Pinewood Derby 2015

This year my only goal was to get through this event without any boy tears.  And we did it!  Success!  Cade’s car did great!  He was basically 4th place overall.  And he was thrilled with that.  Hallelujah!

This is Cade’s third year, so Rock let him do the whole thing almost completely by himself. 

Lots of excited boys.

Ready…Set….

Go!

And here is the coolest thing about the night.  A scout’s big brother put a video camera on his old Pinewood derby car and happened to race Cade’s car, so we got it on video!

The Garage Door

You might think this an interesting name for a blog post.  Or maybe just a boring one.  If only I could name it something different, something more exciting.  If only I could name this blog post, “The wonderfully Wonderful Things That Adorable Little Boys Do.”  But I can’t name it that.  Sorry.

About four months ago Levi came inside telling me that the garage door opener was smoking.  I ran out to the garage to see if something was on fire only to find that Levi and his little neighbor friend had been playing with the garage door opener button.  Up, down, Up down, Up, down.  Over and over again.  “Weeeeee!”  they said. “Gee, Mom, we didn’t think it would hurt anything!”  they said.  Sigh.  Luckily, nothing was broken….yet.  Two days later the big spring across the top of the garage door broke.   Amazingly enough, the door still worked and so we went on with our lives and replaced the spring the following month.  Needless to say Levi was chastised to the full extent of the family law.

Last month Levi came inside to tell me (surprise!) the garage door opener was smoking….again.  I ran out to the garage to find the same two little boys with that same ‘I’m guilty as heck’ look on their faces. Deja vu anyone?  Accept that this time, the garage door opener stopped working the next day.  Levi was chastised to the fuller-fullest extent of the family law and will be working off the new $430.00 spring and garage door opener till he’s fifty.  Though, Rumplestiltsken did have the right idea and I may be willing to accept his first born instead.

If that were the end of the story, it would be a happy thing.  But it is not the end of the story.  Half an hour after the new garage door opener was installed I realized the opener had a motion sensor light on it.  Five minutes after I made special trip into Rock’s office to tell him the good news, Cade decided to stick a pencil INTO the motion sensor in an attempt to open the garage door.  “Gee, I wonder which button opens the garage door.  Maybe it’s this funny looking one that is not actually a button at all but a plastic covering for the motion sensor.  Hmm, I can’t get it to do anything so maybe if I stick a pencil into it, it will magically work!” 

I wish I could say that I handled that discovery well, but let’s just say that Cade will be telling his children and grandchildren about the explosion for years to come. 

Homeschool Happenings

Thomas Edison was a fascinating man.  We’ve been reading a biography about him and have learned a ton!  He was a bit of a rebel, he was a prankster, and he was incredibly persistent.  He tried 3000 different theories while trying to create the electric light.  My kids can no longer claim they have tried something twice and then give up.  From now on I will say, “Come back to me when you’ve tried it 3000 different ways and THEN we’ll talk.”

We made a telegraph as part of our study of his life.  The boys each wrote a message in Morse code and then typed it out on our telegraph. 

Here is Cade’s message translated:

Here is Reagan’s:

And Levi’s:

As you may have deduced from Levi’s message, we have been learning about the Civil War this month.  What has been really cool is to also be reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin for my book club this month as well.   I was able to tell the boys the amazing story of Uncle Tom and what he went through just as they were learning about slavery and its horrors.  Then right as we finished up the Civil War, Ben Carson announced he was starting an exploratory committee to run for president.  So we watched “Gifted Hands”, the story about his amazing life.  I figured I would only show the boys the first part of the movie when he was young.  I love that his mother required him to read 2 books a week and write a report about it.  But the boys were so enthralled,  we watched it all.  It was the perfect thing to finish up our unit. One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War a black man can do anything in America; from pediatric surgeon to President of the United States!

Reagan has become fascinated with magnets lately and bought these Neodymium magnets to play around with.  This video he made is pretty cool.

This week we learned about the composer, Franz Schubert.  While listening to his 8th Symphony, the boys decided to organize their Pokémon. 

A few weeks ago Levi wanted to make a squirrel feeder for the back yard.  We have a ton of squirrels.  So many in fact that if you have seen the movie UP, you will appreciate the fact that when my children are sitting at the table and I am trying to read to them, rather than sit enraptured as I think they should, their attention is often called away by far more interesting sights.  “Squirrel!!!” someone yells,  and they all dash to the window to watch the one millionth squirrel run the fence.  Sigh.  I should never have allowed the squirrel feeder.  But here it is.

