The last bit of February...

So. Aside from those Leap Day pictures from yesterday (is it sad of me to admit that I'm still sore from leaping? lol...course we also did a short bike ride and I'd run 8.5 miles the day before that...), I'm a bit behind. Here's what's been going on since mid February:

- Close call. We've known for years that Asher and Micah will need braces. We thought it was going to be this year and, upon the advice of our pedodontic dentist, scheduled a couple orthodontist consultations. We had the first one in mid-February and were thrilled to learn that that orthodontist thinks we can wait another couple years and then do one slightly longer session of braces for Asher instead of starting now and doing two sessions. Given the orthodontist's explanation, the poking around we've done and the talking with other parents and such, we're pretty good with that diagnosis and Asher actually really likes the orthodontist and her office, so we'll likely stick with that. (We do still have another consultation this month with a different orthodontist and will get the second opinion, but it would take a lot of convincing to sway us at this point.) Whew. :) We know it's still coming, but having a couple more years to save up for it is definitely welcome. ;)

- Presidents Day. Like last year, the boys still had Options (can't afford to take all the "Monday holidays" off when you only go to school on Mondays, lol). And, like last year, I asked them again what they'd do if they were president. Here are their answers:

• Micah: "I'd make it so you couldn't have walkie talkies during fitness testing in PE." (Apparently, a "walkie talkie" is a set of girls that chats while completing the mile run, lol. This somehow offends Micah or gets in his way...)
• Asher: "I'd quit." ;)
• Noah: "I'd order Apple to put a store in Fort Collins." (Yes, still a bit obsessed, lol.)

- Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The day after Presidents Day, my mom came for a visit! On Wednesday, then, we headed down to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science for hours of perusing and fun. The boys particularly enjoyed the Expedition Health exhibits...Asher even tackled a couple of the experiments offered:

Here he is with his Nana...looking at the cells from inside his cheek. After that, we even convinced Micah to join us all in the new lizards and snakes exhibition (after reassuring him multiple times that all of the lizards and snakes were closed behind glass, lol). 

- Archery with Nana. The next day, the boys and I took Nana to the archery range...to show off their shooting gear and skills and to help Nana try out archery. Nana even got a bullseye!

 
And we took this picture of me and my mom... ;)

- Swim meet. Later that night, Noah had a swim meet. He did really well and is happy. ;) He took first in back stroke and breast stroke. He also did his first IM (individual medley) and finished really well (because the meets are internal, they don't always have enough kids in each age bracket and event to fill all the lanes, so technically, I don't think either of the other kids in Noah's IM heat were in the same age bracket). 

- Karate tournament. The next day (Friday, if you're keeping track, lol), Asher and Micah competed in their second karate tournament. (Read about last year here.) It's also an internal event (to help the kids learn how bigger karate tournaments operate) and is broken into two parts. Friday night was the forms competition. They divide the kids up by age/rank-ish into groups of four or less for the most part (so that everyone gets a medal and prize). Here's Micah:

And here's Asher:

They both took first and were darn happy. ;) Then we hugged Nana as she headed down to Longmont to spend the weekend with my brother and his family before heading back to Washington:

The sparring portion of the tournament was the next morning and it was Asher's first time participating in that part (thanks to his broken arm last year...he was still recuperating). (Micah doesn't do the sparring stuff yet.) We weren't so sure how it would go, as he's a youngish and smallish green belt and the height difference makes scoring points more difficult. But. It turned out well, and he took first:

(To be fair, it was just Asher and his opponent in his bracket...only one other green belt signed up for the tournament and he was considerably taller so was in a higher bracket.)

- Bows for us! It was probably inevitable after making the choice to dive into this archery thing for the boys...Nathan and I joined in! Nathan's almost got his new (used) bow all sorted out and equipped now (having ordered the bow less than two weeks ago). We spent the weekend sorting that out and ordering a bow for me. Should be here soon! :)

- 100 mile mark. This morning's run, btw, put me over the 100 mile mark for 2012. Yay!

And that brings us to the present... ;) Whew.

(Off now to take care of Asher (who woke up sick today) and try to figure out our science fair projects and organize the fair, itself, and take Noah to swim team and Micah to karate and stuff like that...)

Leap Day.

I know I'm behind. I have my reasons. :) I'll get to that soon, really. In the meantime, here are some leap day pictures we took earlier today...

Yup. Just had to "leap" for leap day. :) It's something I started four years ago. I find it hilarious, btw, that Noah put up the biggest fuss about not wanting to take pictures but then ended up insisting that I take photo after photo of him as he tried out different poses, lol. Heck, I even joined in:

(Incidentally, leaping from the deck is *not* as easy as it looks. The landings, in particular, were abrupt, lol.) Anyhow, I'm hoping to make more leap day layouts like before and need still to ask the boys for their predictions for next leap day. 

Oh, and I still contend that getting three boys to jump in unison is a darn difficult task:

(But, look at how adorable they were four years ago! Micah had some difficulties actually "leaping" last time, lol.) For the sake of adding something different this time, we even took some "froggie" pictures:

 
Here are my little froggies getting ready to leap. (Noah adamantly refused to join in, of course.)

So, what did you do with your "extra" twenty-four hours? ;)  

Update.

