Michael's 12th Birthday

Guess who turned 12?  He got a raspberry pi- and a shotgun.  What more could a 12 year old want?

 Since this was an even year, he was allowed to have a party.  We gave him a lot of options for parties....roller skating, movies, but none of those seemed to be what he wanted.  He finally decided on Minute to Win It Party.  We invited all of the deacons from church and a few of his school friends, and we put together some games.  There were two teams and they competed in various games to win contests.  They had a contest to see who could  stack 15 cups the fastest.

 Using a wooden skewer, they had to stack five nuts on each other.  This was probably the trickiest challenge.

 Two boys had to get pennies out of the end of pantyhose without using anything other than their fingers.

 They had a minute to see how many dice they could stack on a tongue depressor.

 This one was called "Junk in the Trunk."  They had a tissue box with ping pong balls inside.  They had to empty the boxes by shaking their booties to empty the box.

There were lots of other games- and the boys seemed to have a lot of fun.  The prizes at the end of the night was candy!  They had 15 seconds to get what they wanted.

A little bit about Michael.  He is in 6th grade.  He still does percussion, and he enjoys it, but not the practice.  He is involved in Student Council this year, he goes to school early one day a week to help make the announcements.  He is also doing a program called Destination Imagination this year.  I don't really understand this program, but it sounds like his group meets once a week to design a solution to a problem (his problem is design something to move some people across a room).  They will create their project and then on a certain day, get together to present the solution in a competition.  That same day there will be other competitions that they compete in.  He really seems to enjoy it.  For his sport, he is doing parkour at Flips gymnastics.  Once a week he also goes running with me, we go about 1 1/2-2 miles.
He loves computers and Minecraft.  He took a programming class this summer, but didn't learn as much about programming as he had hoped.  He still loves to read too.  He enjoys his friends, and has started getting together on weekend nights to "hang out."  He really likes to roller blade right now too.
He always has interesting tidbits of information that he has gleaned from school, and he enjoys sharing those with us.  He also likes jokes.

We are very blessed to have him in our lives.

Halloween

We did our annual Haunted House foam project this year one night for FHE.  The kids really enjoyed it and went all out.  It was fun.

 Ellie and Nate got to dress up for the storybook parade.  Nate chose to be a ninja wolf from the book, the three Ninja pigs.  He had the wolf costume, but he wasn't sure he wanted to wear it, and he didn't have a book for just the wolf book, so we added his BJJ costume and it worked perfect with the ninja pigs story.  He was a little embarrassed at the school parade, but luckily, no one knew who he was in that costume, so he was safe.
 Ellie had a ca costume for Halloween, so she just had to find a book to go with it.  She really didn't want to do the Warrior books, so she decided to go with Bad Kitty.

 We had our ward trunk or treat on the Wednesday night before Halloween.  I wore this beauty that I found wadded up on the floor of my Grandma's trashed house when we went out to go to the funeral.  I washed it up, and it worked out nicely for my costume.  My mom let me know that she made this dress for Grammie.  She also let me know that there was a belt that I didn't find.  I think it is cute that the polyester fabric it is made out of has a pattern like a quilt.

 For the trunk or treat, Adam dressed like a clown, Michael like a nerd, Ellie was a cat, and Nate was a police officer. He decided that night that he didn't want to be a wolf again, and he really wanted to be the police officer he was 2 years ago.  It was a bit small and all ripped up, but we were able to fix it and make it work.

I even decorated my trunk this year.

 On Halloween night, Nate went back to the wolf costume.  It was very cute!

That night, after the kids went trick or treating, we had a party at our house for all of Adam and Michael's church friends.  they played Just Dance on the Xbox and talked and we had some games for them.  There were about 30 kids that showed up, so it was a little chaotic for a while, but it was a lot of fun!

Ellie's Level 3 Gymnastics

Ellie just finished her level 3 in gymnastics. It is the same level that she did last year.  Her coaches wanted her to have a strong year with good scores so that she got used to earning medals at every meet and she would learn to work hard to place at every meet she goes to.  They were right, she did fantastic! This post is going to be picture heavy, hope you don't mind.

Here are her stats for this season: All of her meets she got 37 or higher points.  The scores are out of 10.00, so an all around score of 40.00 is perfect.  Her highest scores were: Vault 9.800, Bars 9.900, Beam 9.625, Floor 9.825, and overall score 38.750.  She placed 1st overall at 4 of her 7 meets this season.  For a while she was on the nations top 100 for her bar score and her overall score!  She's amazing!

Usually her best scores were on bars and floor, but she did really well on vault and beam by the end.  In order to do so well, she practices a ton.  She is at gymnastics three days a week for 4 hours each.  

 

After she placed first at district championships, she got to go to South State.  There are 7 districts in Texas, and South State is 3 of those districts.  Needless to say, with such a large state, they are highly competitive.  At south state, everyone gets a matching leotard that says Texas on it.  It was hard to find her in the crowd of matching leotards, but it was fun to have such a cool leotard!

 Ellie and her coach, Coach Allec.

Here are some videos of some of her routines.  The routines are set and repeated by everyone in her level. They are then graded on how perfect they do the routine.

Now she has moved up to level 4.  She already knows the skills, but she needs to learn the routines and then will perform at her first meet in January.