Convictions

Todd got off for MLK Jr Day on Monday.  He was going to take Henry out for some special one-on-one time while I did school with Josiah.  He took him to the movie theater to see Paddington.  However, before they even got out of the car Henry told Todd that he didn't want to see Paddington because he (Paddington) makes bad decisions so he did not want to watch it.  (He had seen the preview for Paddington last summer when they went to see Planes Fire & Rescue.)  Then when they drove back home, Henry says, "Daddy, I didn't like your fun thing."  At least he has convictions.  Meanwhile Josiah had a FIT when he learned what they were doing.  We were going to take him this weekend by himself as a special one-on-one time.  What we've learned is that the boys prefer to do things together.  Parent fail.  And still no one has seen it.

Although we were told that we would need winter coats here, we don't believe it.  This week has been gorgeous and has been in the high 60s/low 70s.  We've gotten to play outside most every day.  Tuesday we played outside a little longer than anticipated when we discovered that we were locked out of our house.  I distinctly remember checking the door to make sure it was unlocked (several times).  However, we do have an unnamed child who likes to go back inside for various reasons by himself/herself without telling anybody.  I am thinking that is how we got locked out.  Fortunately, I had my phone on me and could text Todd to please come save us.  He had convocation that day, so instead of going to that, he came and let us back in.

one of the many faces of Henry

This is a very popular car with all 3

Josiah did well at CC this week.  He wanted to give his presentation on helicopters.  He had taken apart his Lego airplane (the one that took 3.5 hours to build) and rebuilt it as a helicopter (only taking 2 hours to build).  We decided to check out a bunch of books from the library about helicopters and he used one of them during his presentation to describe how they were made.  It went pretty well.  I asked him what he likes best about CC and he said, "art and snack."  Right now they are studying painters for their fine arts and then trying to do a painting in a similar fashion as the artist.  This week was Georgia O'Keefe and Josiah painted a huge rose.  Last week was Norman Rockwell and since his pictures/paintings tell a story, they had to have their painting tell a story as well.  He painted planes flying and putting out fires.  Unfortunately it had rained the night before so there was no playground time.

Caroline got an early birthday present from Grandad & Nana.  A backpack of her very own.  (She is always putting on the boys' backpacks.)  Of course, she loves it and wears it around the house.  When we got ready to go to CC on Friday, she grabbed her backpack and put it on.  It was very cute to see her grab it, but it also sort of ended an era for us.  I cleaned out her diaper bag and put a few diapers in her backpack.  Now we are diaper bag-less.

Her reaction when she first got the backpack

Ready for CC on Friday (her hat was an accessory put on by her, not necessary for weather)

Caroline's prayers have gotten more sophisticated.  Now she says, "I pay. I pay. Uhhhhhh. Daddy. Uhhhhhh. Mommy.  Uhhhhhh. Siah. Uhhhhhhh. DaDa (Henry). Uhhhhhhh. Amen."  Henry likes to tell me during all of her prayers that he can't understand what she's saying.  I just say, "God does.  He understands her."
She also let us know that she no longer needs to wear zipper pajamas.  Todd went to get her after she woke up Saturday morning and she was naked in her crib.  Fortunately she had only gone pee in her diaper, but just the thought of what could have happened is enough to not use those pajamas again!

For some reason last night she didn't want to go to bed and was up until 10pm with me. At first I tried to keep her in bed and just snuggle, but after an hour of her not going to sleep, I gave up and had her come clean up the kitchen with me. She was playing with her stroller, and ended up strapping herself in to it. She used her feet to roll herself around the kitchen.

standing up, strapped in the stroller

Strolling around at o'dark thirty

We've gone to Second Baptist Church the past two Sundays.  It is a little further away than we'd like, but the boys really liked it the first Sunday we went.  So today we got there early enough for us to try both Sunday school & the service.  The boys started off their morning in a big room and they sing and dance in there and do puppets and lots of fun stuff.  Josiah had a good time.  Henry told us that he did not like it and that he cried louder and louder so that we would hear him.  "Did you hear me?" he asked us.  When the other children were singing and dancing around, Henry said he sat on the floor.  When we asked him if he would participate next week, he said matter-of-fact that, no, he was not going to sing and dance.  This kid sticks to his guns.  It helped that Josiah was in there with him, but not enough to get him off the floor.  They both like the classroom time afterwards.
This week, the church had Dr. Ben Carson at the service.  He gave his life story and he was amazing.  He spoke about Joseph and how no matter the circumstances he was in, he always did his best, always made the best of the situation.  We left wanting to work a little (lot) harder at being better parents, spouses, and followers of Jesus.

