JOAD

Last Saturday, we finished up the JOAD season with the state tournament down in Denver. I won't get started on the organizational woes and politics involved. ;) Let's just say that after things finally got going Micah and Noah managed to shoot pretty well. Micah even managed to set a new personal best! 

(Part of our team...shooting during the first session of the day.)

(Micah waiting in one of the inspection lines before shooting got started.)

(Noah scoring during the tournament.)

And after this coming weekend's team potluck (and some final number crunching whenever the tournament organizers deign to share them), that will be that. Whew. :)

(Many thanks to LeAnn King for sharing these pictures, as apparently I didn't take any, lol.) 

Last Friday

In efforts to prepare for the summer and hone some skills (and not have to worry about the addition of swim lessons to my summer schedule, lol), I signed Asher and Micah up for private swim lessons at our gym. (Technically speaking, Asher's a pretty good swimmer and has even been invited to join the swim team, so doesn't really need lessons so much as practice/endurance. Micah likes the company, though, and Asher is just happy to have time in the pool.)

They started last Friday and will go for another couple weeks (six sessions altogether). (The flexibility of choosing session times that work for us rather than trying to fit the group lesson times into our schedule is lovely, too.)

This was them earlier today. They're thoroughly enjoying the time in the pool, and the individual attention is quite effective. Yay!

Morning schoolwork

Yesterday, I took advantage of one of homeschooling's many perks and opted to take the boys for a walk in lieu of morning schoolwork. I'd initially intended just to walk around the neighborhood a bit but we somehow ended up walking to Fossil Creek Park (a bit more than a mile away)...

It was a glorious morning as we walked beneath the trees...

...and posed with the mammoth...

(That's the three of us on top of the mammoth.)

But then the clouds started coming in and the wind picked up and it turned less warm, lol...It didn't deter boys from running and playing and enjoying being the only ones at the park, though...

Yeah. He doesn't really fit. I was worried Micah was going to get stuck when he tried, but Asher managed to slide his way out through the bottom.

In any case, we had a lovely time just playing and sliding and climbing and swinging and such. (We'd done some talking on our walk...about homeschooling plans for the coming year, actually.) 

And then we called Nathan and asked him to come pick us up before the rain clouds burst open (which happened about 10 minutes after we left the park, btw, definitely sooner than we'd have made it home walking). Before we left, though, we had Nathan help us reach these...

And take this picture...

And then we went to lunch. Because having a homeschooling schedule and a husband who works from home rocks. :)

(Poor Noah, meanwhile, was at school all day, lol. And don't worry. We did actually do some afternoon schoolwork after we got home, including the morning schoolwork we'd skipped.)

Dental news

So. On Tuesday, Micah lost a molar. He actually wiggled it out on his own. This, in itself, is a miracle. (He has a history of dental drama...see here and here and here for examples, lol.)

But. His bravery at pulling his own tooth (which was actually more of an accident) was short lived. ;) As soon as it came out (about 30 minutes before karate), he promptly declared himself unable to go on. There were tears. There was exclamation over the blood (a very few dabs of blood). There was questioning as to whether fluids could make their way into his brain through the hole in his mouth. Yeah. He didn't make it to karate that day.

After Asher and I got home from karate, Micah was still going on about how weird his mouth felt. :) 

Sigh.

That night, he left a note with his tooth. It's his second or third attempt to get the tooth fairy's name, lol. I'm told, though, that each family has a different tooth fairy and that each one has his or her own name. (Apparently, one of his classmates at Options has a tooth fairy named Jonathan.) In the past, our tooth fairy asked simply to be called The Molinator. This didn't satisfy Micah. So...

Now you know. ;)

Oh. And Micah informs me that the tooth fairy's last name is Hoeslworld. Yes, really. Apparently, Micah dreamed this and believes that the tooth fairy was trying to send him a message. I'm not going to argue with that. :)

In other news, the next day (Wednesday) Asher got his bottom braces on. First, I treated him to brunch and documented his teeth without braces:

And then there's the after picture:

Unlike his brother, he's barely complained a peep. He did sit out on his sparring class at karate, on account of the mouth guard hurting still, but he's good to go today. :) 

Btw, I continue to be impressed with the progress that's being had with these braces. Those top teeth are really coming along!

Easter - outside

Continued...

After the cake, we tackled our somewhat traditional egg drop competition. (See 2013 and 2012) Rather than set components, we followed these rules I found online this year. Here are the contraptions we came up with:

Micah worked on a parachute sort of design, with the egg in a padded bowl. Asher created a cone of foam. Noah went a bit eclectic this year (having done both other types of designs previously with great success) and made some sort of pizza board saucer with streamers sort of thing. Nathan taped garbage bags together for drag and found a big sponge in the garage. And I simply filled a ziplock bag with popcorn. (I did, also, create a little sling out of duct tape to keep the egg roughly in the center of the bag.)

We loaded up our raw eggs. And then Nathan climbed out Asher's window to drop our contraptions from the roof.

(Yeah, the younger two joined him after the first round, despite my objections. No one fell, so I guess all's well, lol.)  

As it turns out, we've all gotten too good at this. Not one of our eggs broke. :) (This was actually a little surprising to all of us.)

Of course, then Asher decided to "drop" his own contraption...except he sort of threw it...which led to our only broken egg. (Thankfully, Noah and I just barely managed to not get hit, as we weren't expecting the contraption to get anywhere near us, lol.)

This led to bringing out the hose. Which led to this:

After the younger two were good and soaked, we bribed Noah with the hose to get a group picture:

And then promptly surprised him with a nice, wet group hug...

Hee hee. ;)

And that was pretty much how our Easter went. We also took some walks and played a round of Smash Up and then proceeded with normal "night before heading back into the school week" stuff like homework and showers and finishing up the week's chores, lol. 

Here's hoping you had a beautiful weekend, as well!