the education of henry

Swim, Bike, LEGO

2025-06-15

This week we are finishing up school. Mom and I have some stuff left to do together, but not much. Mostly I am working on my own while Mom is getting everything ready for next year and the rest of high school. Can you believe I am going to be in 9th grade? I worked on my state testing, too - everything is done but math. Dad and I worked on editing my paper on Henry V, which is slow going, but I am learning.

It is summer and the pool is open again, so I am doing some swim lessons. Mostly the lessons are for a refresher, so I am only taking them for the first two weeks. We were at the pool with Jonathan and Eva a few times this week. The weather was decent enough - although it has been a little cool for swimming. We also had Recess at the creek.

Me with Eva and Jonathan.

Taking a break from swimming.

Phoebe came to the park with Nick!

At the pool again - and it's not very busy.

Dad took Friday off and we met Jonathan and his parents at Bricks and Minifigs. This is one of the months I gave Jonathan the free bag of bricks we won, so we went with to claim the free bag and help them fill it. We had a coupon for a discount on bulk bricks, so we got a bag as well. When we were done we all went over to Culver's for lunch.

We fell in the pit....

Moms working on making sure the bags will close.

The carnival is in town this week, so like last year, we rode down early in the morning on Saturday to see everything when it was completely empty.

And we saw this guy on our ride - it's not Duke, but he sure looks like our old buddy.

We also went to the local No Kings protest on Saturday. About 800 people were there, and we talked to a lot of folks we haven't seen in a while.

Eva and her mom made this sign - it's really good!

Caroline and Mom.

Standing by the road to get people to honk their horns for us.

Mom is talking to Carol in the background.

All of us.

Sunday was quiet and we stayed home - except for a bike ride. Here are some pictures of the LEGO project I was working on all week. Dad helped build the gate and the towers, and worked on the wall with me. I finished the wall and added all the details.

You might remember I built the castle last week. Now we are building a wall.

Wall is close to done - we added some foliage.

Big jump in detail - I added some buildings....

The view through the gate.

Some Vikings coming into the city.

The church and the blacksmith shop - and you can see some clouds and rain in the back by the boats.

In other news, we are still listening to Huck Finn, and thankfully there have not been any more tedious chapters describing every thing in a room. We finished reading Life Without Principle by Thoreau, and I finished Anna of Byzantium and started The Never-ending Story. We watched some Big Bang Theory this week, and we also watched Hellboy and Hellboy: The Golden Army - Dad picked those for Father's Day weekend. We also tried to watch No Time For Sergeants but Mom and I thought it was a little mean-spirited, so we did not finish it. We did think the parts about cleaning the latrine were funny.

Also, Uncle Neil got a new pup named Lily. I haven't seen her in person yet, but I did see her on FaceTime and she seems like a really sweet dog. She looks a lot like Loki, only smaller. And she is very quiet. Hopefully I will have some pictures soon.

And that was my week. Take care!