Does Ca-Co sell Wogs?

Our week started with a Monday morning 6 year old check-up for Josiah.  He freaked out when he learned he would get a shot.  Henry was sitting next to him on the doctor's table and just started to hug him and not let go.  Henry got down for the shot (so the nurse and I could hold Josiah down) and after it was over, Henry says to Josiah, "See, it didn't hurt a lot."  We'll see if Henry's saying the same thing when it's his turn in February!  I do appreciate how well they are able to comfort each other.  Often when one is in trouble at home, the other will go and tell them "it's all right" and comfort them/stay with them.
The shot must have worn Josiah's body out, because he felt "sick" all week (although there were no symptoms).  He and Henry both took naps two days this week!  It is not often that I get all 3 kids sleeping at the same time during the day.

I think the boys got to sleep in our bed more this week than Todd or I

For his presentation at school this week, Josiah spoke about Mt. St. Helens.  He and Henry still love Mt. St. Helens.  He brought in a library book and showed pictures and explained what happened.  It was his best presentation to date.  He got into character voices only a little bit when he was speaking about Harry R. Truman and how he said "Oh phooey" to the news media.  It was so enjoyable.

Friday at CC was also a very nice day so we got to spend a lot of time on the playground after school.  Caroline surprised us with some gymnastic moves.  They have a metal frame play car there and she hung from the metal frame and swung her body back and forth.  It wasn't just a small swing, though, she looked like a gymnast swinging to get to a high bar.  She was shocking quite a few of us adults.  She did take one tumble and cut her lip, but even then she only sat in my lap for 15 seconds before squirming back down to try it again.

Caroline is starting to express her own desires more and more.  She now wants to pick out her own clothes.  Then she wants to put them on herself.  Since she is unable to do this on her own, she will run around in a diaper for half an hour every morning.  This may be a good thing as we might potty train her soon.  We got her a potty that sits on the floor so she can access it much easier than the big toilets.  She sat on it for quite a while tonight as the boys serenaded her in the bathroom.  Josiah on his tin whistle and Henry on the harmonica.  Every 30 seconds, "Did you pee Caroline?"  She also asks to pray every evening, too.  It took us a while to catch on to what she was saying, but she says, "I pay, I pay."  Then she bows her head and says, "uhhhhhhhh" for a really long time and then says "Amen."  My favorite new word of the week from her is "Costco," but it sounds like "Ca-Co."  I don't remember how I figured out what she was saying, but once I said Costco her face lit up and she said, "Mommy Ca-Co."  She is our daughter.  :)

She has really taken a liking to her baby dolls.  She really likes the one that she got at Christmas that has a hard head.  She now has tried to change its (nonexistant) diaper, swaddle it in her blanket, and take her for a ride in her stroller.  One night, as I was snuggling Henry in his bed, I could hear her singing in her bed and then she kissed her baby three times on the head before turning in for the night.

Her baby

She still has to do everything the boys do.  This week they made balloon men.  I left the room for a minute and came back to Caroline drawing a face on her balloon with a marker just as the boys had.

da boys

You can see her smeared green marker on her balloon, pants, and hand.

Henry has been into the Ninja Turtles more this week.  He's been drawing pictures of them and dressing up as much as he can like them.  He kept coming up to me saying he needed a "wog."  I had no idea what he was talking about.  I finally figured out he was the purple one who carries a staff/long stick.  So I asked him if that's what he meant.  He said, "yes, a wog."  A Log.  That durn "L" sound.

His "wog" even though he's wearing the blue mask at this point.

For his birthday, Josiah got a How to Draw Super Heroes book.  It teaches how you start off with just circles, lines, squares, etc. and build up from that.  He followed the instructions and drew Spiderman.  I was impressed!  He gave it to Todd to hang in his office.

Josiah is 6!

