Archery...

So...our weekly homeschool archery classes are now over (finished last week) until August-ish...and we had our last JOAD tournament of the season (Oct-Apr) last weekend. (More on that in a moment...) This means that instead of archery twice a week for all three boys, we now have NO ARCHERY. Woohoo! Except. We'll probably end up at the archery range at least weekly as a family now. That was part of our plan when we decided to invest in all this. But. Those visits will be as they fit into our schedule and aren't set. It feels lovely. ;) 

Now. That last tournament. Let's just say that Noah and Asher weren't having their best days...primarily in their attitudes, which reflected in their shooting (though Noah refuses to see the connection...which is obviously a big part of the problem, lol). They managed to pull it together by the end (barely) and we only had a few bouts of crying. :) Micah, on the other hand, managed to set a new personal best overall score of 468 over the two rounds. And, he took third:

And this time, folks, there were more than three boys in his division! Yup, he managed to beat out one other little boy and couldn't be prouder. He's shot against all three of the other boys (and come in behind all three of the other boys in varying combinations), so this last tournament was sweet for him. He was the best darn six year old archer there that day. And I can say that without bias because he was the only six year old archer there that day. :) (Yeah, he's tiny out there but it doesn't phase him in the least.) Yay!

Oh. And I don't think I ever posted a picture of *my* new bow (taken a few weeks ago):

You can see Nathan behind me with his bow, too. :) Aren't we cute? ;)

Promotion.

Last Friday, Asher earned his purple belt!

He was very excited and continues to excel in his classes (honestly, it's not unusual for us to have total strangers come up to us and tell us what a good job he does). ;)

Baby brother

Catching up...my baby brother and his new wife came to visit last week. It was short but sweet. :) Here are some pictures to sum it up:

From top to bottom, left to right...

• We drove up to Estes Park and ate some yummy lunch (after having had a yummy breakfast before the boys' archery class)...
• then we found a little hike just inside Rocky Mountain National Park (cut it short, partially because of the snow on the ground (which we of course ended up throwing at each other) and partially because it was just darn chilly)...
• and drove further into the park to admire the views...
• and decided that, even though we were freezing, ice cream was in order in downtown Estes Park (yes, before we ate a yummy dinner, lol...lots of good eating that day)...
• We made it home and played some Pictionary and Twister (um, hilarious!)...
• and had to have Uncle Joe make sugar cookies the next morning...
• along with playing some frisbee in the yard...
• before taking some pictures with both my brothers when Zach drove up from Longmont to take Joe & Bridget with him for the rest of their visit...
• and nabbing a picture of Joe & Bridget with the boys...

We also headed down to Longmont that night for some visiting altogether, which was fun. And that was our visit with Joe & Bridget. Yay! ;)

Easter

Hope you all had a lovely Easter! Ours was low key but pretty darn good. It was actually a weekend of egg-cellent fun: (click to make larger)

After a conversation with a fellow mom at archery on Thursday, I decided to make our egg hunts this year a bit more interesting (particularly as the boys seem to be outgrowing them anyhow, even though I found them earlier this week hiding rocks in the back yard to "practice" LOL). So. We normally just hide empty plastic eggs. The boys like hiding and finding them...all good. This year, though, I put various supplies in plastic eggs...ten different types of supplies. I then numbered those eggs 1 through 10 and made up four sets (we had a friend over Saturday and opted to do this all then instead of Sunday). The boys had to find only one set of eggs (so couldn't, for example, have two number 5 eggs).

That took a little longer than anticipated and we never did find one of the number 9 eggs. ;)

Then we took everything inside and had the boys open the eggs. Their expressions were pretty good as they discovered miscellaneous "stuff"...here's a list:

a shuttlecock
a small carabiner
rubber bands
paper clips
string
pipe cleaners
knee high pantyhose
cotton balls
a trash bag
balloons

I then let them know that they each had to use what they had to create an egg drop contraption (I also allowed the use of scissors and tape). They set to work and had great fun! Once everyone was mostly ready, we headed outside where Nathan had set up the ladder over the garage...about a 16 foot drop. We did test runs with hard boiled eggs then allowed any tweaking. Then, we dropped 'em with raw eggs!

Micah and Asher's eggs came out unscathed. Noah and his friend's...not so much. ;) (Noah would want me to insert here that he initially came up with an entirely different contraption based on the idea of lowering the egg to a foot off the ground and then dropping it (as demonstrated by Jamie on Mythbusters)...only to discover that we were dropping the eggs from considerably higher than his string reached. So, he hastily built an alternate and knew it wouldn't hold. He'd also point out that Asher and Micah received a wee bit of parental assistance, lol.)

Still. We all had a blast! :)

After using our contraptions, we decided to have even more fun and managed to get an egg inside a balloon and then filled the balloon with water and dropped it...just to see. ;) Yup, it splatters as one would expect. ;) 

That upper left photo was actually still on Saturday...managed to get in some time at the archery range and finish off the experiment portion of Asher's Options science fair project. (Yay! and whew for having that out of the way, lol!)

On Easter, we continued our egg theme with egg & spoon races...which ended after a frustrated Micah threw his egg, cracking it open...and then my brother collected the hard boiled yolk and bounced it off of Noah's head, which led to much laughter. 

Meanwhile, Micah went back inside for his pantyhose. (He is oddly taken with them and finds them very comfortable. On Saturday he tried getting them over his head but mostly has been now wearing them on his hands/arms. I don't know why.)

And then the boys and my niece all played frisbee in the front yard for a good while, enjoying the gorgeous day.

And that was our Easter. ;) (I'm really happy with how my new take on egg hunts went and hope to continue the tradition next year!)

Laundry room.

Just so you know, amid the bike crash and everything else last weekend, Nathan put up shelves in our laundry room so that we could rearrange things and make room for our growing collection of archery gear. Before the shelves, we had bow cases scattered around the house and were thinking of storing them in the basement. Then we decided to just stack them in the laundry room so boys wouldn't have to lug them up the stairs and through the house (hitting walls as they went).

(The laundry room, btw, is nearest the door to the garage but was occupied with the vacuum and steam cleaner. We figured that we lug the bow cases out of the house twice a week and only get the vacuum cleaner out once a month or so, LOL, so moved the vacuum stuff to the basement instead of the bow cases).

Anyhow, stuff "fit" in the laundry room but was inconvenient...had to take everything out if you wanted anything out. And. Nathan's case is significantly bigger and heavier than the rest of ours and was in my way any time I did laundry. So, here's what we did:

Sorry. I couldn't manage to get the whole shot vertically in a single picture...so the left shows the floor up and the right shows the ceiling down. Nathan's case is way up there on top. The boys each have a spot on the bottom. My stuff (the lightest and smallest) is on the actual shelf there in the middle.

Whew...so much better. ;) Who knew archery gear would take up so much room? :)