Connors Order of the Arrow

Connor was nominated by his troop to go earn his Order of the Arrow this year.  He was excited at first but then the whole process took so long he got a little bored, but maybe that was just for show! Anyway so there are 3 Ordeals this year, one this last weekend that was full, one at the end of MAy when he is gone for 8th grade field trip and the last in Novemeber. I felt bad signing him up for Nov because it's so far away and everyone would have it before him. (Did you know I'm competitive?) So I sent a email of to the main Lodge guy and asked if there was any type of waiting list for this last weekend. He emailed me back and said probably not. Then he did it and got him in! So Connor had 2 days warning and it was 2 weekends of camping in a row. Some boys would love this, not Connor. Since no other boy from our troop got in and I had the wonderful opportunity of driving him 1.5 hours to the camp in friday night traffic, yeah! He slept most of the way but it was a gorgeous drive through the mountains. Once we got there I signed him in and offered to sit with him or walk around and he said no. He said I walk that way and you go home. I was both, proud and sad. We picked him up Sunday morning, and it looks like a lot of people left early so he was maybe one of the last 20 kids to go. His first words were I hate you. Always a heart warming thing, but he was smirking sooooo.... He said on Saturday they got almost no food and they had to chop wood and haul it around to campsites all day. And that is about all the details I got. He is pretty low key but he did allow me to get one picture with his sash!
Is he in the same clothes in both pictures 3 days apart? Yes. Did he have opportunity to shower and not take it? Yes. But most importantly did he shower before school today? Thank heavens YES!!

Elle's first race!

After my last half marathon with my Mom, Elle commented that she wanted to run a race with me and earn a medal. This was very exciting for me of course so I went out and found a 1K. There was also a 5 K but I wasn't sure if she wanted to run that far yet and I wanted a really positive experience! So Kirk, Elle and I all trained for a 1 mile race :) Kirk just trained with us but then he went along to support us and take pictures! At the start line I noticed I was only one of maybe 5 adults running, it was almost all kids, I asked Elle is she wanted me to run with her and she said she didn't care. I thought well, I'm here and I'm trained (giggle) so I'll run it. I told her as we were waiting to start to not start sprinting as soon as they said go, remember to pace yourself. Then I said and don't look back for me, I'll be right behind you just go! They said GO and OFF SHE WENT! She sprinted out of there and I'm tripping over tiny 5 year olds trying to pace myself thinking it's ok she'll slow down... About 1/2 realizing umm she isn't slowing down so I spent the last 1/2 mile running as fast as I could reasonably go to try and catch her! Without luck of course! I felt really silly for the people cheering for me, when I wasn't running with a kid! Dork much??? She crossed the finish line 2nd overall at a time of 5:29!! Amazing! I was about 30 second later, so still an amazing time for me. Anyway you can see from the wild expression in my eyes that I can't believe how that just went! She had a great time and wants to do another and I figure that makes it a success!

Flower arranging

It's difficult to find clever ways to arrange flowers for Kirks secretary every year for secretaries day. Oh sorry administrative day. I've done vases, pitchers, jugs, you name it. But I haven't done a watering can!! So tada here is the arrangement for the year. The roses just called out to me, such a pretty color orangish yellow! I really do need some green filler something... maybe I'll go hunt some down,

Matts pictures

My Mom wants a cute picture of MAtt to update her picture frame. Her last picture of him is over a year old. So I'm looking through my Iphoto today trying to find pictures. And I'm feeling guilty because there are lots of Aj, Elle some of Connor but not as many as Matt. But I've discovered that it's not all my fault. Because when I take his picture he tries to look like this.

Connor and Ruger playing

Hopefully this works, I have trouble putting videos on blogger. This is Connor playing with Ruger on the stairs and it cracks me up every time I watch it!

Regional Gymnastic Competition

We traveled to Raleigh NC with a teammate and his mom. His dad works for Holiday Inn so we either got comped rooms or greatly discounted rates which was the coolest ever! Aj loved th pillows :) He was so patient as I continually told him to fuel up and eat more, drink more on the way up.

He had a great meet. He was able to earn a 7th place on the floor and 18th on the vault. They gave out medals to the 20th place. He was somewhere exactly in the middle on rings but had a rough time on high bar and parallel bars. Which put him exactly in the middle for over all rank. Not bad for his first time to regionals! the fact that he made it to this level is so cool! We stayed an extra day to watch the level 10 athletes compete, thats the top level. And that was sooo cool! AJ says e can see himself doing these moves in the future. I can see me having a heart attack! Its a tough sport, you only get 1 shot at it. anything goes wrong and there is no redo. But he loves to train and the sport so we'll see.

Afterward we walked around downtown Raleigh and saw the old State Capital which is beautiful and we got his picture with the statue listing the 3 Presidents that come from NC, 2 of which as Andrews!

The friends we drove with are Jewish and were still continuing the Passover diet restrictions until 5 pm Friday night so I got to learn a lot about that which I enjoyed. It was harder to stop for food, but they brought most of their stuff and just supplemented along the way. She wants to know a good kid type book that explains our church so their family can learn more, any ideas?

Caving

Since Matt started doing this online high school I haven't seemed to blog as much. I think it's because I mostly do it in the morning and thats when he is on the computer. Kirk has taken Matt and Connor to a cave about 2 hours away to learn the best places to take his Varsity Scouts camping and caving. I was very nervous the first time since my boys haven't caved before, and we didn't know the system. But they came back just fine but so disgustingly dirty! The next time they went a new route and Kirk couldn't sleep that night remembering all the dangerous things they had to do to go that route. None of them will go that way adagin. But it involved a giant underground waterfall and how cool is that!

This weekend they took the scouts and had a great time. It was a great chance for Matt and Connor to both lead since they now have experience. It was of course a amazing success with many of the boys telling their parents it was the coolest scout activity ever.