Josiah and Henry got a Batman/The Flash/The Riddler Lego set for Christmas and we wouldn't allow them to put it together until we got back to Texas because it was a decent size kit and we didn't want to risk losing any of the pieces.  I told Josiah we could do it on Monday.  3:30 a.m. Monday morning Josiah wakes up, comes in our room, and says he's ready to make the Lego kit.  I think I got him to stay in bed until 5, but I don't know how much sleep happened during that time.  I have never met such an early bird.  He did make the Batmobile that morning and fortunately it made it through the week without breaking and that was his presentation at CC on Friday.  He can't seem to do a presentation there without getting into character voices.  We practiced all week what 5 points he was going to say about the Batmobile.  He knew it well.  Then when he got up to present, all of a sudden he starts doing voices for Batman and making a whole mini-play out of the presentation.  When I encouraged him to wrap it up, he started the presentation that we practiced.

Henry had a rough start to his week.  On Monday, he did not want to eat the vegetables on his plate at dinner.  Instead of calmly saying, "I would not like to partake of my vegetables this evening," he flipped his plate over, dumping the contents on our table.  Then he grabbed two big handfuls of the vegetables and squeezed the life out of them.  I was not going to stand for that, so he went to bed without dinner that night.  We've never done that before, but there was no way I was backing down with that!  He kept telling us that he was starving.  I told him that if he was truly starving he would have been glad to have vegetables on his plate and eaten them right away to satisfy his grumbling stomach.  He didn't buy it.  And usually he's the kid that eats every meal well.

The past couple of weeks he has also slipped into regression mode.  He all of a sudden does not want to do anything for himself.  He acts like he cannot dress himself, go to any room of the house by himself, go to the bathroom by himself, everything.  It's a bit frustrating (for both of us I'm sure).  One night he fell asleep on the couch, because we got too tired of bringing him back to his bed over and over again.  Here's hoping he snaps out of this phase soon.

Caroline has become quite loving towards everyone.  She now walks around and kisses each of us.  Sometimes she hugs us, too.  She waves at everyone.  We took a walk down the block earlier in the week and as some lawn guys were driving away (with their windows down), she yells, "Bye Bye!" and waves.  They waved back.  We went out for a walk that day because when she woke up in the morning, she started saying the word, "outside" over and over.  When we pass by the playground at the elementary school, she'll point and say, "Weeeee."  (she likes to slide)  Her favorite past time this week has to be using the potty.  She says, "I pee. I pee." a lot.  And while I would love to have her potty-trained early, the idea of starting that now seems tiring.  The end result is great, but the process isn't much fun.  So I take her to the potty.  She sits for 3-5 seconds, hops off, washes her hands, goes to where her diaper is, looks at me and says "I pee" again.  She will go sit on the potty as many times in a row as I let her.  She's yet to do anything, but I'm hoping one of these times she does.  The cycle ends when I get tired of holding her on the potty and being held hostage in the bathroom.  She retaliates by twisting all around so I can't put a diaper on her.  It's a fun time.

We did have a fun family game invented by Josiah.  We opened Caroline's tea set that she got at Christmas.  We had a few tea parties, but the boys know I like my coffee (a lot).  So, Josiah set up a Starbucks drive-thru with our dining room chairs.  I would order at the first window and pick up my drink at the second.  Henry would usually get in my "car" with me so he could get a cake pop (usually the wooden stick of butter from their kitchen).  We did that a lot and it was funny to hear Josiah use the words "grande nonfat caramel latte" or "chai tea latte."

We ended our week with Josiah's 6th birthday!  It is so hard to believe he is six already.  He choose Froot Loops for breakfast which is always a good way to start the day.  Todd changed them to Groot Loops.  Dinner was pizza because he had a Ninja Turtle cake and the Ninja Turtles like pizza.  We spent the morning at church and we spent 3 1/2 hours in the afternoon making his Lego plane kit that he got.  It was a kit for 8-12 year olds and they weren't kidding.  It is very cool, with gears that move the propellers, but it was a lot of work.  Todd and I took shifts helping him make it.  It is now a toy only he can play with (at least for a while) since Henry got a turn to play with it and unfortunately it had a crash landing (on purpose).  Caroline was happy to play with Josiah's balloons and the bubble wrap from his packages from both sets of grandparents.

The plane

6 already!

Showing her dessert - a dry gluten-free, dairy-free, crumbly cookie.  I really need to start baking for her.

And our crafts of the week.
We did the Peanuts.  Josiah made Snoopy,  Henry did Charlie Brown.  I was commissioned to do Woodstock which I tried to do without taking my scissors off the page - one long cut (kind of like getting all the skin off the apple without breaking it).  Hence the legs are a bit off.

Henry did his Charlie Brown totally on his own.

