Fall is Here!

The boys and I made our annual trek to the pumpkin patch this weekend.  The Scouts are supposed to go but since I haven’t heard when we are going and there is only one more weekend we decided to go today.  Who knows, we may be going back next weekend too.  Not that the boys will mind if we go two weeks in a row.

This year, we tried a new farm that apparently everyone in the county, with the exception of us, knew about.   The boys were a little dubious about going to a new place since they didn’t have one of their favorite activities (pumpkin sling shot) but they were both excited, tired and very happy when we left the farm so I’d say it was a success.

This farm had a lot of kid things, including a play area.  Our day looked something like this.

We visited the animals in the petting area

Went through a hay maze where the boys slid into a hay pile (and I took some truly horrid pictures)

Played in the sand pile

Panned for treasure

Played in the corn bin

Ran across and jumped off the hay bales

Played in the hay barn (which included more running, more jumping, a little hay throwing and even some hay wallowing.)

(again, this is as close to a decent picture of the two of them as I was able to manage)

Went down the slide, a lot (I understand it is bumpy and feels weird on your bottom)

Rode the “horses”

   

And ate a snack (in addition to the freshly made corn dog we also had freshly roasted corn on the cob, fresh squeezed cold apple cider and an apple cider donut) 

 

The boys also rode the cow train (50 gallon water containers painted to look like Holstein cows and pulled by a tractor.  The ride was insanely short but they both loved it.  I was out of card space so I don’t have any photos of that.

You may notice that our trip to the pumpkin patch didn’t actually include any pumpkins. :)  This is often the way it works.  The boys could care less about picking out their own pumpkins in a patch and would much rather just do the activities.  Occasionally we do wander the pumpkin patch just to look around, however today we had already been there almost 4 hours and the boys were ready to go.  Since it was a good 100 yards or more to just get to the start of the patch, I decided it would be better to head home.  One of the nice things about living where we do is that there are several pumpkin patches within 15 minutes of our house so we can always run down one evening if they decide they want to look.

Going to the pumpkin patch always makes me in a more autumnal mood and I love the smiles and laughter from my boys as they play. 

Today was a good day.

Festivity

It seems hard to believe but K celebrated his ninth birthday earlier this month.  My adorable boy has gone from this

 

to this

(Like this years’ weird smile?  I’m not sure what is with him and his goofy smiles in pictures but he changes the smile every year or so.  I guess just to keep it fresh.)

For K’s birthday, D and I met him at school for lunch and took his class cupcakes.  D loves that he gets to line up with his brother and get the hot lunch at school.  K loves that he gets cupcakes.

We decided that since we weren’t having K’s birthday party until later in the month that he would get to pick where he wanted to go for dinner on his birthday.  He started out with Red Robin (I can live with that), then the next morning he wanted to go to Red Lobster (I can do that too), by the time I picked him up from school it was Chuck E. Cheese (why, oh why).

I do have to say that going with only the two boys was a lot easier than trying to keep track of all the kids at a party.  The boys had a great time and K really enjoyed his family birthday party.  This was as close as I came to a decent shot of both the boys.

 

I mean seriously kids, just a nice relaxed smile.  Am I asking too much?  Sheesh.

For K’s birthday party he wanted a slumber party, however that didn’t work out as most of his friends had plans on Sunday and couldn’t stay.  I do have to admit that I wasn’t exactly saddened by the fact that I wasn’t going to have 8 boys “slumbering” at my house.

This years party was a LEGO themed party and I think it went very well.  We were lucky to have a beautiful day which allowed the boys to play outside and be boys.  They also built lots of LEGO items, including a LEGO race car where they got to take home all the pieces as part of their goody bag. 

This years’ cake; which was the easiest cake I’ve made in years; didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped, however everyone ate it so I guess that was a success.

    

I did something sort of fun with the interior of the cake, but I forgot to take a picture of it the day of the party and the leftover piece wasn’t as picturesque as I’d hoped.  I colored the cake batter so that the inside of the cake was multicolored.  It just added a bit more festiveness to the cake and was a nice surprise when it was cut into.  That yellow cake part was actually colored lime green.  I was disappointed that it turned so much the color of regular cake batter when it was cooked.  I think next time I try this I will find some powdered coloring or a more intense gel so that the colors are brighter.

