Nephews

My sister, Cas, flew Micah and I out to Washington state last week to stay with my sweet nephews while she went on a business trip with her husband. We were there almost six days and kept plenty busy. :) We played at home, visited the trampoline park, took boys to their ninja class, took boys to their preschool classes, did some shopping, and played at a park...

Micah was such a great help! Having two sets of eyes and hands definitely made a difference; my nephews are 2 and 4 years old and significantly busier than any of mine ever were, lol. Fortunately, the boys love their cousin (and vice versa). 

I'm totally kicking myself because we didn't get pictures with my mom (she drove up for an evening at the start) and didn't manage more with Blaze (the older of the two) since getting him to stand still wasn't easy, lol.

On Wednesday, Cassy got home and we enjoyed some time outside (since it was the nicest weather we'd had the whole time; fall is definitely here!). Kicking myself, too, for not getting pictures of Micah pulling the boys down the yard/hill in sleds. Oh well. You'll just have to imagine their delight. :) 

And on Thursday, after getting boys to their respective preschool classes, Micah and I flew home. :) Asher and Nathan met us at the airport and (after getting a little help from parking services since the keys got locked in the van, lol) we grabbed dinner, got Asher to parkour, and finally made it home. Whew.

Ten on Tuesday: Catch up edition

As promised, here's some of what's been going on since we moved Noah into his dorm room at CSU back in August...

1) Classes started at CSU for Noah on August 20. By all accounts, that seems to be going fine. Since he's been taking college classes already for the last three years, the academic side of college isn't too much of a transition for him. :) He probably needs a bit more to do, lol.

2) Asher tested for his third band for parkour on August 25. He handily earned his Nova band and continues to thoroughly enjoy going to parkour regularly.

3) Both Asher & Micah attended a special hand trapping class with MJ on September 14. They loved learning something new and seeing MJ again and are planning to incorporate some of the new techniques into some of their demo team performances.

4) Classes at CEC are going well for Asher, too. He's been in classes since August 9 and is adjusting to actually being at CEC every weekday (though only for 2-3 hours each day) and is doing great at learning study skills and time management. 

5) Both Asher & Micah are homeschooling with me, too. I've updated our curricula lists over on the left. Things seem to be going fine. :) 

6) Micah decided to add a Tribe Teen fitness class to his schedule and started that on September 18. It's a class at the same gym where I do boot camp...and happens to have a couple of his good friends in it. ;) (That's Micah on the bottom left. This was at the end of class, after stretching.)

7) Micah's First Lego League team is off and running. This year's theme is space so the team headed to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science on September 20 to visit the space exhibition and ask some specific questions. 

8) While at the museum, Micah and I popped in on one of their new, temporary exhibits (Mindbender Mansion) and definitely want to spend more time there. Hoping to get back there with the rest of the family before the exhibit leaves! (This is another of those instances, btw, where I realized that--though I *feel* like I've spent a lot of time at the museum--it's actually been a long while and Micah has few memories of going, lol.)

9) Micah's also been teaching himself animation on the new laptop he bought and is really enjoying it. He got himself a book and a digital drawing pad and is already creating short animations. (Gotta love self-directed learning!)

10) To that end, we also found this site called Outschool with a variety of online classes. So far, Asher's taken a one time algebra refresher and Micah's taken a one time class on learning to draw comic faces:

Micah's signed up for another one time class about realistic faces and is thinking about doing a longer class after that on drawing the human body. He figures the drawing skills will help his animation. 

Okay, that's some of what's been going on here. Sorry I haven't been posting more. Now that we're getting into more of a routine and finding our way, maybe I'll do better. :)

Elitches

Howdy! Yes. Still here. :) I'll do some catching up shortly...promise. Before that, though, here are some pictures from yesterday. It was Martial Arts Day at Elitches in Denver. Asher & Micah's demo team was invited to perform, so we spent the day. The boys were pretty excited, particularly as the last time Nathan and I went to Elitches was fifteen years ago, lol. 

We started the day picking up three of the other demo team boys and getting to the park at opening. (The conversations on the ride down were highly entertaining and random.) Once there, we met up with all six of the girls on demo team and the kids all took off together. They started right off riding the carousel then proceeded around the park together. Meanwhile, Nathan and I wandered and rode the MindEraser roller coaster:

(I snapped this as we were getting set then quickly zipped my phone back in my pocket, lol.)

After a bit, the boys all met up with us as planned so they could eat and change. Everyone met up together at the performance area, the team warmed up (in the almost 90 degree weather, lol), and then they finally did their thing:

After that (yay, team!), the kids all scurried over to the Shipwreck Falls area to stand on the bridge and get blasted by the ride:

Yup, they got pretty darn soaked, lol. But. At least they'd thought it through and did this before changing back into their (dry) street clothes. :) Then, the whole gang took off again to ride more rides until closing. Occasionally, Nathan and I spotted them and managed some photos:

(Asher & Marshall were on that one. It's the MindEraser.)