Henry made Robin of which he was really proud.  He told me what a good job he had done through tears tonight after Caroline ripped it in half.

The yellow part is his cape.

Christmas Travels

We don't do Santa, but Henry was being extra sweet with Caroline before Christmas.  He helped her color and then said, "I like her scribble scrabble."  He didn't even get upset with her coloring on his drawings.  He also enjoyed helping her eat and drink.  He fed her an egg, Kix, and held her milk up to her mouth.  He told her that she was big and strong when she ate her food.

Drink your milk Car-wo-wine.

His days of being sweet with her may be coming to a close as she has become much more opinionated and vocal the past couple of weeks.  She regularly yells, "Go! Go! Move! Move!" and pushes her brothers around (literally).  She held us all hostage at a Chick-fil-a in town.  The boys wanted to try out the playground at the CFA further down the road.  The playground was quite tall and Caroline managed to make her way to the top.  I don't know if she got scared or what, but she sat up there for 45 minutes.  The boys (Josiah mainly) were desperately trying to get her down so they could eat.  I was desperately praying she would get down so I didn't have to climb up there.  Josiah finally dragged her down the slide after much screaming and wrestling from her.  We will not be frequenting that CFA for quite a while.

Henry got his first splinter.  He learned the hard lesson that if you rub your hands against an old wooden fence while you're walking, you get splinters.  They were so tiny I couldn't get them out, but we tried.

Look at that face.  These were tiny splinters.

Josiah's last craft before our travels was making a Mr. Peanut.  When Todd got home from work, he announced he made it all by himself.  Really son?  I slightly remember the sweat shop facilities I was under during the afternoon to cut and tape all the parts just so.  He did play with him for a lot of the afternoon, so that was a win.

We headed east 5 days before Christmas.  Todd and I discovered that when traveling with three small children, the driver's seat is now the most coveted position.  No more snoozing in the passenger's seat enjoying the view and the quiet from pre-kid life.  Now the passenger seat consists of answering 500 questions an hour, getting them snacks every 20 minutes, retrieving fallen toys, and trying to keep Caroline from dropping her blanket on the side next to the door where no one can reach it.  If Josiah spent more time in a car, I think he'd out weigh Henry.  He asked for food constantly.  This trip we made the wise decision to bring a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread.  Blueberries and grapes, too.

We stopped in Alabama for the night and Caroline kept our record going of injuries in a hotel room.  She learned how to climb out of her pack-n-play, climbed up on the bed, tried to dive on top of Josiah, over shot, went over the side of the bed, hit the nightstand table and fell to the floor.  All this in the dark as we had just turned out the light to settle in for the night.  She busted up her nose pretty bad.  We moved the pack-n-play to a different wall.

Her poor nose.  It's still red even now 3 weeks later.

The kids were super excited to see Nana & Grandad again.  They learned how to tell time while waiting for 10:00 a.m. to get to pick from Nana's treasure bag.  They helped Nana frost and sprinkle a cake that they had bought here in Texas just so they could bring it and make it with her.  Henry noticed that their Christmas tree didn't have a star on top, so he generously made them one.  Josiah picked his favorite Nutcracker from Nana's collection.  One night, instead of going to sleep, he returned to the living room with a picture he had drawn from memory of his nutcracker.  He did this at least twice.  His attention to detail was pretty amazing.

frosting the cake and licking their spatulas

Henry's colorful star.  That is not our Savior in the middle, but Henry.

Henry is one fun kid on Christmas morning.  He shows such appreciation.  The first gift he opened was a Thor electric toothbrush.  "Oh, it's what I always wanted!" as he jumps up and down excited.  Josiah got his favorite gift of "Redwood" (red helicopter from Planes Fire & Rescue that he's renamed).  Caroline loved her stroller.  She may play with dolls now that she has something in which to push them.

Chowing down on a gluten-free, dairy-free Christmas cookie at 5:30 a.m.  She was a happy camper.

When you get clothes for Christmas, you must try them on right away.

Christmas afternoon we drove up to Great Grandma's house and saw lots of aunts, uncles, and siblings.  It was so nice to see everyone again.  Grandma & Grandpa came up a couple days later and Josiah fell in love with their dog, Scooter.  The dog was incredibly docile with him, as Josiah kept petting him and loving on him for a long time.  Josiah talked a mile a minute about his love for Scooter.  He announced that he was going to go live with him (and my parents) and send us pictures of he and Scooter playing frisbee in the park.  He said he'd come back and live with us when he grew up.  When asked at what age "grown up" would be, he said 50.    Meanwhile, Henry was huddled up on my lap quite scared.  Caroline wasn't too sure.  She was curious, but I think more scared than curious.

