A Bit of Birthday Excitement :)

We Interrupt This Vacation . . .

You might have noticed the recent slow-down in vacation-related blog posts . . . I reached the point where I had not yet written up our days. I have a feeling the subsequent posts will be significantly shorter and less detailed than the others so far. However, that will have to wait, because life does not :) I am now behind on posting all the things that have happened since we arrived home three weeks ago.

And since we’ve been home, we’ve had a dozen doctor/physical therapy appointments, more than a dozen sporting events, nearly a dozen church-related functions, five repair appointments, Caelan working regularly, the boys pet sitting, half a dozen music and choir lessons, art lessons, countless grocery trips, and even company (my college roommate Rissa and her family stopped by for dinner). Also . . . the bra-wearing chicken died. “Turkey” is no more :(

I’ll try to hit some of the highlights here, so you feel all caught up . . . because I may never feel caught up again :)

Graysen’s birthday happened to be our very first fun event upon returning home. He went to bed a vacationing 10-year-old and woke up the next day a whole year older :) His breakfast plan: chocolate chip waffles and sausage. His lunch plan: Panda Express (ooh, orange chicken). His dinner plan: chicken tenders (because I said we wouldn’t be able to get wings together that quickly) and several other yellow-colored foods. Which, actually, fit the Green Bay theme his siblings chose to decorate the house with for him . . . after we unloaded the van from our trip. That’s about what life feels like lately. Finishing one giant adventure to drop directly into the next.

Like going to the hardware store—when you’re not home for a couple of weeks, your hay box might blow its lid in a storm. Super fun adventure for a birthday boy ;) 

Also, we didn’t have enough time between all the running around we were doing to actually bake a cake, so Buck and I bought Graysen a birthday pie from Fareway. It was in the freezer section, so I think it counts as ice cream cake :) He certainly enjoyed it!

Before we ran Caelan to work, G$ opened gifts. He was pretty excited by all of his new treasures, including a snap together Ford Raptor (like Aaron Rodgers drives in the commercials), but the rookie Rodgers football card exceeded all expectations. I just might have to post that video : )

His birthday maybe wasn’t as exciting as we usually try to make it, but if you’ve been reading any of what I’ve been trying to get posted for the past several weeks . . . we were just recovering from more excitement than really anybody should have in that short of an amount of time. Whew! I still think our special kid had a good birthday, so glad he’s part of our crew!

(Pictures--opening gifts from Grandma J after our mail hold was delivered and the monster truck that he's been wanting for a year, purchased with his birthday money from several sources :)

Back to school a.s.a.p., Buck took the girls to a pond to gather water and microscopic critters for their biology experiments that week . . . oh, right, and it SNOWED! A lot. (But it's all gone now :)

When the snows melted, the boys wrapped up their flag football season--after missing about half of it. Their last game was fun to watch; good team work, lots of “tackles” (flag pulls) by Graysen; Brennen was quarterback quite a bit and had one run three-quarters of the way across the field for a touch down! He smoked everyone with his wheels : ) They didn’t win any games their first season, but somehow they managed the cold and learned a bunch about football. Now there are regular games in our backyard with the neighbor kids, made all the more challenging by the “land mines” planted by Chauncey, lol.

In the realm of karate, the kids had their next round of testing at the same time on the same day as that final football game/awards presentation. So, we arranged to test early with the lower ranked black belts. It was a huge testing class, and we were watching that clock anxiously as it moved closer and closer to the time we had to jet to get to football across town on time. Buck wisely suggested we bring all the football clothes, extra coats, etc. to karate, just in case we couldn’t stop home first. He also suggested we drive two cars, so he could leave with the boys (figuring they could change from karate clothes into football clothes during the drive). 

This is exactly what happened. They gave their final high fives to the judges at 3:09; they had to be out the door at 3:10—seriously!! Buck, again wisely, had run to the grocery store and bought the boys Gatorades and Power Bars (something he used to eat between athletic events) and jerky, I think? Apparently he’s done this multi-exhausting-sport thing before : )

One week later, we were back for the annual tournament at our local karate club. Three of our crew participated in the higher level combat sparring. Participation was kind of low this year, and no one signed up in Caelan’s age category (she’s in the 16 and above since they base participation off of age by 12/31). So, she automatically won first place, but as we’d paid for her to participate, she was set to spar the winner of the younger bracket’s top finisher.

