Four on Friday

1. We've been watching a weird lot of Food Network here lately...Next Food Network Star, Cutthroat Kitchen, Iron Chef, etc. This has Micah, in particular, all excited. He's been taking cooking classes at Options each year since he was five, so he kinda enjoys cooking. ;) He really loves Alton Brown (of Good Eats fame, among other things...whose current US tour does not include a stop in Colorado, much to Micah's disappointment) and thinks he might want to be a chef when he grows up. So, on our last one-on-one night (just me and Micah), his request was to hang out in bookstores looking at cookbooks by Food Network chefs. This is him at The Cupboard. We hit two more bookstores and had dinner after that. :) 

2. Noah registered for his fall semester classes yesterday! It's nice to have that checked off the list. All of his classes will be Front Range Community College classes and on that campus next fall, which I suppose will be easier than navigating both that and having some classes on the CEC campus like he's been doing this term. He ended up having to call the school to complete his registration, though. He more than met the prerequisites for his Chemistry 111 class, but the system didn't recognize that he had...because his first math class at FRCC is Calculus. Apparently, it was only set up to recognize Algebra or Trigonometry as meeting the prerequisite...which is a little bit annoying since we already went through that when he registered for Calculus in the first place (and had to get his transcript adjusted/accepted to merge the two school's records and such).

3. Asher successfully mowed the yard for the first time ever yesterday. He was pretty excited about it (though not about wasps, lol), since it's a way for our boys to make a little more money. (Most chores are simply required but a select few can earn money.) Until now, Noah was the only one who had that available. (Micah really needs to get big enough to handle the lawnmower, as he's routinely broke compared to his brothers, lol.) In any case, we had him do this yesterday on account of how this weekend probably won't work...

4. ...because we're, of course, under a Winter Storm Warning and they're predicting many inches of snow this weekend. Lovely. If the temperatures stay warm enough (I think it may have hit 80 yesterday), it may just be rain at our "lower" elevation (of about a mile high)...with the snow staying in the mountains. But, that wouldn't be great news for our rivers and streams. Snow, though, won't be good for some of our plants...like my fun little tulip hybrids (?) that are blooming right now: 

Alas, that's what we get for living here in Colorado, I suppose. :) Here's hoping at the very least that the more severe weather holds off until Saturday night, since we need to drive down to Denver tomorrow for the boys' final JOAD tournament of the season. Whew.

Atlatl

Not much to report here. Just keeping on, keeping on. ;) Schoolwork and archery and gymnastics and karate...nothing much new.

But. Yesterday, when I took Noah and Micah to the archery range to practice, there was a lovely gentleman trying to persuade RMA that atlatls are worth the time. He was letting anyone who wanted try it out. Micah, of course, thought this was awesome and jumped right in. :) I can't figure out how to load the video from my phone here but this is a screenshot:

He was pretty stoked. :)

Battleship

Just a quick snapshot of what we're up to this blustery afternoon...

Yup. I have boys playing Battleship...periodic table style. :) I got the idea here (thanks, Pinterest!). I put mine inside page protectors so they can just use dry erase markers for repeated play. So far, we've done traditional boat numbers and also a two space boat in roughly each element group (one in alkali and alkaline, one in metals (including the lanthanides and actinides), one in metalloids and nonmetals and one in halogens and noble gases--so five ships total). I've been having the boys call them out by atomic number and name...using coordinates if necessary to help direct the other player. I'm thinking that at the very least they're getting more exposure to the names and to the organization of the table. (We worked through the chapter on the periodic table already earlier this week, and that was mostly review, as we've discussed this all in years past.)

Plus, we're not outside in the snow/rain mix that's blowing every which way. And, they're having fun. :)

Easter

Obligatory Easter pictures... ;) 

We enjoyed a low-key celebration here...missing family and boys are getting old enough that they're not really that into it all anyhow. :) So. We started with an indoor egg hunt (on account of the snow still outside, lol, and, yes, I keep my eggs in my Halloween cauldron...doesn't everyone?). Nathan and I hid 84 plastic eggs filled with chocolate. We gave Micah a small head start but he still ended up with a few less than his brothers, lol. Then boys dove into their baskets, which I made this year out of boxes of candy from the dollar store...just added some packing tape and cardboard bottoms...voila! (Really happy with how that turned out.)

Our baskets were pretty straight-forward in the candy department. Then each boy also got a small something specific to his interests and a tee shirt. The shirts followed a theme...and later that day we went to watch the new Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice movie. Nathan and Micah represented Superman, Noah and Asher represented Batman, and I sported my Wonder Woman tee. :) 

Yes, we have a bit of a dispute going on here about which superhero is better, lol. Don't get them started. ;) 

We didn't do our traditional egg drop challenge (again, snow...the ground wasn't horrible but we didn't want to get up on the roof and also didn't want to get the hose out, lol), though we might try to run that out in a few weeks.

And that was pretty much it...just a day of spending time together and looking forward to the new season. Hope everyone else's celebration was beautiful! 

Five on Friday

In catching up mode again...

1. Last weekend (at the end of spring break), Asher and Micah took a class at our local Museum of Discovery. It was a three hour class about comic books, and they seemed to enjoy themselves. (Micah was quite enthusiastic about the whole thing, lol.) This was actually (sadly) the first time we'd been to this museum since its move, and we're looking forward to making the time to go back soon hopefully to explore the rest of the museum. Here are the boys with a sculpture out front...pretending to be bored:

2. The following day (Sunday), Noah and Micah had a JOAD tournament down in Longmont. This was a new location for us, but apparently things ran pretty smoothly. (I wasn't there; it was Nathan's turn to take them, lol.) The boys didn't shoot as well as they've been doing during practice, unfortunately...so we're going to work on that before next month's tournament (which is the last of the season).

3. Nathan reported for jury duty for the first time ever on Monday. He ended up being selected for the jury and finished that up yesterday afternoon. He says it was very educational and is glad he did it, though now he's scrambling to make up for the lost work time. (It was a short trial for four different counts.)

4. In the middle of all that, we had a lovely spring storm/blizzard on Wednesday:

We ended up with about 6"...a good bit less than areas south of us. (I heard some places in Denver got almost 2 feet of snow, and the airport actually closed for awhile for the first time in decades.) Because 12 of the 13 jurors somehow managed to get to the courthouse that day, the trial was able to proceed. (All the schools and many businesses, though, closed for the day. Unfortunately for Asher and Micah, homeschoolers don't get snow days, lol.)

For those not here in Colorado...this is normal. It was sunny and gorgeous yesterday and right now. Another storm is expected later today, though, but then back to sunshine for Sunday. ;) 

5. Yesterday, I led Micah's monthly book club. The kids (and I) read The Wells Bequest ahead of time. We discussed the book, specifically, and time travel, generally, before making our own model time machines out of random stuff I had taking up space in my house, lol. Here's Micah's (the closer one):

And now I must go tackle more schoolwork for the morning. :) Happy Friday to you all!