Driving back to Hampton, Henry broke our hearts.  We heard him quietly crying in the back seat and when asked why he was sad, he said,  "I miss Aunt Cwaire and Great Grandma."  He cried this way for a good half hour.  It was so sad, but it's also good he had such a good visit with them.  We took them to a playground each day, but the day Aunt Claire came, both boys couldn't wait to show her everything.  He has a good aunt and a good Great Grandma.

We made sure we were back in Hampton by Sunday morning so Josiah could go see all his friends at Bethel.  He confidently said that everyone would be glad to see him again.  It was nice to see friends again.  Sometimes it seems like we haven't been gone long, and other times it does.
Some of those friends were very kind to open their house later in the week to host a mini-birthday party for Josiah.  He really wanted a party, but we don't know too many people in Texas yet, so we compromised by having a small party in Virginia.  The boys were very happy to play with friends again.  They have so many dress up clothes.  Henry put on a Woody outfit and another child may have dressed up as a princess, but we have no photographic evidence.

It was sad to leave family and friends again.  Josiah dramatically says, "Will we never see them again?" whenever we say goodbye.  There were tears shed.  It is good we have so many people to love and miss.

Heading back to Texas, we stopped in Alabama for the night.  Josiah kept our record going with hotel injuries this time.  He stood up in the bath tub, hitting his side on the faucet on the way up.  It didn't seem that bad when it happened, but it bruised up and looked like it hurt (as Josiah told me it did).  We were hoping to get a continental breakfast before heading out on the road again, but all three kids independently woke up at 4:30 a.m. the next morning.  Breakfast started at 7:00 a.m.  There was no way we were waiting that long for breakfast, so we hit the road and made it back home by 6:30 p.m.  I put the kids immediately in the bath tub after all the gross bathrooms we had entered on the road.  It was nice to sleep in our beds again.

Frosting, Sprinkles, and Syrup...an "Elf" Christmas

I think we must have been channeling "Elf" this week with the amount of frosting and sprinkles we all consumed.  It started with the extra frosting I had bought for our CC cookie decorating party.  Somehow a jar got open and then we had to eat it every day.  On Monday, it started off the normal way, on a cookie.  Josiah actually finished all the vegetables on his plate so he could eat dessert.  (I never thought he'd follow through with eating them all, so lesson learned on that one!)

By Tuesday, the boys put frosting and sprinkles on Fritos.  Josiah made me one and it wasn't half bad.  The saltiness helped cut the super sweet frosting.

The best part of this picture is that the floor was as equally bad as their plate and the table.  I asked Josiah to dustbust up all of the sprinkles.  I watched from afar as he turned the dustbuster on, sat it next to him, and then proceeded to pick up and eat all the sprinkles off of the floor.  Not exactly what I had in mind.  I didn't take a picture because I didn't want to distract him since he was technically cleaning up the floor.  :)

Do you think he licked the sprinkles up from the plate?

On Thursday, Josiah ate his tiny sliver of zucchini so he could have more frosting and sprinkles.  He ate it first on a cookie, but then moved onto Caroline's apple slices on her plate.  Henry covered his zucchini in frosting and sprinkles and announced how great the zucchini tasted.  Caroline got in on the action and ate her apple slices with sprinkles on top.  All I have to say about that is my boys ate zucchini.

Tonight, Josiah made us "patties."  I have no idea where he got the idea of "patties" from, but he's been making us patties all weekend.  Usually it is a mayo & cheese sandwich.  Tonight, however, it was a dessert patty.  He got a wrap out, spread some frosting on it with sprinkles on top, folded it over and voila.  It is tastier than it sounds.

At this point we just need to throw the frosting away.

We also enjoyed a bit of syrup.  The boys wanted to make pancakes that looked like an elf and Rudolph (thank you for the pictures Aunt Kathy).  So we went out and bought blueberries, strawberries, grapes, & bacon.  They ate way more berries than syrup for this meal, so it was a win.  Caroline ate some blueberries as well.  I would give her two at a time and she'd pop them in and say, "more please."  She is speaking in two word sentences more and more.  Caroline also likes to feed herself with a spoon and will push my hand away if I even attempt to help.  She is able to do really well with it most of the time, but if she's distracted there's a lot of food everywhere.  It's a lesson in patience for me.

