Karate Kid

This morning we took Asher down past Denver for a karate tournament. Both he and Micah have participated twice in tournaments at our local karate school, with kids they already know and go to class with. But this was our first experience with a regional tournament...with about a dozen rings running simultaneously and lots of other kids from other schools. Asher had just really wanted to try his hand at a larger tournament. :)

And, though he was plenty nervous, he did a fabulous job:

He competed in Traditional Forms for 10 year olds...intermediate level. There were seven other kids in his division, most of whom have been doing this all season. (This was actually the final tournament of the season. Fortunately, our local karate school prepared him well in what to expect and do, so he just had to adjust to the noise and number of people, lol.)

He drew to go fourth in the order and did well...ending up in a tie. The two who were tied performed their forms one more time, with Asher winning the tie-breaker unanimously and, therefore, taking third. He was pretty happy:

Jackson Pollack

Three cheers for me! I actually stuck with my plan for art, and we did our first project yesterday...Jackson Pollack inspired. 

Here are the boys in the backyard: (click to make larger)

Yup, tackled this in the backyard, having first made the boys spread out and reminding them that...though we're doing Jackson Pollack inspired pieces...we don't have an entire barn to devote just to art like Pollack had...so pretty please keep the paint limited to the canvas and the grass as much as possible. ;) As you can see, Micah really got into the "whole body" action we'd read about when talking about Pollack. (He was very enthusiastic, lol.) And, though he'll deny it, Noah even had some fun with the whole process, lol.

All in all, each boy painted three different canvases and we had a lot of fun. It always makes me smile how the boys' personalities just shine through no matter what the medium. For instance...here are their work spaces (and, yes, I continue to use baking sheets for school stuff about as much as baking, lol):

I'll let you guess whose is whose. ;)

And, here are their canvases:

These are the three that the boys decided they personally liked best...the ones they want to hang in their respective rooms. (That's Micah's, Asher's and Noah's if you couldn't tell.) 

Yup, fun times! In case you're inspired now, here are some things we learned from this experience:

• Mixing paint is a perfect opportunity to discuss types of galaxies. (Our science lesson this week dealt with classifying galaxies. Noah and Micah started talking about this all on their own...with Noah mixing and quizzing Micah.)
• Watering down the paint a good bit helps with the whole splatter thing. (We just used normal tempera paint, though Jackson Pollack apparently preferred house paint. And, though we do have a good variety of house paint on hand, lol, I figured the tempera paint would clean up a lot easier and be better for the grass.)
• Incidentally, I think I've had these same bottles of tempera paint for a decade or so. Wow. Probably time for some new paint pretty soon. ;)
• It's a good thing that I stopped boys from putting any shoes on. (These are Asher's feet. Micah's were actually (unsurprisingly) worse. I have no idea how he ended up with paint on the bottoms of his feet, too. I'm thinking he either spilled some paint in the grass and stepped in it, used his feet in the painting process itself or stepped in his paint tray...or, quite possibly, all three, lol. 
• Bring wipes outside with you to wash up boys before letting them back in the house. (Also unsurprisingly, Noah did not require washing up after we were done. He had, maybe, a few splatters of watered down light grey paint on his foot. Not quite sure how he managed that. The other two went straight into baths, lol.)
• Race tees that don't fit (because apparently many races don't have kid sized shirts) make fabulous paint shirts. (This was actually *after* we'd cleaned Micah up a bit.)
• If we'd had more time and space, it would be fun to experiment with using things beyond a bunch of different types of paint brushes for splattering paint. I'm thinking...rolling hot wheels cars, blowing through straws, shooting spit wad paint balls, shooting marbles, dropping paint from above, and all sorts of other stuff. Hmmm. May need to do a repeat... ;) (with larger canvases?)

And that was our Jackson Pollack art project afternoon. ;) Yay!

Ha.

Just some quick thoughts on this rainy day...

1. Deanna's brother did manage to capture a picture of us going after Noah at the end of the Mud Brigade:

Yeah, I don't see any of our boys wanting to participate in a mud run soon. ;)

2. On Monday, we melted chocolate in the microwave to learn about and calculate the speed of light. I'll be honest, I didn't really "get" it. But, Nathan was able to explain the hertz and waves and such to the boys and we all got to each chocolate, so everyone wins. ;)

3. Yesterday was my baby sister's birthday! Wishing her a happy birthday always makes me feel old, lol. 

4. I think I need a program that uses Star Wars to make the parts of speech "cool." If you find one, let me know, okay?

5. Dear Colorado weather, while I appreciate the rain and cooler temperatures today (hello high in the 50s today whereas Monday was above 90, but whatever), would you please remind people who drive here that rain will not melt them or anything and is not a good reason to drive 15 miles under the speed limit just to annoy me?