I also blatantly lifted this idea from the internet. 

These are supposed to little minifigure heads.  They are marshmallow dipped in yellow candy coating.  They were really easy to make and they made a great centerpiece for the table.  The kids loved that they got marshmallows and cake.  For whatever reason I think they are just so cute!

So, K is nine and in 3rd grade.  Sometimes I don’t think there is anyway I've been a mother for 9 years.  Although I will admit that raising K can be a challenge at times I am so grateful to have him in my life.  He is a wonderful kid and I love him more than I could ever express.  Happy Birthday.

Going On A Hike

The boys and I went on a hike with the Cub Scouts and had a great time.  However this post isn’t really about a hike.  It is about a pair of boots.  Specifically, these boots:

These are D’s new boots and he wears them absolutely everywhere.

In anticipation of a said hike, and knowing that we live in what is often a wet and rainy area, I decided that the boys needed boots. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any books for K, however D was more than happy to find these nifty spider web boots.  They even glow in the dark, what more could a 4 year-old boy want?

Because of his new boots, D was delighted to discover that he could walk in the mud and puddles!  Especially since his brother had to be very careful on the hike to not walk in mud or puddles.  I have to say that K did an excellent job of avoiding the puddles and came home with his shoes only slightly dirty.  D spent a lot of time reminding his brother that while K had to avoid puddles he (D) got to splash all he wanted.

The hike looked a lot like this.

   

 

Exhibit A:  K going around the puddle, and D set to go right through it.

D also found a caterpillar and was very upset that he didn’t get to bring it home.  Of course, I’m sad to say I’m not sure what shape the caterpillar is in after D’s tender loving care.  D wanted to put it back on a specific leaf and every time the caterpillar didn’t land on that leaf D picked it up to try again.  And again, and again, and again.  Poor little caterpillar.

When K was young I never purchased him rainboots.  They never seemed to be worthwhile.  Considering D wants to wear his boots absolutely everywhere, I will have to concede they were a good purchase.

Since we have a couple more hikes and a pumpkin patch visit I have feeling the boots will get a lot of use this year.

We also have a new puppy. (Didn’t even try with that segue did I?)

 

The boys are ecstatic.  The cats…not so much.

Around Here

The boys and I have been keeping marginally busy around here so far.  I wouldn’t say we are exactly staying active, but we are managing.  We are at the library once or twice a week, both for the books and for the programs.  We go to parks, see the free movies at the movie theatre and play a lot in the backyard.

Since I have been home more I decided to do some very small changes around here.  Nothing dramatic or time consuming but it is rather fun.

I had these two little tables which while absolutely not fashionable are quiet functional.  They had this sponge painted pink/lilac/lavender paint finish on them from about 10 years ago that really just didn’t fit our current decor.  I had thought about painting them black, however I wasn’t sure I wanted them to be that stark.  While perusing the spray paint aisle I found this fantastic black paint with little copper flecks in it (it was even on sale).  Silver would have been more my style, but for some reason this paint grabbed my attention.

       

I have to say, that while still not fashionable or particularly beautiful, I’m happy with the way they turned out.  It is hard to see it in the photos but they have this lovely little black/brown sheen on them that I like.  It was almost like having new furniture.

   

My other favorite item is a wire paper rack that I purchased from a scrapbook store that was going out of business.  My original intention was to use it to hold my scrapbook paper (I am determined to get a handle on my paper fetish.  You would think it would be as simple as “stop buying paper”, but that is madness).  Instead of using it for my paper, I decided to use it for all the paper the kids use.  I was getting sick of finding paper on the floor because the color they wanted was on the bottom of the stack in the drawer and they didn’t notice the one or two extra sheets of paper that fluttered out when they got theirs.

I have to say it is working very well.  They can see what colors they have and since the white paper is just my printer paper it doubles as storage for that too.  If you are wondering, the top rows of white paper are actually three different sizes.  I will fill them in with additional colors as the two odd sizes are used.