She provides me with all sorts of lessons in patience.  I have noticed that when Caroline is quiet she has either found my phone and is playing with it, or she has gone to "play" in the boys' dresser.  Her favorite activity of late is to sift through their pajama drawer and mess up all of my nice folded piles.  This may not sound like a big deal, but most days I feel like the only thing clean in the house are the clothes drawers.  And even now they are torn up.  At least the bottom two that she can reach.

Henry provided another lesson in patience with playdoh this week.  They have not played with it much since we have been here, so when Caroline went down for a nap, the boys played with it.  I prefer to play with it neatly, not mixing colors, and picking up all the little pieces as I go along.  Henry...not so much.

He mixed four colors together and squeezed them through the small holes to make a snake.

Can you see the floor?  It was everywhere.

I literally had to just keep walking away from the table to keep calm and realize it is not a big deal in the long term.  Besides playdoh is very easy to dustbust up when it hardens.

Our neighborhood has great Christmas lights.  Today it was 75 out, so after dinner we walked around the block to see the lights and blow up things on people's lawns.  Caroline ran a good portion of it and was very excited to see them.  She'd point at each house and say, "uhhhhhhhhhhh uhhhhhh uhhhhh."  Earlier in the week we drove around our little neighborhood to see the lights.  Every time I slowed down so the kids could see the lights Henry would say, "Did you run out of gas?"  Every time.  We were two blocks from our house.

Saturday was a big day for the boys.  In the afternoon we went to a small theatre play of "Busy Town."  Busy Town is the one show they watch on t.v. most days, so I wasn't sure how they would do with a play and real live people playing the parts.  They loved it.  It was super low budget and I think most of the audience were family members of the cast (half the cast were kids).  They had homemade cookies and cupcakes for $1 each, so the boys had a snack and a show.  They really enjoyed it and kept asking about other characters that were not in the play, but in the books.  Definitely a good first experience.

The Busy Town show they watch on t.v. is on the Qubo channel.  I despise the station because of its commercials.  The boys want all the toys they advertise and they can quote the sales pitches verbatim.  Josiah was sitting with Todd the other day and said, "You have no hair on top.  Hair Club can fix that."  Thank you Qubo.  He also wanted to get me beads for my hair as a Christmas gift.  Again Qubo.

We did do our school lessons this week as well.  We are still doing the Civil War.  Josiah painted a picture of a Civil War soldier with a rifle in his hand.

He looks every so much like a Revolutionary War soldier, but still good.

We also made a pictograph of eye color in our family.  We tend to favor blue.  We had to change Grandma's eye color from hazel to green, as well as add Green Lantern and a boy from Josiah's class to our chart just to give ourselves a bit more variety.

This semester we learned all the states and capitals and the last two weeks we've started learning mountain ranges in the U.S.  We started off with the Appalachian Mountains.  Our map has Mt. Mitchell colored red which turned into a discussion as to why that was.  (highest peak in that range)  That turned into a discussion of all the "red" mountains on the map.  We ended up looking up most of them on the computer which turned into a small, but persistent, obsession with Mt. St. Helens.  Let me just say there are a ton of You Tube videos on the eruption (on May 18, 1980 8:32 a.m. in case you're wondering).  We also got a book about Pompeii (unrelated to school) from the library so we have had a lot of discussion about volcanoes, eruptions, ash, rock slides, people not listening to the police and still going close to the mountain, on and on.

Henry's picture - "the man is smiling because he won't leave the mountain and he's going to die."

Josiah's picture

Some more artwork:
Josiah drew big pictures of Caroline & Henry.

Caroline holding her beloved blanket and screaming.
Henry holding a donut and he has his toothbrush at the bottom of his shirt.

Henry drew the Cat in the Hat.

All of these pictures are now decorating our front room. I'm not so sure we'll ever need to buy real artwork for the walls. They will have the house decorated in no time.
And I am including a picture of Josiah's lego helicopter that he made because I had no less than 27 pictures of it as well as a video he had taken when I uploaded my photos.  Clearly he is proud of his work.

Having a late night snack (9 p.m.) with this little girl.

