Seventeen, Yesterday

Oy. My baby turned seventeen yesterday! He had class during the day but we took him out to dinner afterward, opened a few gifts and enjoyed playing his new game. See?

The dessert was ginormous! (and Asher loves to photobomb, lol) The top left shows the new game, Pandemic. It took us a bit to get set up and learn it, and we totally lost and died (it's cooperative), but we're looking forward to playing again soon. :) And, Noah started all three boys with Rubik's cubes lately (they're all pretty amazing at being able to solve them quickly), so Asher got him some new variations to play with. Noah solved this one in short order (and then Micah unsolved it...and then Noah solved it again...and then Micah unsolved it...you see where this is going?).

Also, here are our obligatory height comparison pictures from yesterday... :)

First, here's Noah with Nathan:

And last year (age 16):

And this year's picture, not much change:

And now Noah with me:

And last year:

And this year:

(Yeah, not much change, lol.)

Finally...Noah and his brothers:

Last year:

 

And this year:

(Micah would like me to tell you that he knows he has only one sock on. He cut himself the other day and had it bandaged. For whatever reason, putting on the second sock was too much work? He'd also like you to know that if canker sores were a person, he'd want to kick that person in the face. Yeah, the braces are giving him some canker sores and he's not happy.)

Anyhow. Back to Noah. :) It was a very low key celebration, he's happy, and now my baby is seventeen. Sigh.

Progress report

So. Last Saturday, Asher completed day one of Master Drive's drive camp. It's a special "add-on" to their drivers ed program that teaches skills like crisis braking, crash avoidance and visual processing. Students also get to experience their skid pad and practice how to correct out of a skid. All of that is completed on the private driving range (no other traffic) and concludes with a parent "recital" where Nathan and I got to ride along as Asher drove us through the course a couple times.

(Yes, this is the same program we had Noah go through the summer before he got his permit.)

Sunday, he finished the classroom portion of drivers ed and took the written test, passing with flying colors. :)

Today, I took him to the DMV, and (in relatively short order) he officially got his drivers permit!

This coming Sunday, he'll finish day two of the drive camp. He'll get more practice at the skills from last weekend, plus more time working on skid correction. 

Then, next Monday, he'll have his first of three two-hour on-street driving sessions (with an instructor in actual traffic, in their drivers ed vehicle).

After that, we'll be logging the required 50 hours of driving and 10 hours of nighttime driving and waiting the full year with the permit before he can take the driving test and get his license. 

Whew.

Trick or Treat?

On Sunday, we finally got around to putting up a few Halloween decorations. It wasn't much, just enough to appease certain youngest sons who felt we needed *something* outside. ;) 

(We enlisted Noah's height...)

...and the Joker's wig from last year (that went unused in favor of coloring Micah's hair) ended up on McCoy (aka Bones).

Yesterday, then, for Halloween, I remembered to take pictures before it got dark:

I'm in the inflatable T-Rex (my costume is AWESOME). Micah's a dragonfly...because he loved the dragon mask and the butterfly wings and that's as far as we got in the costume aisle with him, lol. And Asher's a giant panda person (because who can resist a giant panda head that was on sale!). But. Sadly, the giant panda head was not great for visibility, so when he actually went out later that night he wore a skull mask:

And here's a better picture of Micah's dragon head:

Shortly after the pictures (and having required boys to add coats or at least long sleeves), I dropped Micah and Asher off to trick or treat with friends. They had a fabulous time and brought home a *big* haul of candy (though I had to confiscate about 20% of Micah's on account of his braces...which made him sad but made Noah pretty happy, lol). Apparently, there was much laughing together as they went from house to house singing Christmas carols (one of the friends was dressed as Santa) and other random things and trying to do a conga line to front doors. 

Meanwhile, back at home we had a very quiet Halloween. Our doorbell rang fewer than a dozen times...which made us very sad because we had a lot of candy to hand out (we've had lots of kids in the past) and because I was standing outside in my costume pretending to be a lawn inflatable and then roaring at kids as they came to the door...kind of like this:

...but in the dark it's scarier. ;) I only "got" a few kids and tried not to scare the little ones (waving and talking instead of roaring and jumping). But. I did startle Gabe as he walked up to the door to join us for his traditional "not trick or treating and just hanging out time" with Noah. That was great fun and made the waiting outside for more kids who didn't come worth it. :)