One thing I did do to this rack was to paint it.  It was the normal white wire when I purchased it and that was definitely not working for me.  I wanted to paint it black, but we didn’t have any black spray paint (this was pre-table projects) so I used  a dark hunter green that I had.  I really like the way it looks with that darker color.  It blends in better with my house then that stark white does.

I’ve also painted the hallway a color that I thought was light gray but which looks distinctly bright white on my walls.  I’m not sure it is my favorite color, however it really brightens up my hallway which no longer looks dank, dirty and dingy so it works for now.  I am trying to decided on another wall to use it on since my kitchen/living room/dining room/family room is basically one big space.  It think I will use it on the main walls and then add some color along a few accent walls.  I guess I’ll just see how it goes.  This is of course assuming I can decide on a color for the accent walls.  That should only take me 5 or 6 months since I don’t even have an idea of which color range to start.   

Bye, Bye Baby

Once again it has been ages and ages since I’ve posted anything.  I think I need Dragon NaturallySpeaking so that I can just talk and the blog will type itself.  Which considering how fast I type is really rather pathetic.

Anyway, rather than bore you with long past events I’ll just say things are essentially the same here.

Now for new stuff

D has not had his hair cut in I don’t know how long.  He has had the opportunities, just not the desire.  Since it is his hair I consider it his choice, until there are issues.  I love his long hair and the curls in the back, however we were running into a number of issues. 

1. He didn’t want to have his hair brushed.  I’m sorry, but around me if you are going to have long hair it must be brushed regularly.  It is a rule.
2. He was being confused with a girl a little too often when we were out 
3. I knew that when summer finally arrived that the hair covering his neck would make him much too hot.  He runs around and plays too much outside and that long hair was going to be a liability.  (Trust the girl with hair down to her waist on this)

Because of these factors I’ve been persistently asking him if he was willing to get his hair cut.  He continued to tell me no.  I finally started telling him that as we got closer to summer that I was going to cut his hair because it was just going to be too hot.  He finally agreed to a haircut, but rather than having a professional cut it he wanted Grandma to do it.  As my Dad pointed out, Grandma has only ever used clippers on horses.  I knew then this was going to be interesting. 

A few before shots

(Side note:  He and I have the same hair.  Why does it look so much better on him? Totally not fair.)

Then after

 

Ignoring the fact that if you get close there are a couple of spots next to his ears that got a little more closely shaven that elsewhere, I guess it didn’t turn out too bad.  I’m hoping that after about a week it will soften out like haircuts normally do and I (not he, I) won’t be so self conscious about it. 

What a transformation though.  My baby looks a little more like a young man.  A young man that wouldn’t hold still for a photo, but a young man nonetheless.

Other happenings

School got out this week.  I am now the mother of a third grader.

We also had crossover for Cub Scouts this week and K has gone from being a Wolf to a Bear. 

Since I am officially unemployed I’m home with the boys for the summer. (This is day 3 and I’m already beginning to feel like I did when I was put on bed rest during my pregnancy with D. I lasted all of two hours before I was up wandering around.) We’ll see how this goes.  So far it has been one day with both kids home and it went relatively well, except for when the afternoon crankies set it.  I can see I’ll have to find something to counteract those.

D didn’t quite grasp the concept that he wasn’t going back to his school.  He was good for the first two days but now he keeps talking about when he goes back to school he can show off his new haircut, take share toys, etc.  He is slowing getting the concept as he has started asking if he isn’t going back to school for ever and ever.  Ugh.  I hope the three of us survive.

Being home has allowed for a few fun things.

D and I surprised K for lunch on his last day of school. 

D loved going through the line and getting a big kid lunch like K.  Do you notice a lack of vegetables and fruit on those trays?  So unlike my boys.  D did get oranges but they were cut through the rind into random wedges and D wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.

Tomorrow we are going to splurge and go see Toy Story 3.  I haven’t seen a movie in the theatre since Cars came out and D has never been to a movie theatre so this should be fun but interesting.  K got spoiled last summer when his Grandmother took him to three movies so he has promised to guide us through the experience.