(Micah, Jacob & Jonathan were on the one after them.)

Later, we spotted them on the tea cups:

Wow, they got spinning super fast! ;)

Anyhow...they had a blast. Nathan and I enjoyed the people watching and hanging out together. And all of us parents were impressed by what a great, nice group of kids this is. And after closing, most of us met up again for dinner on the drive home:

And then we got into our (at this point) three separate cars and headed for Fort Collins. Again, our van was full of crazy conversation. (Seriously. You literally cannot imagine, lol.) 

After dropping off the other three boys, we made it home about 9:30. Whew. And that was yesterday.

Ram Welcome

Thursday we had work and homeschooling and classes at CEC as usual. I made a quick run with some stuff up to Noah and dropped that off with him between his scheduled events. In the evening, we all headed up to campus for the Ram Welcome dinner and carnival. First, all the students were in Moby Arena for a convocation gathering. Then, they joined the rest of us on the fields for a box dinner. We managed to snag a table for us and Noah's roommate and his parents, so we enjoyed chatting over dinner then took some pictures...

Here's Noah and Ethan. 

All the students had on this shirt (handed out during check in). The back had the lyrics to the fight song...lyrics which were supposed to be used during convocation but which were apparently ignored to great extent, lol. 

Then we took some more group shots...

And then we parted ways to enjoy the carnival. Ethan and his parents headed over to the booths with games. We wandered the bouncy things and watched people on the climbing wall and zip line before following people with popcicles to get some for ourselves, lol. Then we ended up in the long line for this ride:

My guys all agreed that it was maybe not worth the wait...as the experience would have been much better if the ride duration hadn't been as long. (And the line would have moved quicker, too.)

After that, we walked Noah back to his dorm so he could head up and get some rest before his early scheduled breakfast the next day. He'll have lots of fun scheduled events over the weekend (apparently he and some new friends enjoyed a great magician show last night) and will start classes on Monday. So, now he's off... :) 

Move-In Day

Wednesday was move-in day. 

Well, technically, it was early move-in day at CSU...with only a quarter or so of the 8100 on-campus students moving in a day ahead of the rest. Due to being in the honors program and in the engineering specific dorm that he's in, Noah got to move in early. 

We'd been collecting things in a pile in our front room over the summer and loaded most of it into the van the night before (after enjoying a nice dinner out with Noah's new roommate and his parents). Honestly, I was surprised at how much extra room we still had. :) In any case, we went to sleep Tuesday night feeling pretty ready...aside from the fact that Nathan still wasn't back from his last minute business trip. (His flight was delayed, and he ended up getting home around 1 am.) 

Wednesday morning, I got up and went to boot camp then came home and woke everyone. We all had breakfast and headed out the door...a little later than planned but just fine on time. We arrived to a less-crowded-than-anticipated drop off lane and got Noah checked in and unloaded up to his fourth floor room. Though assured that there would be plenty of CSU helpers to carry everything for us, we ended up carrying all of Noah's stuff ourselves (and by "ourselves" I mean Nathan, Asher and Micah primarily, lol, as Noah and I stayed in the room and started unpacking as things came up...it's good to bring your own crew). Nathan says he noticed that girls unloading seemed to have many more helpers, lol. But, it was all fine, since we didn't have too much anyhow. :) 

After getting everything upstairs and moving the cars out of the unloading zone, we unpacked everything and Nathan, Asher and Micah assembled things in the hallway. We had Noah's part of the room mostly done in about two hours and had even tested the microwave by making some popcorn, lol.

This was our pile at home and in the vehicles and then checking in and the early stages of unpacking. (Yes, we bought and brought our own dolly to help with the mini fridge and it was handy. We're sure it will get more use over the years.) Here's what it looked like after all that:

As you can see, it's one of the newer buildings and is pretty sweet as dorms go. The two roommates have their own sink and bathroom. Both boys opted to have their beds lofted and put stuff underneath.

And here are some other pictures we managed during the day:

(Nathan's a little more sad than I am...)

(...though maybe not as sad as Micah.)

After getting Noah mostly situated, we all enjoyed lunch at the nearby dining hall before Nathan left to take Asher to his CEC classes. Micah and I stayed to walk over to the student center with Noah to pick up his pre-ordered textbooks and supplies, then said our goodbyes as well so that Noah could get to scheduled events and Micah and Asher could get to karate. 

And that was Wednesday...