Champion Soccer Player?

This picture is so funny to me. Todd took this picture of Holden today when we were at Collins's gymnastics class. If you read the words on the trophy, it would seem that Holden was awarded for his Cheer Power. Go team!

Daddy Daughter Dance

Oh the magic of a daddy daughter dance. Collins had been counting down the days until this dance for several months. In true girl style she loves every part - the pretty dress, the suit that Todd wears, the car they drive in, the activities at the dance. This year's daddy daughter dance did not disappoint! She was glowing and talking excitedly when they came in the door.

When Todd was getting ready Collins wanted to choose his tie and she critiqued the way he fixed his hair. She knew just the way she wanted him to look for the dance. It was so cute!

Collins decided that she wanted to take this little pink photo album with her to the dance. It was made by Lila shortly before she died. At the dance they had a photo booth so Todd and Collins took fun pictures together and then she put them in her album. 

What a beautiful girl! And clearly she is having a great time at the craft table.

On the dance floor with her friend AnnaKate.

Dancing is so much fun!

Hunter

I know I've said it before, but we are so thankful for Trinity Classical School where our boys attend. It has added so much to their education and filled in the gaps in my individual efforts to homeschool. This blog post highlights a perfect example of that. I rarely did poetry with the boys... mostly because I never liked poetry. But TCS has students memorize great poems and holds a student poetry competition each year. Hunter submitted the following:

Woe of the Grammarians

That’s it! I’ve had enough with your lack of punctuation.
Every time I see a grammar mishap, it adds to my vexation.
"There," "they’re," and "their"— you have no clue what the difference is!
I thought I was reading time travel by the way you changed tenses.
You write as if you’re texting: no apostrophes in sight.
Gasp! You said, "irregardless"! You’ve killed Strunk and White!

The only time you use semicolons is when making a smiley: (-;
Did I mention that your quotation marks are used "rather vilely"?
You write in caps lock to hide your ignorance in capitalization.
Egad! It seems your writing has an emoji infestation!
Your parenthetical remarks are irrelevant, and honestly, quite shallow.
And your sentence structure’s shakier than a blob of cherry Jell-O.

One exclamation point is enough, yet you still use ten.
Was that a comma splice? An unforgivable grammar sin!
What were you thinking? Possessive “its” has no apostrophe.
That pile of clutter you call a paragraph is a linguistic catastrophe!
Want to hear about the Oxford comma? I’ll give you a tour de force.
Subject-verb agreement? Ha! They had a grammatical divorce!

Oh, the woes of the grammarians! We yearn for phonological perfection.
Like the traffic cops of English, we direct each lexical intersection.
But even the best are not above reproach— we too have our failings.
It’s impossible to fully stop making errors, our best attempts unavailing.
Yet we still press on, determined to purge our language of mistakes.
We’re the guardians of grammar, and we’ll do all that it takes.

Breakfast with Barbies

Holden

Holden has been potty trained for a couple of months now. It is terrific to have no one in diapers! He really wants to be independent in the bathroom, but he often still needs help pulling his shorts and underwear down and then back up, so I assist. As he steps up onto the stool to go potty, I place my hands on his sides to help steady him. Almost every time that he is on the stool, he leans over, while he is peeing, and gives me a kiss. I think it is adorable and I treasure this memory. Especially considering that every other time I kiss him he either wipes it off or says, "Yucky!"

Greek Theater Field Trip

Last Friday we drove out to Brazos Bend State Park for the TCS 5th grade field trip. Carter's class has been studying the Trojan War and his teachers organized a Greek Theater field trip. The class acted out a play called "The Search for Odysseus." Carter was Telemachus and he did a super job! It was a beautiful day - pretty typical for our Houston winter - about 80 degrees.

Telemachus and Queen Penelope

This is JJ - he is one of Carter's best friends at TCS.

Taking their bows.

After the play we headed to the nearby pavilion to celebrate with a Greek feast, Olympic games and laurel wreaths. Carter and Trevor did well during the wheelbarrow race.

Carter, Isaac, Trevor and Hudson after the games!

Half-price candy

The day after Valentine's Day is a great time to buy candy. Tonight the kids enjoyed FunDip for dessert.

George Observatory

Tonight Hunter had a field trip to the George Observatory at Brazos Bend State Park. His science class has been studying astronomy and so they went to see the stars. Todd took Hunter and Ben Barnes and he sent me these pictures. Look at Hunter here! This is him thoroughly enjoying his friends from TCS. I really feel like Hunter comes to life at school and in the experiences that he gets to be a part of with his classmates. Wow, it makes me happy!

Notice the turquoise headbands/ scarves? That is the House of Maxwell representing their house tonight at the field trip. From L to R: Rivkah, Alexandria, Zachary, Ben, Abby, Faith, Ellie, Grace, Kennedy, Alex, Hunter and Carson.