We also have on the calendar for the summer all the events put on by the library, the movies in the park and the free or $1 movies shown at the local theatres each week.  The boys are also signed up for some getting-used-to-swimming type swim lessons next week.  Each session is only 30 minutes and they go everyday next week.  If those go well I’ll be able to sign them up for regular swim lessons and can hopefully forgo paying for the semi-private lessons.  I’m also hoping that by being home I’ll actually get some of the random stuff done that never seems to happen, such as taking the clothes to the consignment store, the books to the used book store and the other random boxes of items to Goodwill.  I guess we’ll just see if I actually get anything accomplished.

I’ve also done a few fun things around the house, but I think I’ll save those for another entry.  I may get more than two entries every other month if i do that. :)

Manic March

I knew when I was putting our March activities on the calendar and realized that we were booked for every weekend in March that it was going to be fun.

A recap:

The first weekend of March the boys had a birthday party to attend.  These are always really fun events and the Mom of the boy having the birthday is super organized.  In addition to the normal party stuff there were 10 craft stations set-up downstairs, all dinosaur themed, with a booklet for the kids to follow with each station given a dinosaur-related name and a set of themed instructions. 

Both of the boys had a wonderful time playing with all the other kids.  It was really a fantastic day.

The next weekend was the  birthday party at the cousin’s house.  It was a slumber party for the older boys and while happily leaving my sister-in-law to deal with 12 rowdy 7 and 8 year-olds, I took the two 4 year-olds to my house so that they could have a sleepover too.

Both sleepovers were a big success, although my set were asleep by 10:30p and hers were still awake at 1a so I think I got the better deal there. :)

On March 19th, K went to his cousin’s Pinewood Derby.  The boys had a lot of fun but it turned out to be a long night.  It was close to 9:30p before they got home.

The next evening K and I headed to the Pacific Science Center for his Cub Scout Camp In.  All of the Scouts from across the District had a fabulous time getting to play in the Science Center without any other patrons.  From about 7p to 11p the boys explored, played, learned about volcanoes and generally enjoyed the Science Center.  Amazingly enough even with all that time K and I didn’t get to see all the exhibits.

They even served an evening snack which I had to laugh at.  This is a bunch of Cub Scouts, so 1st through 5th graders.  The snack was gourmet macaroni and cheese.  Luckily I had seen that and packed a good amount of snacks for K since I know that he will not eat any macaroni and cheese that doesn’t come from a box (trust me I’ve tried).   I personally thought the snack was delicious. :)

At 11p we gathered our camping stuff, found our sleeping area and set-up ‘camp’.  Our spot was between the boa constrictor exhibit and the naked mole rat exhibit. 

The boys seemed to sleep pretty good, but I didn’t do as well.  I may have gotten 2 hours sleep total in about 10 minute increments.  The rule was lights out and that meant no cell phones or MP3 players.  I broke the rule and listened to the radio and podcasts while placing the face of the player to the floor so that no light was visible. 

Once again reading the rules for the event got me into trouble.  I did as they suggested and packed very light, slept in the clothes I wore, kept in the mind that any padding had to be less than 4 inches, and since I didn’t have a travel mattress that I could find, the only padding between me and floor was the sleeping bag.  I knew we were in trouble when as we were walking to the center people were carrying huge bags of stuff or even wagons, most of them with blow-up air mattresses.  Lesson for next time; invest in a blow-up mattress and bring jammies.  Everyone with that set-up seemed to sleep fine.

The next morning at 6:30a the wake-up call sounded.  Off to a continental breakfast, then the laser light show and IMAX movie.  I was a little disappointed in the laser light show as I had always presumed that it was a more choreographed effort than this seemed to be.  Other than two sections; the Star Wars Imperial March which had Star Wars vehicles in lights (very cool) and Michael Jackson’s Thriller complete with tombstones and dancing skeletons in lights (also cool, although skeletons doing MJ’s crotch grabbing and pelvic thrusts seemed even more risque than when MJ did them); the rest of the presentation was just flashing lights.  Honestly half-way through the first segment I had to close my eyes because it had given me such a massive headache.  I only watched those parts that had actual images from then on. 