6. Incidentally, though, I do totally thank you for holding off on this small cold spell until today. Running the Mud Brigade in this weather would have been miserable! (And, hey, I get to wear a sweater and jeans and my new jacket!)

That was all. Now I must be off to take advantage of my time while the boys are at LEAP... ;)

Eleven years later.

I can still remember walking a sleepy less-than-one-year-old Noah in the living room eleven years ago today...pacing and watching the television...aghast and astonished. I hesitated to wake Nathan...as somehow that would make it all more real...being able to talk about it with another person. So, instead, I hugged my baby boy closer and felt that time had slowed.

To all those affected by 9/11, my thoughts are with you today.

The Muddiest Person was on our team!

Yesterday, was the second annual Mud Brigade of Northern Colorado. Back at the start of the summer-ish, my pal Deanna and I decided that this would be awesome and convinced our husbands to join us and sign up for a team wave. We had visions of this motivating us to actually cross-train...to go beyond just running a few times a week. Yeah, that didn't really happen. ;)

Regardless. Even knowing we were in for it, we showed up smiling, excited and just a wee bit scared, lol...here's us BEFORE:

See how happy and clean we are? ;) Well, 5K and 14 obstacles later...here's our AFTER picture:

Yup. It was AWESOME! 

While we obviously weren't going for the best costume or fastest team awards, Pete did manage to win the Muddiest Person award for the afternoon waves! (You can't see these results on the official website, but they're listed on their Facebook page.) Being as the morning waves didn't have a Muddiest Person awarded (apparently they couldn't find anyone?), I think it's fair to say that Pete was the muddiest person of the day. :) 

(For what it's worth, our after picture doesn't do justice to how muddy we really were. There was one last mud pit just before the finish line that washed much of the caked on mud off...especially considering that we all pretty much swam in it rather than just wade through. I personally think that Pete earned his title for attitude...you should have seen some of his enthusiastic dives and belly flops and back slides into the mud pits along the course, complete with primal yells, lol!)

So. Now that we're home and clean and recuperating, here are some random things that I learned along the way:

• I think we did okay in choosing what to wear. Nathan and I wore five finger shoes that did a great job of staying on and helping with grip, and the bandanas came in handy for wiping stuff out of your eyes, lol. I also picked up a couple cheap pairs of fingerless gloves for Deanna and me that helped a bit with protecting our hands, though they were disgusting by the end. ;)
• For next year, though, Deanna and I are already talking about team costumes. ;) We're thinking we'll stalk the after-Halloween sales...
• The afternoon team wave was definitely the way to go! The weather was perfect...not too hot and not as chilly as the morning had been. Plus, the mud had had a chance to get all nice and warm and gushy, lol. 
• When they tell you that you really won't want to take your muddy stuff home with you, you should listen. ;) We did throw all our stuff in a trash bag after hosing off (in the horse stalls, lol!) but I made the mistake of trying to wash it before donating it to Goodwill or something. I ended up just tossing the shirts (which were stained from the grease) but it made the rest of the load smell, despite running it through more than once. (Fortunately, I hadn't put much else in that load...just our five finger shoes (which came through the whole thing pretty well), the bandanas (that the boys just use for tying each other up, so I suppose the smell shouldn't bother them), Nathan's swimsuit and a couple pairs of shorts that were already smelly. ;) Anyhow. Point is that next year I'll just toss them first, not try to wash them. 
• Grease, by the way, is disgusting. :) The two guys whose job it was to grease those poles in the first obstacle (where you had to shimmy along the poles over a mud pit) were having way too much fun. (They were continuously applying globs more grease while we were on the poles.)
• Do make sure to wash out any cuts really well after the race. I've got a couple on my leg that are starting to look infected and Nathan's monitoring a few on his legs, too. Fun times. (Nathan's gotten really good at bandaging lately, though...as Noah burnt his arm pretty good back on the 28th and Micah got a decent rug burn on the 5th. Not to jinx anything but Asher's the only one of us right now who doesn't have some sort of injury.)
• Free bounce houses are great for keeping kids occupied while their parents are running. (Thanks, too, to Deanna's brother for keeping an eye on all six of the kids!)
• It's fun to immediately hug your 11 year old who's already embarrassed by the whole thing and oh-so-averse to ever getting even a little bit dirty. (Wish we'd had the camera ready for that, as both Nathan and I swarmed Noah after the finish line, lol.) (He asked us later why we only went after him and we said that it was obviously because he was the one it would bother the most, lol.)

And that's the story of our first mud run. Can't wait to do it all again next year!