Finished rearranging the basement guest room closet. :) 

The first picture is about 25 boxes of stuff upstairs in the storage room (a normal bedroom closet with sliding doors). The next picture is the basement guest room closet "before" (emptied of the gazillion games but still with the old inefficient shelving). And, the last picture is the basement guest room closet now, having purged and consolidated the boxes from the upstairs closet and adding a few tubs of holiday decorations that were in a different closet. 

And, for those who are wondering, from my earlier post, I ended up keeping most of the papers. :) They fit in the box, so it's okay, right? ;) (and we just won't talk about those other couple crates of papers we discovered upstairs earlier today...lol!)

Woohoo! Now on to the next step...redoing the other basement closet so that we have someplace to put the stuff we sort out of the storage room (which is currently packed full again with stuff). Um, here's what that closet looks like right now:

(It's actually a decent sized space, roughly 9' x 5' with some more space to the left under the stairs...I think it was originally roughed in to be an additional bathroom.)

Yeah. It'll be awhile... ;)

February 14

1. Happy Valentine's Day (a little bit late but sincere nonetheless). :) We don't really celebrate it here lately...as my boys have decided that pink and hearts and all are for girls and think that exchanging Valentines is ridiculous. Sigh. It's okay. I'm not huge on pink and hearts and all, myself, anyhow. I have, though, done my duty and reminded the boys that they may some day need to actually remember and celebrate Valentine's Day for the sake of a girl who might like that. ;)

2. My morning today started off with a decent run. (Yay, me!) I'm done with winter, though. My run on Sunday was freakin' freezing...coldest I can remember being in ages. (It was about 8 degrees and moist enough that my eyelashes were freezing.)

3. So. I ordered a new headband to keep my ears warm (a different color of the one I already have and love). I figure that doing so will set spring in motion so that the headband is rendered unnecessary, right? (Using this same reasoning, I'm refusing to wash the van because then it will snow again, lol.) 

4. The rest of my morning wasn't great. Noah and I had words (argh...the beginnings of preteen angst...awesome) over my assignment to him for the morning. This ended in assigning him even more work, giving him a lovely lecture and eventually (finally) moving on. Meanwhile, I worked on math with Asher. By itself, this was fine and Asher was good. I just find teaching math to Asher more difficult than many things. It's got to do with very different learning styles and is something I'm aware of and able to deal with...just more frustrating some days than others. Sigh.

5. On a related note, does anyone have any recommendations for math curricula beyond 6th grade? The program we've been using for ages only goes through sixth, and Noah will finish that this spring. (Well, okay, the brand, itself, goes beyond 6th, but is a different program...I'll definitely be looking into that, but am still delighted to hear any suggestions.)

6. Yesterday, btw, the boys celebrated Valentines Day at Options. The Student Council made bags for everyone. The boys found this all silly. It didn't stop them, though, from enjoying the candy. ;) They refused to write out any individual Valentines or sign their names to anything, but I brought them a big bag of suckers to distribute among all the bags. Apparently, they put a few handfuls (definitely more than a dozen) in their PE teacher's bag...because they love her and because (in Noah's own words) "she's eating for two." ;) (She's due in about a month, lol.)

7. Fortunately, the afternoon went better than the morning (homeschool-wise). We did Latin, spelling, US geography and US history. (Loving this book. We've already read two others by the same author. Highly recommended!) All good...then we headed out to swim team and karate. :)

8. While Asher was at karate, I returned a purse that I bought earlier this week. I loved it. I *want* to be a smaller, cuter purse type of person. I do. Apparently, though, I am just not that person. I'm a large purse toting sort. I need to have all my "stuff" with me. Fine.

9. Oh. In my reorganization and all, I need to find a new way to store all my gift wrap materials. Any ideas?

10. And, dear husband of mine who commented on my last post, might I remind you that at least a few of those boxes still in the storage room are your own boxes of memorabilia and papers...a couple of which you lugged home from WA last summer to add to the pile? ;)

I need a nudge.

So. One of our goals for 2012 is to clean out our storage room. Completely, if possible. Here's what it currently looks like, though:

Yes. Really. It's gonna take a bit. ;) (Our apologies to my lovely father in law who once upon a time graciously helped me clean out and organize that room so nicely. It was mostly good until the last few months. Honest!)

We're tackling it in stages. The stages are complicated and involve lots of shuffling of stuff from the upstairs storage room, down the 27 steps to the basement, and back up again. ;) Right now, we're in the middle of redoing one of the basement closets to accommodate as much of the stuff from the storage closet as possible (that storage closet pictured on the left...with at least 25 of those boxes packed in there).

First, we had to empty that basement closet of the gazillion games that were inside (sorry, neglected to take a picture)...which left us with this:

Yes, it's nice that there are shelves inside and all. But. They're really quite inefficient. They're only half as deep as the closet and are an odd size, such that I couldn't fit any boxes in there well. Bleh.

So. We took that dealio out and Nathan installed some nice basic shelves:

Since then, I've been sorting and purging and reorganizing all the stuff in those boxes into new, longer boxes. I'm *almost* done and have *almost* managed to consolidate those 25 boxes into about 10. (I'll take a picture soon!)

But. Don't laugh. I'm a packrat. For all that I take pride in how much I've purged in the last couple years, I somehow still have pretty much every paper I've ever written. Literally. Okay, not from grade school. But I have binders and binders full of papers from middle school, high school, undergrad and graduate school.

PLEASE. Someone. Tell me that I can toss these. I need a nudge. ;)