The IMAX movie was very interesting.  It was about building, launching and tracking the two rovers that were sent to Mars.  Very fascinating and well done.  Something that both the boys and parents I talked to enjoyed.

Since that day was my birthday, and J’s parents had gotten into town the day before but K and I hadn’t seen them since we were on our way to the camp in, the boys, J, J’s parents and myself all went to Red Robin for an early dinner.  Somehow my Strawberry Lemonade always ended up sans Strawberries due to a certain 4 year-old.  I’m sure K would have helped but he had his own thus negating the need to steal mine.

That was a very, very fun weekend but so tiring.  I had a ton of  stuff to do that week, plus visiting with the out of town relatives, and ended up pretty sleep deprived by Wednesday of that week.  I figured it up and between Saturday morning and Wednesday morning I had a total of 9 hours sleep.  I never did get to visit with the relatives as much as I would have liked, especially my sister-in-law and nephews. :(

The next Saturday was my oldest nephew’s baptism.  The boys and I attended and I must say that given this was something new to them and that even the adults were looking at the speakers going ‘are you done talking yet’, they did an excellent job. 

After the baptism we all trundled back to the in-laws house for food and play.  Since the boys always have a fantastic time playing with their cousins you can guess how that went.

Add those weekend activities into our normal days of work, school, preschool, Cub Scout and Karate (oh and a sick dog that required 3 vet visits in one week, plus surgery scheduled for Thursday) and you have our month in a very large nutshell.

So far April is looking a little better.  Only the first three weekends are full. :)

Here are some pictures of the kids as your reward for reading.

Oh yeah, they are sharing a room now.  So far so good.  D’s old room is now the playroom (which they occasionally even play in).

The places we’ve been, the things we’ve seen

Sometimes I think it is feast or famine around here when it comes to activities.  I swear there are days where we don’t do anything and then weeks when we don’t stop.  This weekend fell into the busy, in a fun way, category

Thursday was K’s Valentine’s Day party at his school.  Boy, this is one of those events that I really miss being able to help out at.  I loved being able to volunteer at K’s school during the day when he was in Kindergarten.  One of my goals is to get back to a position where I can do more during school day volunteering, instead of only non-school hours volunteering.  Anyway, for some reason I was a day off all week and Wednesday evening it hit me that K’s Valentine’s were due the next day.  K had already decided that he wanted to make Valentine’s for his whole class, but of course not believing me that it would take more than 5 minutes to make cards for everyone in the class, he hadn’t really started on them.  Luckily he had done the drawing he wanted to use for his cards on Tuesday evening so I whipped up some simple Valentine’s for his class.  They certainly weren’t professional looking, but I find them very cute and love the fact that all the drawing and handwriting is his own (even if it was a 2 minute drawing).

For those of you wondering that is, Indiana Jones telling you to have a whiptastic Valentine’s Day!  He drew all this on a small piece of paper and ran out of room while writing the greeting. I asked him if he wanted to rewrite it but he said it was fine.  Oh well.  We punched two holes over the lollipop to thread in a Dum Dum lollipop and away he went.  He was thrilled by them.  Of course, I didn’t remember to take a picture of a complete one.

Friday was D’s party at school and he also wanted his own homemade Valentine’s.  If truth be told he wanted to use his brother’s Valentine’s and put his name on them but I vetoed that.  He choose to throw a fit instead of doing a drawing so his were a little different.   D sat with me while they were designed and he choose the pattern on the heart and the duck.

He loved this little duck embellishment that I had so that is what we used.  Again these aren’t fancy but I love that he helped design them and wrote his own name.

Both of the boys came home with so much candy it was insane. 

On Saturday we had a Cub Scout event where we had to go to an important place in the community as part of K earning his Wolf Badge.  We choose one of the aeronautical museums in the area.  There wasn’t as much to do there as I had hoped and was feeling like we had spent entirely too much money for what we got when I first walked in, however before I knew it 2 hours had gone by and the boys all had fun. 