You’ll never guess who the finalists were for combat sparring—Brennen and Graysen! They fought an intense battle (I was thinking how strange it is that we pay money to give our kids opportunities to hit each other with sticks, and that we cheer them on while they’re doing it!). Time ran out when the score was 8 to 9—Graysen won! So then Graysen combat sparred Caelan. He did a really good job, and again they battled until time ran out . . . this time 7 to 8 with Caelan winning her already promised first place medal. 

Both matches were very exciting, and Buck made it home from work in time to watch and cheer—you can’t go wrong when all of your children are out there at the same time :) Gabby doesn’t like combat sparring, so she was helping judge the younger sparrers. Actually, all four kids helped with judging, score keeping, timing, and official paperwork. ACTUALLY even I was called out onto the floor to help with score keeping for sparring matches, apparently my orange belt (you know, one step up from white) qualifies me. My score-keeping match was for Brennen and Graysen regular sparring. Thankfully, this tournament is just for fun and practice, otherwise it would have been too intense for me to do my job, ha!

Let’s see, Caelan ended up with first in combat sparring, regular sparring, and forms; second in weapons. Gabby took first in weapons, and second in sparring and forms. Brennen had first in sparring and forms, second in combat sparring, and didn’t do weapons. Graysen was first in combat sparring and second in regular sparring and weapons. Basically, with the small pool of competition, our kids took the top spots in every match in which they competed often only being out-placed by each other. Tournaments are a lot of fun, if they weren’t so expensive and  generally far away, we’d likely do a lot more of them :)

After the tournament, we came home for just a couple hours (if even that). I swapped laundry loads like a woman on a mission, and then (the story is long and complex, I will save you the details of fighting with Amazon and fast forward to where our missing box is mysteriously delivered containing the chicken “medicine” I needed) I worked on mixing up a batch of chicken food with diatomaceous earth. This crushed crustacean meal apparently is super healthy for their digestive systems and can eradicate any issues with worms they might be having. We’ve never noticed any issues, but a chicken lady Buck found on youtube said that any animals that live outside probably have worms and with chickens this could affect egg production. Well, with our seven remaining chickens we only have been collecting three eggs a day. This isn’t cool! So, we ordered diatomaceous earth (which is super fun to say out loud, by the way) to try to fix any potential problems we may have. The funny thing is, as soon as I put my special concoction in the food box, I checked the eggs and there were NINE in the nest! This means either that stuff works by proximity (since no chickens had eaten any yet), the now-patched hole in the fence was access for a non-chicken killing, but egg-stealing creature, or the kids forgot to collect eggs for a few days. I guess we’ll see what they produce today!

Sorry, I’m easily distracted by chickens. Back to the karate stuff . . . we only had this short amount of time between the tournament and the two parties our kids volunteered to help with that afternoon/evening. Buck helped Graysen put together a police officer costume (since Graysen’s first costume plan hasn’t yet come to fruition) and the girls helped Brennen put the final touches on his LEGO Guy costume (hot glue, oh yeah! Actually Buck helped with this too). Gabby put together Scottish girl accessories to join her birthday kilt, and Caelan decided I am terrible at applying Egyptian make-up to her face. “I look like a raccoon.” Well, yeah, I’m more of a chicken person ;)

We finally made it out the door and to the event, only about 10 minutes late. Buck, in the meantime, ran to the hardware store to buy our pastor a pair of axes for his birthday (which Gabby wrapped before we left). Then, he planned to nap while we were at the karate parties, so he could go to Qdoba with the guys for dinner. It has been a long time since Buck went out with friends . . . like California long . . . for dinner or birthday festivities. He said it was him, several guys from his “cohort” (we started attending a six-month “school” at church; a training for leadership that reads books, writes papers, and meets monthly for discussion), a couple of elders, and some pastors from church. It was so odd to come home to him being out, but I’m glad he’s finding a good crew of guys to connect with (by the way, we’re also completing membership requirements in preparation to join this church; my we’re busy people!)

At the party, I helped our karate teacher’s wife judge the costume parade (I’m kind of an expert because I helped out last year, hee hee : ) Caelan wrangled kiddos, and then each of our four picked a game station and ran carnival-type fun for the three-to-six-year-olds and next the seven-to-twelve-year-olds. Actually, Graysen decided to join this group, but he had trained a young lady to take over his “tape the smile on the skeleton” station. Gabby helped kids bounce eyeballs into cups taped to the floor, Caelan did the ring toss for pop and water, and Brennen did suction cup throwing stars against the mirrors. They are all so good with younger kids! I overheard parents saying, “This was a blast!” I told our crew that they helped make it a fun, safe event for the families who came, and that’s really neat! They always have fun doing things like this.

Okay, this has grown long. I’m going to switch to a new post for the rest of my updates!

