Over the weekend...

Just checking in to share a few pictures...

On Saturday, Nathan and I volunteered with Habitat for Humanity. (It was Nathan's first time and my third.) Despite the snow still on the ground from the day before and the freezing temperatures, we had a pretty good time. We spent the day working together, building a couple of interior walls. The first one was already planned out; we just had to cut the pieces to length and assemble. The second one was a bit more work, as we had to figure out the "plan" and then cut everything and assemble. (We even used geometry, lol!)

See the wall behind us...between us and the stairs? That's the second one we built. Part of it was really straight-forward and easy, but there was also adding a doorway (it'll be a closet under the stairs), and working around that steel beam, and that extra little part at the far right that followed the stairs.

Not too shabby for amateurs who've never done that before. :) For what it's worth, the snow did start to melt by afternoon...which just meant that we were constantly being dripped on from the snow in the upstairs. (Did I mention that not all of the roof is on yet? lol) Still. A good day!

Sunday, then, aside from weekend chores, Noah had his JOAD end of season party...possibly his last. We all ate, and the coach handed out awards and such. Then, as we did last year, the kids and the parents had a shoot off...with everyone using rental recurve bows. 

Because of the number of kids/families, we had to break it into two groups. In the first group, the parents beat the kids. (Woohoo!) In the second group, the kids just narrowly beat out the parents (by five points). Noah and I were in the second group. But the two of us shot pretty evenly and definitely held our own compared to everyone else. :) 

And before we left, I made Noah let me take his picture with his coach:

Look how far he's come since he first started on the JOAD team!

This one was taken back in January of 2012 when Noah was first learning how to shoot his compound bow. Awww!

Things that have happened

Checking in to just document what's been going on here since last I posted...

- Nathan and I enjoyed a lovely date night after Nathan got home from a couple days in San Francisco meeting with the new board for his company.

- While Asher & Micah performed with their demo team at a monthly karate promotion, Nathan, Noah and I attended a reception for those students eligible for the CSU Scott Scholarship. It was just a short dealio to answer questions and help students understand what the scholarship committee will be looking for. 

- The next day, Asher & Micah performed with their demo team at the black belt promotion of three of their classmates. Both boys had been training partners for the candidates, helping them over the past four months or so with sparring and grabs and such. 

Here's Asher with his good friend, Marshall, who earned his black belt Saturday:

Love that these two have each other! They've been on demo team together since they started that back in the spring of 2012...Marshall was Asher's training partner when Asher was testing for black belt...they're pretty much the same age and size and have been for years...and they're both just nice, weird boys. ;)

- The day after that, Asher & Micah enjoyed a birthday party for one of their fellow demo team members...complete with pizza and a scavenger hunt through Scheel's and fudge and just all around good times.

- While we were there, Nathan and Noah headed to Denver for Noah's JOAD tournament. Noah set a new season personal best during the first round!

- Meanwhile, the younger two and I headed home to watch the SuperBowl and enjoyed the game. (Grumpy, though, that the JOAD tournament chose to schedule a group to shoot *during* the SuperBowl. In the past, when the tournament has fallen on the same weekend as a SuperBowl, the organizing team has generally worked it so that all the shooting was done before the SuperBowl, given that they shoot over the course of two days at multiple times. Bleh.)

- Monday, Micah had Options and Asher had parkour as usual. :)

- Tuesday, Micah's First Lego League team wrapped up their season with a party at Loveland Laser Tag. The kids had a great time and we moms enjoyed the time catching up and chatting.

- Noah received a fun piece of mail welcoming him to the Honors Program at CSU. We'd already known he was accepted (via email), but the actual mail was great...especially because it came with confetti, lol. (Noah's not a fan of confetti.) ;) 

- I've been working on gathering all our tax information for our meeting with our accountant. I'm also starting to gather ideas and plan for Noah's graduation party...which is infinitely more fun than the tax thing, lol.

- Boys and I started back to homeschooling (last week was our "off" week) and are happily pursuing some new areas. We've got more time now that both First Lego League and helping with black belt training are done. :)

And now that I've caught up on all that, don't expect to hear much from me for a bit. The Olympics start today/tomorrow!!

State JOAD

Remember how last Saturday we spent the day at the Science Olympiad State Tournament? Well, this Saturday, I spent the day at the Colorado JOAD State Tournament (technically, it's the Indoor Rotational Finals, but we all call it the state tournament, as it's the culmination of the JOAD season and was officially called the state tournament up until this year apparently).