In our homeschool co-op group Cade was in a Greek mythology class.  He made this diorama of the scene in the Odyssey where Odysseus almost gets sucked into the whirlpool, Charybdis.  I thought his use of electronics was pretty ingenious.

(Warning: Brag Alert-read ahead if you are a grandparent, but otherwise, proceed at your own risk.)

In other homeschool news, Liberty is begging me to teach her to read and is still dancing everywhere she goes.  She has her first dance recital next month.  Levi is begging me to let him read Percy Jackson.  I’m not ready to let him read about all those monsters at age 7, but I will have to give in at some point.  He would rather mom just step aside so he can plow ahead at his own pace with his school work, but I’m not quite willing to do that just yet. Cade is speeding along a grade ahead in math and has finally caught fire with reading.  He taught himself to read at the age of three, but he is only now choosing to read books just for fun.  Reagan is a straight A student at the middle school half day.  He loves playing in the orchestra and has had a really good experience there this year.  His ADHD medicine has been a HUGE help in all ways but especially in his school work.  It’s wonderful to see his bright mind outshining  his attention deficit. 
(End Brag Alert)

After three and a half years of homeschooling  I can say that it is still constantly evolving.  We still have really good days and really bad days.  But I still get up every day excited to start another school day.  Next year we will probably be making some big changes, but for now things are going great and I am really pleased with the progress the kids have made this year.

Spring Break Part III

While in Grand Junction we went to the Math and Science Center that we love so much! 

The Python named Monty…….

The Lizard whose name escapes me.

This game is called Ball of Whacks.  No joke.

That evening we celebrated Grandma Dot’s 89th birthday.

She and Liberty chatted all night long.  Though Grandma admitted she only heard about 40% of the conversation. What was funny was to listen to Liberty’s responses when Grandma happened to repeat a question like “How old are you now?  Libby started saying“I’m STILL four, Grandma.” 
This cute picture was taken by Uncle Dave.    Love it!!!

Reading her birthday cards from the kids. 

Cade had to write his card left handed and had to try three  times to get it right.  The completed card promised a Cade Hymas origami card when his arm heals.

And then our time was done in GJ!  It went by so fast!  On our way home we stopped in Salt Lake to have dinner with Rock’s family.   Got these on Temple Square:

Really wish I had a GOOD camera.

Someone to look up to.

And to end on a funny note, here is Liberty in the bathroom at the restaurant.  She walked in and gasped with joy,  “I LOOOVE this bathroom!!!!”
She hadn’t even flushed the toilet and was already planning to paint her bathroom back home.  No way Reagan is going for that.

Thanks for a great trip G and G!!

Part II-The Spring ‘Break’

Who knew ellipticals could be so deadly.  Actually, I did have a gut feeling that I shouldn’t let the kids play on Grandma’s elliptical because it was so big and powerful, but I am too often a paranoid parent and didn’t want to be the party pooper again.  I should have pooped this party, though.
 
Exhibit A-The Elliptical:


On Tuesday Cade was using the elliptical when he got his elbow at the wrong angle and the moving handle smashed his arm into the stationary handle he was holding.  He stepped down in terrible pain, crying and then promptly fainted!  I had to catch him and sit him with his head between his knees for a few minutes.  I searched all over for a bone or something sticking out figuring that fainting must mean something really bad.  But there was nothing we could see to indicate a break.  He laid on the couch with ice around his arm for a few hours before we took him to the urgent care.  It’s always hard to tell if a kid needs to go to the doctor with stuff like this.  With Levi it is usually evident, gushing blood is a pretty clear sign, but that’s not true for the rest of them.  When the doctor pushed and prodded on his arm it was very obvious he was not faking it. 

The X-Ray


Exhibit B-The X-Rays


Notice where the radius bone (big arm bone to the left) bulges out slightly on both sides.



I drew lines to show where the true line of the bone should be.  That slight bulge or buckle was the proof apparently.

Verdict: Broken!  The technical term is “distal radius buckle fracture”.  Rock’s cousin helped us understand why we couldn’t tell it was broken by looking at this x-ray.  He said your bone is like a stick with a bunch of saran wrap around it.  If the stick breaks, the saran wrap holds it together if it’s not too big of a break.  And the “saran wrap” is pretty strong when you’re a kid.  That’s why it is so hard to see the actual break.

The Urgent Care put a splint on him and sent us home with instructions to see our pediatrician for a cast once we got home 3 days later.



