's also done some chalk art this week.  Unfortunately, it has rained both days after he chalked them.  His puppet Al Dente:

Paul McCartney:

Henry and Caroline saw me going through my pictures in anticipation of writing about our week.  They asked to put sunglasses on Henry's Essentials class.  Here is their work (giggle giggle).  

The assessments will be towards the end of this coming week, so the days will be long until then.  After they are completed, we should fly through May with a much easier schedule!

Crawfish and Rain

Monday afternoon, Henry was able to complete his Director Proof over Zoom.  He became a Cycle 1 Memory Master!  He worked really hard this year to memorize all the subjects.  Many weeks he took the initiative and studied the material on his own.  He has always been crazy good at memorizing information and retaining it!  I think half the reason he does it, however, is for the special dinner at a restaurant.  A few years ago, he decided to not do the memory master and at the end of that year he said he really missed not being able to go out to eat.   

To celebrate completing his memory master proofs, we made him a chocolate cake.  It was our intention to bake it for him, but he wanted in on the action, so he basically baked his own chocolate cake.

That same celebratory evening, Josiah regaled us with a very unique concert.  He had a song playlist that included Queen, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Europe, and Sesame Street.  Instead of himself lip-syncing the words, he had his puppet, Al Dente, do the singing.  They say there is nothing new under the sun, however, I would be very surprised if any other child has had their chef puppet perform We Are the Champions and Bohemian Rhapsody.  When Al Dente had finished his numbers, Josiah danced to Michael Jackson's Billie Jean.  It was quite the event.

This was our last week of CC for Henry and Caroline.  Henry received his Memory Master medal, which he wore all day.  Caroline had a pizza party in her class because some of her classmates were moving up to Challenge A.  

After lunch, Henry's Essentials class did Faces of History.  Henry was Alexander the Great and he stood up on stage and gave a very excited, very rapid and energetic speech about all the lands he conquered.  Since they spoke in first person, at the end of their speech, they had to say, "Who am I?"  Then the audience was able to guess.  

They finished it out with their traditional ice cream party.  It was a good day, albeit exhausting.  Josiah still has two more weeks of classes, but his last week is just exams, so he's nearing the end, too.  

This was the last week of Awana as well.  Each week at opening ceremonies, we say two pledges - to the U.S. flag and to the Bible.  Caroline was picked to say the Pledge of Allegiance this week and I was there to capture it.  She did a good job of speaking at a pace the rest of us could keep up with.

This weekend we went to our first ever crawfish boil.  It was at the home of Todd's Krav Maga instructor.  This is something he has annually, which made our family the clear crawfish-eating amateurs of the afternoon.  When we first walked up the driveway, we noticed the two giant pots, but then a few feet beyond the boiling pots, were the fresh crawfish just waiting.  He had bought 100 pounds of crawfish!   When they were cooked, he put them on giant trays.  To our untrained eye, this looked like a massive amount of crawfish per person.  Todd and Henry took a tray and sat down with some seasoned eaters.  They were taught to twist off the tail, suck the head (but it's really the abdomen), take off the first segment of tail shell and then push up from the bottom of the tail to eat the tail meat.  They both got into it and easily ate two trays of food.  It was a lot of work for a little bit of meat.  I did try it, but will probably stick to shrimp - much easier!  Josiah and Caroline were a no-go to try it.  There was also jambalaya, which was very, very good.  The man who puts it on is originally from Louisiana, so it was the real deal.  

Right after the crawfish boil, Josiah and Todd had to get ready for their concert.  We had bought tickets to Rain years ago.  The original concert was for April 2020, which was at the start of all the lockdowns.  After several postponements, they finally got to go.  They are a tribute band for the Beatles and Todd said they did a phenomenal job.  They started off dressed as the Beatles in their suits, singing their old stuff.  They they gradually would change costumes and hair and sing the later songs as well.  It was 34 songs in total!  Todd said they even sounded like Paul McCartney and John Lennon when they spoke.  Todd's favorite part, however, was at the very beginning.  They did the usually announcement, with a small addition.  "There is no flash photography, no video recording, and no smoking......ANYTHING."  The adults got a laugh out of that.  

They got home late and Josiah fell asleep the minute his head hit the pillow.  He is very much an early bird, but he cannot do nights.  

Josiah did a little chalk art this weekend as well.  

Agent Peely (Fortnite)

It was a good busy week.  As much as we enjoy our activities starting up in August and September, we are equally joyed by them ending in April and May.  Now we just have regular school for the next few weeks to finish out the school year.