Though the first line of shooters showed up at 7am, I arrived at 10 to be on hand for the day to help with scoring and verifying eligibility and winners for a couple different programs that I volunteer to keep stats for throughout the season...which meant (similar to last week) periods of sitting and chatting interspersed with periods of extreme busyness. ;) 

(Meanwhile, Nathan took Asher and Micah to demo team practice then Micah's black belt candidate weapons form check. After they got back home, he met with the sprinkler repair folks to dig up a valve in the backyard to fix one of our sprinkler system zones and also got the lawnmower tuned up for the season.)

Anyhow...there were three lines of shooters throughout the day. Noah's age group was assigned to the last line of the day, scheduled to start shooting at 4pm. Rather than make him sit with me all day there, Nathan graciously drove Noah down around 3:30 (before returning home, himself). Due to a build up of running a bit behind, Noah's line didn't start shooting until 5:20...and we finally left there at 9:30...getting home (after stopping briefly for food) around 11pm.

Here's a bit less than half of the shooters during Noah's time:

Noah's third-ish from the far end...in the bright blue jersey. You can probably tell that the groups assigned to this line were the older kids...which was truly a pleasure to watch. These kids have been doing this for years and just plain enjoy what they're doing and the people they're doing it with (for the most part). Also, after having watched the younger kids (who admittedly are cuter and more enthusiastic), it was just so nice to watch people who knew how to do their math, lol. (Don't get me started on the state of math in the United States these days...)

And. As I've mentioned before, Noah switched from shooting compound bow (which he's been competing in since we started JOAD back in January of 2012) to barebow for this tournament. The overall scores were lower but the change of pace was more than welcome.

And...he took home FIRST PLACE from the state tournament!

And even let me take his picture. :)

And, in the process, he also managed to set TWO NEW STATE RECORDS in the Junior Barebow Male division (both for a single round score and for the combined score--they shoot two rounds at each tournament).

Whew. 

Thus concluded our 2016-2017 JOAD season. :) We'll have a team wrap up/get together soon and then will be done until fall. Woohoo! 

Four on Friday

Quickly popping in to do some catching up...

1. Last Saturday, Nathan, Asher and Ocean met again to finish their "first-draft" flyer for Science Olympiad. They'll be building more before the actual competition, but this was their starting point. After they finished, we took it over to our gym's indoor basketball court area to test it out. :) It flew, though not as they were hoping. So. There will be some tweaking and redesign...which they expected and is good. 

2. The following day, Noah and I journeyed down to Denver for the first JOAD tournament of the season. Noah's in the middle:

As starting points for the season go, it wasn't horrible. And we're feeling pretty okay about the fact that Micah opted not to do JOAD this season, as his assigned shooting time would have been Saturday at 8am (the furthest shooting time from Noah's Sunday at 1pm possible), lol. 

After he finished, we headed over to IKEA for a quick stop to get a replacement frame for Noah's kitchen chair. (Because, of course, it recently decided to join the list of things around the house that need replacing, lol.)

3. I finished my necklace challenge! It took me about 5.5 weeks of wearing a different necklace every day, but I did it. :) Really, it was pretty fun. It reminded me of what I have so that, hopefully, I'll do better at using them going forward. I'm going to tackle scarves next but think I'll give myself some wiggle room to account for warm weather. (It's been too warm lately to wear many of my scarves.) I counted 24 scarves, so will give myself all of November to wear each of them.

4. Everything else here is just continuing as usual...busy with homeschooling and karate and archery practice and swimming laps and Science Olympiad and all. Noah's had a couple of tests this week and also his advising appointment for spring semester. Nathan's busy with work and I've managed to meet a friend for lunch, get my hair cut and make it to the gym four times this week. Yup. Busy. :) 

TGIF!

Done

After Friday night's promotion for Micah (followed by demo team practice for Asher and Micah), we set out early Saturday for Denver for the final JOAD tournament of the season. Micah's check-in time was 7:00 am and we managed to get on the road (overly prepared for the potential snow that had been forecast) by 6 and registered just fine. 

Micah had put in extra practice in the weeks leading up to this final tournament so was really hoping for a good showing...knowing that if he shot his best, he had a good chance at placing. Unfortunately, though his form was definitely more consistent and better overall, his scores didn't match his expectations. :(

But. Social boy that he is, he managed to enjoy himself chatting with his coach and teammates:

...when he wasn't shooting, obviously...

After he finished shooting, Noah's division started. Like Micah, results were less than expectations, sadly. But. Our team definitely put in a good showing:

Look at all those teenage boys, lol. (There were a few more that weren't in this picture for this shooting time.) 

So. After a long couple of shooting sessions (which both started late thanks to not the greatest tournament management and some technical issues), we made it home about 12 hours after leaving. Very glad that we didn't have either boy shooting in the third session of the day...which was set to start at 4, but which obviously didn't since Noah's session was still shooting at that point. Whew. So that was Saturday. 

And now our JOAD season is DONE. Or will be after this weekend's team party. :)