Watch out in 2024...(or 2028 or 2032...)

Micah says you should watch for him in the Olympics. :) 

Last night, Micah attended a seminar by Khatuna Lorig, a five time Olympian and the current top ranked female archer in the United States. 

It was at Rocky Mountain Archery, and Micah was stoked to sign up weeks ago. (The other two chose not to sign up, feeling that it wouldn't apply to them since they shoot compound bows and Khatuna shoots recurve. They would be wrong, but I'm not dwelling, lol.) He was so excited to meet someone who's been in the Olympics and did an excellent job of listening to her presentation and asking a few questions of his own. 

He's even adjusted his plan. He's decided now that he can be an Olympian *and* follow through on the rest of his plan. The summer Olympics are in the summer, after all, he says. Classes would be out during the summer. ;) 

So. He's committed to stepping up his practice (incorporating the steps that Khatuna went through) and figures that down the road he'll switch to recurve, so as to be eligible for the Olympics. (The Olympics only feature recurve archery, not compound.) For now, though, he'll stick with compound...since we already have all that gear and since he's still young and since he needs a bit more strength before shooting with a recurve will work as well for him.

In any case, if you ever have the opportunity to meet Khatuna Lorig, I'd highly recommend it. Micah was delighted and, after having his picture taken with her, went looking for a piece of paper to get her autograph. She gave him a signed print of her at full draw. It's now hanging proudly in his room. :)

Four on Friday

1. Micah and Asher both passed their levels in their swim lesson sessions! Honestly, I'm pretty impressed. Based on history and how he was looking last week, I didn't think Micah was going to pass...had already signed him up for a repeat of the same level, lol. Something must have clicked for him in the last few days, though, because he made tremendous improvement and is delighted to be signed up now for the next level. (The new session will begin in a week-ish.) Asher passed just fine (as I mentioned, it was mostly a refresher to make sure all the skills were still there and get him some pool time) and is now officially done with swim lessons. Whew. ;) 

2. For those who read blog posts using Google Reader (like I do/did), don't forget that Google Reader will be discontinued starting Monday. Having recently been reminded of that, I switched last night to Feedly and am pretty happy with it so far. They had a button right on their home page for me to just transfer all my Google Reader stuff. Clicked it and approved the share and was good to go. :) They also have an app for my iPhone so I can still read all my feeds on my phone...lovely. (and easy!)

3. All three boys had regular dental checkups earlier this week and came away with no cavities! Even happier...no teeth pulled. ;)

4. Even though I very much did not enjoy driving home in the thunderstorm over Fort Collins just now, I'm thankful for the rain and am hoping this cools things off for a bit. I could have done without the hail smacking into my windshield, though, lol.

Well, happy weekend to you all! Here's to making progress on our to do lists, right? ;)

Ten on Tuesday

1. The front right blinker on our van is annoying. At the start of the day, it works just fine. As soon as it gets warm, though, it stops working altogether and makes a super fast sound. (And the fact that it works sometimes means that it's not just the bulb (which we've tried changing anyhow). Awesome.)

2. Last weekend, we hit the Longmont Air Show and had a pretty good time:

It was smaller than other airshows we've gone to, but that just made it casual and comfy. ;) We watched the skydivers bring in the flag (while the anthem was sung), enjoyed the smoke from the aerobatics routines, and wandered through the exhibits (including a number of planes and also the bomb squad).

3. Swim lessons continue and are going pretty well. Micah's signed up for one more session after this and is actually starting to look like he can swim. ;)

4. This is one of our "off weeks" from homeschooling. Woohoo! I'm working on tackling a number of projects that have been piling up around here. Fortunately, the boys are pretty good about doing their own thing and perfectly able to feed themselves, lol. 

5. (May I just add that it's fabulous to have a 12 year old who's able to grill me some lunch and, for the most part, doesn't complain about it?)

6. Since we have just one "session" left in our school year after this, I need to finish nailing down my curricula choices and purchases for the 2013-2014 academic year soon. Will update about that as I can. ;)

7. Before I can do that, though, I should really work on selling more of our purged stuff here. We're opting not to do a full-fledged garage sale...not enough little stuff and no desire to deal with that, lol. Gotta do some Craigslist listings, I guess. I'll let you know when we get those posted.

8. In the meantime, if you're local, head over to Scrap 2 It this Friday night or Saturday. They're having a garage sale and I'll have a table of goodies there for sale (almost all new, actually). (Friday is a preview from 5-7pm and you need to bring cans of food for the Larimer County Food Bank to get in. Saturday runs from 10-5.)

9. Really. Please stop by if you're in the area! I won't actually be there manning the table or anything (the store takes care of that and has more than a dozen seller tables lined up already) but I have some great stuff to sell and would love for it to go to a good home. ;)

10. Okay, off to get some more done for now...happy end of June to you all!

Red belt!

Last night, Asher earned his red belt in karate:

He's stoked and we're so very proud of him. This latest belt is particularly important to him, as it's taken the longest to earn (about half a year) now that he's in the more advanced levels. Yup. Happy. ;)

(Also, if you're local, I can't recommend Karate West highly enough. If you're at all interested, let me know. I'd be happy to chat with you about why!)

Ten on Tuesday

1. First and foremost, please join me in congratulating my awesome friend, Kaitlin, in the release of her new line at Carta Bella! Yay!!

2. The younger two started swim lessons yesterday. It's mostly just a review for Asher...a refresher course to get the summer off to a strong start and work on technique a bit. Micah's still...um, honing. ;) 

3. Micah randomly informed me the other day that when he has trouble falling asleep he finds that thinking about soap helps. True story.

4. My computer is dying. We're pretty sure the fan in the laptop (an older ThinkPad) has stopped working...as evidenced by its random decisions to turn itself off. (Yeah, that's fun.) The optical drive also no longer reliably works, so I can't play dvds in it while I'm working on other things. ;) So. Thanks so some lovely inheritance monies, we bit the bullet and bought a new set up. It arrived today. Yay!

5. Which means, of course, that I've been working on rearranging stuff in my office once again...because the new set up is a different size than the old set up...which requires moving things. Bleh.

6. This also means that Nathan has seized the opportunity to make me get a new office chair (one that's the right height ergonomically for me). I apparently have horrible posture when I sit at my desk (cross-legged) and it bothers him. ;) So. We hit the CSU Surplus Sale last weekend in search of office chairs, but only came away with a couple skirts, some organizer things that I have yet to find a use for and a geography game that I'd actually had my eye on for awhile. ;)

7. We just took a family bike ride. Ice cream was involved. Hooray for summer!

8. Course, before the bike ride, we still had school work. We're on our last bit for this month, will take a week or two off and then will hit three more weeks before "officially" finishing this school year. Oy. I think we're all pretty ready to start a new year. Not that we actually get a big break or anything since we school year round. But. Two weeks off before starting the next school year seems lovely and far away... 

9. Speaking of which, I'm working this summer on creating the boys' assigned reading lists for the coming year. I'm trying to read a bunch of the books to make my decisions and get a bit ahead of them (as I try to read them all before I assign them). I could definitely use some help, folks. Seriously, please, please shout out any book recommendations for 3rd, 5th and 7th grade boys...boys who tend to greatly favor machines and war stories over anything having to do with animals and who don't mind non-fiction in the least. (Asher would actually like to just read the encyclopedia of WWII air machines but I've informed him that we must have a bit more balance, lol.)

10. Really. I'm asking for recommendations. It deserves another mention. ;) 

Thanks!