Cookie Decorating & Christmas Concerts

Last Sunday night we were greeted by a Texas snake coming in under our back door.  It was part way in the house when Todd called me over to see if it was a real snake or what (b/c it wasn't moving at the time).  It clearly was a snake as we pushed it back outside with cardboard.  There is no doubt that "fully sealed doors and windows" will be on our list for when we purchase a house.  Eeek!

Our week started off shaky with Todd & Josiah getting the stomach bug on Monday.  Josiah wanted me to spend the day with him on my bed watching TV.  So, every time I left the room he'd say, "Why aren't you taking care of me?"  Every time...  Uh, because I have two other wee ones who are a little too happy to have their run of the place.  Fortunately their sickness was short lived.

By the end of the day Monday, our house was closed on in Virginia.  Henry was pretty sad to hear that.  It's tough for him to hear that someone else will be living there now.  He misses his room there and from what I can tell, he'd prefer not to have bunk beds (even though he has bottom).  So, I think we'll unbunk them when we move again.  Right now there's no room with all 3 in the same room.  We all want a house "with stairs" (two stories).  We're making out our wish lists for the house hunting come spring.

For school, we learned about pioneers heading west to explore.  We read some great books about the wagon trains and so we decided to make covered wagons out of popsicle sticks.  It took much longer than I anticipated, days to complete, mostly because we'd have to do all our gluing when Caroline was sleeping and allow it to dry in between.  I thought the boys would enjoy pulling things around in them, but Josiah played with it only for about 10 minutes.  I don't think Henry ever played with his.  Although, he had to put his up high because Caroline had woken up just as he had finished.  

Even though he didn't like the covered wagon, Josiah did like gluing the popsicle sticks together to make things.  He ended up making this helicopter using popsicle sticks and cardboard.  It turned out really well and ended up being his presentation at CC this Friday.  It was a rescue/fire helicopter and when the back opened up, he had cotton balls fall out as the water.  

This was our last CC for the semester.  To celebrate they had a cookie decorating & pizza party after school time was over.  The boys had a very good time decorating their cookies and eating an unknown, but far too large, quantity.  The best part of the cookie decorating party was that the whole day exhausted the kids so much that by the time we got home they were all asleep.  And they stayed asleep for about 2 hours.  It was bliss.  :)

This cute little girl loves to copy every thing the boys do.  And I cannot emphasize EVERYTHING enough.  If they run around, she runs.  If they sing or talk a certain way, she copies.  If they eat a certain way, she follows.  When we're outside playing and Josiah sits on the sidewalk, gets back up and runs around, she will do the exact same thing.  It's been a lot of lessons about, "See if you make good decisions, Caroline will too." (and vice versa)  She can now say "no" which is always fun.  She loves applesauce.  For every meal she will go and get herself a spoon; even if she's eating a piece of bread, a spoon is required.  I am very happy that all she can reach so far are the spoons because she can leave a mess in the drawer.  She also likes to count, "2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3..."

We got an explanation for all of her screaming.  I was finally able to see that her two back top molars were pushing their way through.  At least there's an explanation and the screaming isn't as bad when I give her some Tylenol.  :)

Saturday was nice enough to play on the playground.  Caroline thinks she's a 5 year old on the playground, so she requires extra supervision!  

And the best part of the week was the boys' Christmas concert tonight at church.  The boys were so excited.  Josiah wanted to shine his shoes beforehand so that they were nice and shiny for the concert.  Henry followed suit.  Josiah also decided not to wear his suit because he wanted a cupcake afterwards and didn't want to get his suit dirty.

Shining their shoes with baby wipes.

Henry's group went first and sang two songs.  There were five kids and for the most part they stood there slightly frozen, not really singing and not really doing the hand motions.  All except Henry.  He did all the hand motions for his songs and he stole the show.  I was videotaping it and my video kept shaking because I was laughing so hard because he was doing such a good job.  Josiah did really well.  He sang both of his songs, but neglected to do the hand motions.  He told us beforehand that he wasn't going to do them and that he was going to focus on singing.  So we praised him for the singing.  They had a dessert buffet afterwards which is always awesome to give children a bunch of desserts at 7 p.m.  After two spilled drink cups (separately) and Caroline running away twice it was time for us to make our exit.  

Chillaxing and eating a few desserts afterwards

Josiah woke up early Saturday morning and made the Grinch before the others had woken up. He and his 5:30 a.m. wake up calls. When he was younger I thought he'd grow out of it, but he's been waking up in the 5 o'clock hour for almost 6 years now so I'm thinking it is never going to change.