Holy geez, am I behind or what? I didn't post anything about last week besides JFK's birthday, and a smidgen of Fenderson stuff. Now, it's nearly 10pm on Sunday, and I am going to try and catch you up at warp speed so Calib can get his very own birthday blog. Fifteen deserves it's own blog, me thinks!
So you might recall, last week on Saturday, the Home Office sent us money for summer of shakes. So we went off to do that.
Oh, and Phenom got to go too, because it was his birthday! He's 8 now!
And when they found Cameron in Asia, specifically in Hanoi, Vietnam, the boys got the last piece to their puzzle.
Sunday we did lessons by dad. This week we talked about India and focused on the Caste System.
All day Sunday we were each a part of the Caste System, done completely by random draw. In order from least important to most..
Peyton was an untouchable. He didn't mind too much, because nobody cared what he did as long as he left us alone.
Calib was NOT pleased with the Sudra. He was basically a slave.
Hayden was the working class Vaisya.
Asa drew the Kshatriya. He had to be bothered with the boys needs.
Because I was the Brahman, and whatever I said went. Which, fun story, I was the last one to pick. I let everyone else go, and took whatever remained. Some might say it's karma. Anyway, Sunday worked out pretty well for me.
You see Peyton might have had to eat dinner by himself at the bar, being an untouchable and all...
But he also couldn't touch our dishes. So, the Vaisya took care of that, with the Sudra drying. (See how unhappy Calib STILL is, hours after that first picture... hehe!)
And the Brahman got coffee whenever she wanted. It was great.
Plus, whatever the Brahman says goes. If I said you were Spanish in Spy Alley, you were Spanish! (just kidding, I didn't ACTUALLY do that- but I could have- though if I did they'd never play with me again).
I did use Sunday to get some work done uninterrupted too. I made JFK to get ready for his birthday.
And I made the rootbeer bottles for the top of True American.
Monday Asa worked and it was Memorial Day. You might remember last year we laid flags at the National Cemetery. Well this year their volunteer list was full (months ago!). So, we missed out on that.
But we did use the day to play True American: Memorial Day edition. If you don't know how we play that, then go back and read the rules. (I'm not linking, it's 10pm here, I am ready to get in my jammies!)
Everyone made their president using a rootbeer bottle (Smirnoff for Asa).
Hayden's president this go around was Ulysses S. Grant.
Peyton did good old TJ.
Calib went with Harry Truman.
And Asa went with James Buchanan.
Those sheets you see attached are their cheat sheets to help them with their questions. So they went to the presidents to refresh their memories.
They turned out super cute, I think!
I did purchase a cupcake thing for True American, because I was annoyed with the tower I had been building. It was a pain, this was SUPER easy. Love that.
There's plenty of room for everything. We had the bottles on top, mini cupcakes, patriotic jello, Lincoln hats and the presidential Pez Dispensers.
I set up everyone's stations. They got the monthly birthday sheet on the back of their chairs...
Along with their rootbeer guys.
Then we added in their kiddy cocktail shots.
Headbanz categories this time: Armed Forces, State, First Pet, First Lady, and President.
Of course we needed pillows for the hot lava part too. Porkchop was happy about that.
Then madness ensued...
Calib was the first one to his rootbeer.
But that didn't stop Peyton from being excited about getting there as well.
So, lets talk Fendersons. This week the boys were tracking Coby. Coby was in North America and had stolen the CN Tower. We knew for his next adventure he planned to visit the Continental United States (amateur! some of us have been to all 50!)
Plus based on the things found in his hotel room in Canada, we know he had already spent some time there and in Mexico.
And Coby is a big fan of 'to-do' lists. It's one of his likes, even. This one left behind in his hotel room in Toronto when he stole the CN Tower let the boys know what he had done and where he was heading too.
So, it was just a matter of tracking him all over the lower 48. That was made easy by all the letters and packages the Home Office intercepted between Coby and Casey. You know, since Casey got away from us in Africa.
Packages came with letters letting them know what they could rule out. This time, the city things were made were blacked out on the actual products and they had to figure out where everything was from.
The letter helped.
They didn't have a list of states, this time they had to color them in on the map when they were eliminated. (They labeled some top secret too, so if a question arose later they would know.)
They got some other things in other packages too. They got some state flags.
One day they got all kinds of pictures and had to figure out where they were from. There was a caption on the back to help them out a little.
We got a couple recipes, one day it was Minnesota Hotdish..
And one night it was buffalo wings from New York.
One night we intercepted some cash Coby was sending to Casey to get some hot-n-ready pizzas to rule out Michigan.
Packages kept coming...
And the boys kept ruling out states..
They got all these 'to-do' lists along the way and had to figure out what state they belonged to.
And they got these driving directions once too. No states were labeled. But you could clearly see some capital cities.
Looks like Coby has a AAA membership.
By the end of the week the board was pretty full...
By JFK's birthday on Friday, the boys were pretty sure Coby was in Texas (somewhere along all the clues they had missed West Virginia and couldn't rule that one out.)
I told you about our crossover event in JFK's blog, but in case you missed it. We had the Fenderson's teaming up with another known criminal, Nita Direction (a project my friend is working on with her kids), and they decoded the message figuring out the two were going to meet at Dealey Plaza.
And there was one last to-do list on the JFK puzzle that we intercepted. Coby hadn't yet made it to the Texas School book Depository.
So they issued the arrest warrant for Dealey Plaza in Dallas Texas. And they got it right!
They received word from the home office in form of some Texas products: Texas salsa and Dr. Pepper! Plus, some Plinko chips as payment.
We also got a couple Texas recipes to make to celebrate the capture. We had a Dr. Pepper cake..
And these awesome tocorita things.
Coby has been captured, and the CN Towe has been found and returned.
I'll share the new criminal with you next week in his blog!
You didn't miss much else.. we did Super Satruday with some SUPER fun categories! (And we played Jeopardy at 11:30 PM per the kids requests.
And we've had some afternoon storms, so poor Sophie is a trembling pile of puppy these days.
Oh and the Lightning are going to the Stanley Cup Finals! Even if we are bandwagon hockey fans around here, we are all pretty excited about this. Yay Tampa!
Asa and I headed out today. We got Calib some of his presents, and made a Costco & Ikea run. Crazy how busy everything is on a Sunday, I don't think we'll be doing that again anytime soon.
That's it from here. I'll be back probably Tuesday with Calib's birthday blog.
Next Up: The big ONE-FIVE for our oldest!
