Michael's Webelos Badge

We just had our Blue and Gold Banquet last night.  Michael had done enough stuff to qualify for the Webelos badge.  For fun, when we pinned his badge on him, we flipped him upside down and pinned it on the right way and then he has to do a good turn to flip it over.

 He also got to pin a pin on me.

As part of the dinner, the kids got to decorate a cake.  This is Michael's camp fire themed cake.

Adam is 12

This boy:

 is now 12!  It is a little unbelievable to me.  He has really been growing up a lot in the last few months.  Not just in height, he still feels shorter than most of the kids around him, but he is 59" tall, so he is getting taller, but also in personality.  He is a self-starter, he comes home from school and gets his homework done on his own.  He is still doing piano and trumpet, and that takes up a good amount of his time everyday.  Recently, we had to decide what classes he should take next year at junior high. There were a lot of classes that he wanted to take, but there are only two spots for electives in your schedule.  He was sure that he should still take trumpet next year because the band teacher said everyone should do it for at least one year in junior high.  We were discussing it because I didn't know that he would still want to do it.  He was very conflicted, but during our discussion he mentioned that there were other classes that he liked more than band.  "Really, what other classes do you like more than band," I asked.  "oh, like math," he responded.  Joe and I took that as a sign that he should no longer be in band if math was more interesting to him than band.

 The past few months he has really been into planes.  He started with a Cessna book, and has been spending a lot of time reading about flying planes and about jets.  He is sure he wants to take private flying lessons now.  The last book we caught him reading was a technical book about how to fly a plane.  He also has been interested in economics and stocks.  He recently got Joe to set up a stock account for him so that he could learn how to invest in stocks.

 He still takes tennis lessons.  He likes them really well.  He seems to be getting better and better.  In the junior high, they have tennis at school as a sport, so his plan is to be able to play for the school next year.

 Michael and Ellie decided to photobomb his blowing out the candles picture...what are gonna do?

Now that he is 12, he gets to go to Young Men's activities and be with the deacons.  We are super excited about this because there are a lot of deacons (contrasted with the one other boy in his 11 year old scout group).  Plus then when I go to joint activities, he can go with me!

We are sure glad that we have Adam in our family.

Snow!

In a very unusual turn of events, we have had "snow" three times so far this winter. The first time it didn't actually snow, it just iced everything, but they went ahead and cancelled school, so the kids got to go out and slide around on the trampoline in the ice.

 The next time it did actually snow- it was pretty cool.  Most of the snow melted when it touched the ground, but on the trampoline, there was a good amount.

 The kids got to lob snowballs over the fence to their friends who were playing on their trampoline next door.  That was pretty cool.  Behind us there were two more houses of kids and they were all playing on their trampolines too.

 There was enough snow to make snowballs, something I have never seen here.

The kids were even able to make a snowman, albeit a tiny, tiny one. 

 Then this morning we woke up to snow on the trampoline.  The kids got dressed and played in the snow until I told them it was time to go to school.  Then I "let" them walk to school.  I'm sure their teachers loved that they came to school all covered in snow.

Personally, I would like to thank all the scientists who talk so much about global warming for this extraordinarily cold winter.

Ellie's first Gymnastic Meet

Starting last summer, Ellie has been going to gymnastics for 6 hours a week.  She moved up into an advanced class, which they call the Force team.  She absolutely LOVES it.  You would think that after 3 hours of gymnastics- which is heavy on conditioning and strength training, she would be exhausted, but she is still bouncing between activities at the end of the class.  It is nice to have something that she likes so well that she is good at too.

 Today was her first competition.  Competitive season for gymnastics is the fall, but since they are just starting, her coaches wanted her team to try one meet so that they knew what they were in for.  They had her compete at the lowest level, level 1, even though she knows the skills for a higher level.  It was fun to see how competitions went.  She had a good time.

Her team was supposed to compete on Sunday morning, but since we have decided to not let her compete on Sunday, they allowed her to compete at the same time as other girls from the same gym that are at a different level.  It was fun to see the other girls compete, and Ellie looked so small as compared to them.  She did really well on all of her routines.  In her floor routine she forgot the ending, probably because they went over that for only a few minutes during the end of her last class a couple of days ago. 

Starting this next summer, she will have to go to the gym 9 hours a week, but then they will be competing in the fall.  We won't know until May what level she will compete at, she has some skills to learn and we have to see if she can get those skills before they assign the level. 

 Here are some of her scores:

So much fun!