They especially liked the 727 Cockpit and the engine display.

Sunday was Valentine’s Day and we had a relaxing day at home.  I had found a few small items for the boys on clearance at Target so they were very excited when they got up that morning and found their presents on the dining room table.

Monday I took a vacation day since K didn’t have school and D’s school was closed for teacher training.  I only had to dial in and work for 2 hours so not bad (I haven’t had a vacation in over a year and am so in need of a real vacation).  One of the radio stations had a promotion for $1 per person admission to the science center so that was our big treat for the day.  It was a mad house, as expected, but overall everything went well.  The boys did a great job standing in line waiting to play with all the interactive exhibits and they had a lot of fun.  They are already asking when we can go back. :)  I think we only really saw about 75% of the exhibits (it could be less, we didn’t have a map and I feel like we missed a whole level) but I wanted to leave by 4p so that we could miss rush hour traffic getting home and by then we had been there over 4 hours so the boys, especially D, really needed a break.  It was incredibly fun to see the new exhibits but to also see that some of the old exhibits from when I was a kid were still there.  It was so cute to see the boys having fun doing some of the same things I did when I was a kid.  I guess the really cool exhibits are timeless.

I would post pictures from the science center but I can’t get anything off my memory card again and J is busy so he can’t pull them off for me with his computer.  Picture cute kids doing fun sciencey stuff.

Time to see what fun this week brings.

Really?

Occasionally the boys are so cute and so imaginative that I just have to laugh.  Here are a few scenes from around my house lately.

K has had a paper box (you know, the box the office supply company brings the reams of paper in) that the boys have decorated to be a car/train/star fighter.  I hadn’t seen the box in a while since it was being used as a pseudo toy bin in K’s room, however he went through his room and donated some toys so the box reappeared.  Coincidently I had brought home another paper box from work with the intention to use it to box up some items I’m donating.  That isn’t going to happen now.

D has claimed the new paper box as his own.  It is so cute to see the games that they come up with using these two boxes.  The boxes have been trains, cars, animal carriers, police cars, fire trucks and slides (Mom put a quick end to that game since it involved putting the footrest up on the rocker, setting the box on the seat, getting into the box, leaning themselves forward until the back of the rocker came up off the ground and then ‘sliding’ down the footrest to the ground, making the rocker; which is conveniently located next to the sliding glass doors; go flying backwards so that it is once again sitting on the ground).  D’s favorite way to use it right now is as a fire truck.  I have to call him and tell him there is a fire somewhere, I then need to “get low and go” to get out of the area so that Fire Fighter D can arrive, via his truck/box which he is sitting in and scooting across the floor, to put out the fire.  K usually ends up directing traffic or he takes his box off exploring distant lands with dinosaurs or aliens.

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Tonight at the dinner table K decided to give D a math lesson in the principles of multiplication.  D, although he was trying very hard, was not quite getting it.  K would ask him what 100 x 1 equaled and D would look at him and say 101.  K would try to explain that we weren’t doing addition we were doing multiplication and that any number multiplied by one is always the number you started with.  K would then ask another question, say what is 6 x 1, to which D would now answer (since we weren’t doing addition) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6!  K was being so patient yet getting so frustrated that D could not seem to grasp this ‘simple’ concept.  

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The boys love to draw.  We have dry erase boards in the car along with all sorts of workbooks about dinosaurs, letters, math, space, the US, etc found in the dollar bin at Target.  They are perfect to keep the boys occupied on our frequent car rides.  We also have paper and all sorts of coloring items around the house.   They will each be drawing and will end up with these huge, imaginative scenes oftentimes taking up both sides of the paper.  While they are drawing you hear a running commentary about what they are drawing, what the people are doing and saying, etc.  The problem is that when they draw they are rarely drawing the same thing or telling the same story so you get to hear two stories being told at the same time.  This typically goes on until K decides that his brother is talking to much and suddenly shouts his name at the top of his lungs.  Let everyone calm down for about 90 seconds and repeat from the beginning.