Collins

Today during our morning devo Collins made me cry. Her sweet little heart is just too precious! I was using the Parable of the Sower for our morning scripture reading and explaining to the boys how each of us much decide what kind of "soil" our hearts will be when we hear the Word of God. I talked about all four examples in the parable - the seed falling on the path, the seed falling on rocky soil, the seed that takes root and then is choked out and finally the seed that falls on good soil and produces a crop 100, 60 or 30 x what was sown. I asked them, "What kind of soil will your heart be like?" Collins immediately raised her hand and said, "Good soil." May it be so Lord!

Hunter

What a clever boy this one is! He delights me with his quick wit and the way he enjoys school. I had to include this story in our blog book since it made me laugh so hard. Our normal routine at home is that the boys bring home any papers that have been checked on campus and stack them in the school room. Then on Thursday afternoon I file the papers in their school binders. One Thursday I was going through the papers when I found Hunter's latest math test.

His teacher had asked: How does math relate to Christmas? Now, I'm not sure what her intention was in asking this question (it was bonus), but Hunter's answer was too good not to share.

Math has 4 letters. Math is 1 word. 4-1=3, and a triangle has 3 sides. Pizza is shaped like a triangle. Pizza is from Italy, which looks like a boot. A boot is a shoe. Nike sells shoes. Nike's logo is a check mark, and Santa checks his list twice. And since Santa is associated with Christmas, then math, by extension, also relates to Christmas.

His teacher wrote: This is the best answer I've gotten. +3

The rest of January and February

We took the kids out for a special dinner at Taste of Texas and Collins wore her Rapunzel princess dress for this occasion.

Hunter got hired for his first official job! He works each Saturday to keep stats or run the scoreboard for a youth basketball league.

I had to include a few more pictures from the boys' birthday party. Here is Ty Baker making a spectacular catch. 

Kind of a funny action shot.

Sometimes after school we just have to run to Target. I love all the boys in their school uniforms.

Thank you Hunter for pushing the cart. Hi Connor!

Connor added to his Tintin book collection with this one.

January is also the birthday month for Carter. He turned 11 this year! He asked for a Boston Cream Pie for dessert and was so kind to his mom when the cake fell apart. We still ate it, but it wasn't pretty. 

To celebrate his birthday, Carter asked to take a friend to the movies. He chose JJ Anderson and Kung Fu Panda 3! We had to take a "selfie" with the Zootopia poster at the theater.

Collins loves opening the sun roof on the Expedition and sitting up there when we are parked. 

Maxwell socks on Connor.

A sunny day at the City Centre fountains.

Kim Party

For literature, Hunter's 8th grade class read Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim. To celebrate the completion of this book, Ms. Pfannenschmidt suggested a Kim party. We hosted it at our house and it was such a neat experience. The book is set in India so we had Indian food, Indian saris and henna tattoos for the girls. Plus we planned a few other activities that were inspired by the book.

Here is a portion of Hunter's classmates. Not all were able to make it to the party. The fabulous Ms. Pf is on the front row, far right.

Hunter and I in our Indian attire.

We recruited Ms. Seymour to be our henna artist.

My friend Shana Parker, and fellow 8th grade mom, taught us all a Hindi worship song. 

The whole group singing in Hindi.

Hunter narrated some rousing games of Mafia with Kim characters and creative ways to die.

Hostesses: Ana, Bronwyn, Shana, Sherry and Freya.

And more...

A bike ride a day makes Collins a very happy girl!

Holden loves his big sister and he wants to do whatever she does. So one day when Collins decided to take her doll in the car, Holden insisted that he take a doll too! He was showing me baby Alexis as we drove away.

Holden and the baby doll enjoyed their ride together. 

Oh what fun we had when we spent the day in Galveston with the Clarke family! They had just purchased a 15-passenger van and so we squeezed both our families into the van and filled every seat. We visited the ice sculptures at Moody Gardens. It was so very cold. 

Connor and Collins.

Carter and Rebecca Clarke - both in 5th grade at TCS.

We had fun in the gift shop after the ice sculptures. Connor was attaching stuffed animals to his velcro hat.

And Connor was photobombing this picture of Cooper Clarke and Colton - both 3rd graders at TCS.

After the ice sculptures, we had a delicious lunch and then found the cutest ice cream/ candy shop in downtown Galveston. Collins was delighted with her lollipop.

Collins started gymnastics and it is her favorite activity of the week.

Doing a little shopping with mom at World Market.

Sibling love!

Holden thinks Sissy is fantastic!

Happy Birthday Colton! January 11th marked Colton's 9th birthday. We took him Smashburger to school for his birthday lunch.

Chocolate chip bundt cake for his birthday dinner.

Colton got a fishing pole for his birthday and he was trying to teach Collins and Holden the basics.

Oh, this is a great story! Holden refused to eat his peas one night at dinner and Todd and I were headed out for a late date night. So Connor and Carter stayed with him at the table until he finally ate his four peas. They were there a little over an hour. Whoa!

Holden decided to eat his Mini Wheats at a ninja one morning.