Fall Fun Take II

Graysen accompanied me on a shopping trip to get groceries and also select pumpkins for this year’s pumpkin carving festivities. He managed to push a giant cart with four heavy gourds in addition to all the other heavy stuff I added along the way that wouldn’t fit into my giant cart with the heavy everything else inside :)

Back at home, it took a couple of days to get those pumpkins off the landing and into the carving arena of our back deck. From there the three youngest took on this project with zero parental facilitation—wait, I take that back, Buck cut the pumpkin tops off for them. We ended up with a giant bucket of pumpkin guts to give the chickens, and we roasted the seeds for our favorite fall treat (okay, not our favorite, favorite, but it’s on the list : )

Gabby made a Yoda with a stencil and it looks rad lit up! Brennen made a traditional smiley face. Graysen started with a Green Bay symbol, but cut a couple of connectors, so ended up with a circle. Caelan chose not to participate and thus donated her pumpkin to Graysen for a second try. He ended up making a tree (perhaps a hint at his hoped for costume creation).

Another bit of fall fun—we went to a much-raved-about pumpkin patch for homeschool days. Actually, we didn't know we qualified for this particular homeschool day (it was a special co-op group day reserved for a huge group we're not part of), so we were stoked when they only charged us half the price and gave us free coupons for things : ) We knew a lot of friends from church would be there (because we joined a weekly Bible study group too) and they were raving about how amazing this pumpkin patch is—“like Disneyland.” That made the cold, rainy, muddy day more fun . . . running into new friends, older new friends, homeschool friends, pastors, pastors' wives; it was like a reunion around every corner!

They would have ridden these cars all day long! So much mud splatter at the end of the track :)

Our crew was excited to bump into the M family--friends E and F and S; they all had a blast blasting balls in the three story tall air gun barn. Buck and I just watched in awe as the sky filled with flying objects and kids appeared and disappeared with amazing speed. The K family appeared too, though we didn’t get to spend much time with them; we just sent them towards the parakeet pens . . . to see more of the flighted friends we had given them pretty much as soon as we got back from vacation. Those noisy birds were lovely to watch, but needed to be re-homed (again) for my sanity. Thankfully, the K kids love their new pets :)

Next, we wandered through the corn maze and my shoes were soaked through to my socks, not ideal. We ate some hot soup, found a pressed penny machine, watched some pig races, saw a pumpkin shoot out of a cannon, and kept discovering new nooks and crannies around every turn. A lot of it was for a younger crowd than ours, but I think everyone enjoyed the experience. I don’t think G$ wanted to leave—the place was filled with cutouts, and he wanted to try just about every one :)

I so very much enjoyed a hot shower and clean pajamas when we returned home, ahhhh, that’s cozy fall to me. Get me a fireplace, a book, and a cup of chai (you could always throw in a softly lit Christmas tree action) and I’m a happy camper. I just need to get all this blogging done so I’m ready for non-action when the tree goes up :)

And speaking of Christmas . . . it came a little early for Buck AGAIN this year. He’d received loads of hunting apparel from his dad in Colorado shortly before our youth hunting weekend in September. While Buck was thanking him for these things, he asked for advice on purchasing a bow . . . something he’s been looking into for several years. His dad said, “Well, I’m not going to be using mine anymore, so . . .”

When Buck heard the boxes were in the mail, he could not stop watching mail trucks drive by. We were heading out to lunch together when the unknown delivery day finally arrived. No sooner did the mail carrier have the trunk keys in his hand, than Buck ran out the door (not exaggerating) and stood jumping with both fists in the air next to the mail truck. A reaction remarkably similar to his son opening his birthday gifts just couple weeks before : ) 

“Do you need any help? How many boxes are there?” He peppered the mailman with enthusiastic questions and was soon racing inside with his freshly delivered gear.

“Okay, we can go now,” he said to me.

“Yeah, right! Like you’d rather wait until after lunch to open those boxes,” I laughed.

“Well, maybe I should make sure everything shipped okay.” Ha! And into the boxes he went. Sooo excited to see all the special things tucked inside. Even a new deer cleaning kit like the one Brennen got from grandpa. He was almost giddy : )

We did eventually make it to lunch, but as soon as the kids and I set out for guitar lessons (Brennen wasn’t feeling well so he stayed home) Buck had the target out in the back yard and the arrows were flying. He decided he needs a beefier target or else the arrows are going to go all the way through, leaving their feathers behind. He’s had worse problems, lol! I’m so glad he got this unexpected gift in the mail; a happy hunter for sure!