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K has three favorite phases right now.  Dude, Oh Snap and Man Down (used when something falls to the floor or some other place it isn’t supposed to be).  I’m not sure why but I find this hilarious.

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D is in the oh-so-serious stage where NOTHING he does can be made into a joke.  This of course means that I have to give him silly responses or ask silly questions during routine discussions.  This normally means that the next thing I hear is “Mom, I said…..”

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Around Here

Hey, what do you know.  We are still around. :)

Lots of photos in this post.  Just a warning for those of you who are perhaps not using the latest connection technology.

Once again, I’ve had numerous things I’ve wanted to write about however it just isn’t getting done.  I’m beginning to wonder who decided to encourage the kids in extracurricular activities and to be an involved parent.  I think that person may need to rethink this plan.  But I digress.

Both K and D are doing well.  D has a little cough but nothing major and it could be do to allergies since we have had very mild, rainy weather.  Lots of stuff that isn’t supposed to be blooming looks like it is trying to bloom.  Poor confused nature.

While we had what seemed like 3 weeks of unending rain I reached into the childhood memory banks and decided that what the boys needed was a living room tent.

      

Voila!  Not as large as I would have liked it, but we really don’t have anything to make a stable tent out of.  Oh well.  It was big enough for the boys to pile pillows, blankets, stuffed friends and themselves into so I guess it was big enough.

As I promised D, he started Karate this month.  I wish I had brought my camera to the first session as it seems that he doesn’t want to go back.  He has been to two sessions and his behavior was, how do I put this, less than stellar.  I asked Sensei if I needed to remove him and she said that he was fine and he was just acting his age and would get acclimated.  Given that information I was all set to continue to take him but I think he has decided he doesn’t want to do it anymore.  Normally it isn’t an option to stop something in the middle, I typically make them finish the entire session, however being that this was D’s first organized event he is getting a pass.  I still hope he will go back next week, since he has been excited to do this for 6 months, but I don’t hold out much hope.  Maybe I will see if he has an interest in soccer or T-ball.  I think he would like those.

Something exciting did happen to K last night at Cub Scouts.  The Pinewood Derby is Saturday so last night was check-in and awards night for the cars.  I was very proud of K because he had put a lot of work into his car.  We learned a lot from last year (and it shows) and then our Cub Master was generous enough to invite the Pack over to use some of his tools which allowed us to actually cut the car body out rather than shaping it by hand with sandpaper and the occasional use of an electric sander.  For those of you keeping score at home, I recommend the power tools.  The Cub Master also shared a few veteran secrets about getting a little more speed from your car by prepping the nails used to hold the wheels on.  Our Pack leaders are awesome!

Here is K using the Dremmel to prep the wheels.

Not only did K work hard on his car, but I can honestly say that he did 90% of everything that needed done.  He choose car body style, he drew the design on the block of wood, he prepped the axles, he sanded, he painted, he choose the theme and color scheme, etc.  The only things he didn’t do was use the jigsaw to cut out the car body (I did that), rout out the opening in the bottom of the car for the weights (Me again.  Glad the boys were asleep for that since I broke pretty much every shop safety rule), and finish the painting of the driver.  He did paint most of the driver but we were on our way somewhere and I didn’t want him to end up with paint all over himself so I finished it up. 

The big new?  K’s car won Best of Show!  I was stunned.  I’m still stunned.  Not because I didn’t think he car was nice, and as I just said I was proud of him because of all the hard work he put into it, but we have a lot of very creative Scouts and great crafts people in the Pack.  Some of the cars that won specialty awards, and therefore aren’t eligible to win Best of Show, were spectacular and all of the cars that the boys turned in were fantastic.  I am very glad I wasn’t in charge of the judging.  I really don’t know how he won (if I’m honest) but he was so happy.  He took the trophy directly to his room last night so that he could see it whenever he was in there.

Now some photos

  As you can see it was a Batman theme.

Now we get to see how it races on Saturday.  At the Pack meeting last night K was reminding everyone that the important thing was to have fun and it didn’t matter if you won.  Hopefully that attitude will carry-over to race day.