Left: Mount Garfield, Right: Grand Mesa, Center: Beaming boy who now has the bragging rights to the first broken bone in the family.  He could not wait to walk in and show off his cool sling to his siblings. 


Had to take his picture with the offending machine. Which, I might add, all children were forthwith banned from using.

The next day, Rock’s cousin Grant, an ER doctor in Grand Junction, took a look at Cade’s arm for us.  He then went to the hospital to confirm the break as valid, got us copies of the x-ray (Thank you, Grant!!), and brought back the materials to put on his cast!  Never thought I’d have a kid get a cast in the kitchen, but Caderade did.  With an audience, no less!




Grandma Dot was second only to the doctor in signing his cast. 
It was almost full with family names by the time we left GJ. 

Ironically enough, his arm is not the only thing Cade broke this week.  You can be a bit clumsy with a sling on, and Cade tripped over a basket and sent Grandma Hymas’ lamp crashing to the ground.  Grandma was very gracious and Cade’s parents are now out $80.00.  That is not the end of the irony  here, however.  This is not the first grandmother’s lamp that Cade has broken.  When he was one or two years old he  broke Grandmother Wesel’s heirloom lamp and his parents were out $150.00.  I’m sensing a pattern here.  Thank goodness he only has two grandmothers.  But as pointed out earlier, he still has two great grandmothers so I should probably warn them.

And that was Cade’s Spring “Break”.  Or maybe I should say Spring “Breaks”.  Stay tuned for the rest of our Spring Break story.

Spring Break Part 1

We spent Spring Break in Grand Junction and had quite the adventure.  The night before we left on the trip I said family prayer and prayed that we would travel safely and that the car  would work well.  After the prayer Liberty said, “And make sure you don’t hit the side again.”  It took me a second to realize she was asking us not to get in another wreck like our last trip home in the snow.  LOL!
On our way down we stopped in Provo for lunch with Alli and Sarin.  We ate at the Pizza Factory because I love their bread twists! 


So did Cade.

The restaurant is right near where Rock and I got engaged almost 14 years ago to the day so we took the kids to see it. They were not duly impressed.

Our first day in Grand Junction we went on a bike ride along the river.  Rock’s mom rounded up bikes for all six of us! 


Here’s the fun bike Liberty and Rock got to ride.

She pedaled for part of the time, but rested her feet for most of the ride.



We rode five miles out free and easy, but on the way back the wind was awful and after only one mile we were all ready for a break. 



Towards the end it got to be too much for Cade, so he and I walked the last mile.  Here we are coming down the home stretch with Grand Mesa in the background. 

It was a beautiful day and an awesome bike ride.  Thanks, Grandma!!

No trip to GJ would be complete without a ride on the four wheelers at Great Grandma and Grandpa Roper’s house.



Reagan got to ride one by himself this time!

Levi found a caterpillar!


He brought it home to Rock’s parent’s house and kept it for a few days before bringing it back and setting it free.  The kids had a great time creating a home for it and trying to feed it.  I’m actually surprised how well they took the idea of setting it free.

When we first got to G/G’s house that day, Liberty had a tummy ache and just wanted to lie down on the couch.  Grandpa John came in and told her that he had been looking forward to riding with her on the four wheelers and wouldn’t she please come out.  But she wouldn’t do it.  We still don’t know if the tummy ache was because she was afraid to ride or not, but she laid around for a while longer and then decided she felt good enough to play dolls with Grandma Dot.



While I was out riding with Levi, they finally managed to get her on a four wheeler.


I love this picture.  It is so fun to watch this 91 year old man tearin it up over the hills on these machines.  I dearly love all Rock’s grandparents and am so glad they have all stuck around long enough for me to enjoy having grandparents again since all mine are gone.  I never knew any of my great grandparents so it’s also great they are still around for my kid’s sake!



Stay tuned for part II, “The Spring “Break”

Skiing

Reagan and Cade just finished up ski lessons.  This was Cade’s first time skiing and he did great.  His second day he was feeling so good he tried a black diamond run, but wiped out so badly he became much more cautious from there on out.

This was taken on the ski lift BEFORE the wipe out.

Reagan tackled all the black diamonds he could this year.  I got a text from Rock the second day that said, “This kid eats black diamonds for breakfast!”

Here he is coming down one.

 

This is Reagan on the ski run called Widow Maker.  Doesn’t that inspire happy thoughts in all you mothers?  I try really hard not to think about all those trees he could hit.

I’m glad Reagan and Cade are loving the sport, though.  Rock is thrilled, and is counting down the days till the whole family can go skiing together.  I just see big price tags.