Karate Class and October fun

Rett had his first karate class! There are a lot of rules, and a lot of sitting still, but he loves it. We are working on the sitting still part :) Before class begins, they get their attendance card and then still in a line on the floor and wait.

Then they line up and run across the room in a line to put their attendance cards in the right spot. 

Then the instructors assign each kid a start to stand on. They have to cover it with their feet or the instructors will come and try to "steal" their star. Rett took it very seriously and would fall over a few times because he didn't want to move his feet from his star.

They played a game where they had to watch which noodle the instructor was holding up. If it was one color they were supposed to do jumping jacks, if it was another color they were supposed to do squats. Rett just watched everyone else and did what they were doing a second after they started. Short cut!

Learning a muscle block:

Getting ready for a kick:

Here a few videos from his second class. He is too stinkin' cute!!

Rett came out to find me and James getting eggs from the chicken coop. He decided to put my boots on the wrong feet and he has no pants or underwear. So typical!

I bought a pumpkin for us to carve and James was very excited and told me that he wanted to "design" it. He even got a piece of paper to show me what he wanted and he watched me carve to make sure I would do it exactly how he wanted it. Once it starts to go bad, we will go ahead and give it to the chickens. It is so nice having a natural garbage disposal!

We made another trip around the neighborhood looking for fence panels and as we were getting out of the truck, we heard Rett yell "Help!". He had unbuckled his seat belt but got caught in it trying to get out. It was so funny!!

Anthony discovered patches of sandspurs in our backyard so he did the only sensible thing and PUT GASOLINE ON THEM AND BURNED THEM. So there are patches of burned grass all over the yard now. Hopefully it at least works and we won't have sand spurs anymore.

Our funny chickens all fight to use the same nesting box to lay their eggs, sometimes at the same time:

A robotics club visited James' school and did some demonstrations with them. I thought this one was pretty cute:

They also had a tshirt cannon that they built and it actually shot tshirts! James said that the shirts were just for the big kids though (the middle schoolers I'm guessing).

The firefighters also made a visit to school for fire safety week, which was very exciting. James still insists that he is going to be firefighter some day!

It was a beautiful night to watch a rocket launch from the boat ramp. It was so neat to see it and then hear it minutes later!

James' school had their annual STEAM night with all kinds of science activities. This was the water balloon slingshot:

They had a visit from "Doug Danger" a motorcycle stuntman. He talked a little bit about safety and not doing drugs (it was very 90's) and then did some stunts for the kids. They were soooooo excited about it, I thoughr they were going to push over the chain barrier and fall into the road!

James was too nervous to try the Van de Graaf generator that you touch and it makes your hair stand straight up. Rett gave it a shot, but since we had just walked through a little bit of rain his wet hair wouldn't stand up. I love his face though!

James really liked the squishy circuits table. They used play doh and wires to make different kinds of circuits to power fans and lights:

It turns out we missed an entire room of exhibits that had the coding robots and bunch of other cool things. We will have to make sure to remember that for next year!

Park and Kennedy Space Center

It wasn't too hot to play at the park that doesn't have a shade cover, so we had fun playing somewhere different. The ice cream truck stopped by so the boys got Popsicle. Rett had two licks before is started dripping down his arm and making him sticky, so he threw his in the trash almost immediately. (No more Popsicles for him!!!) James did a good job of finishing his mega Popsicle, but I had to stand far away from him because the wind kept blowing melted Popsicle at me!

James school started a "morning mile" program where 30 minutes before school starts anyone who wants to can walk laps around the school for some exercise. They get a red straw for every lap that they do and the kids are very competitive with each other about how many straws they get. Every day James wants to leave for school earlier and earlier so that he can get more laps in and get even more straws. At the end of the 30 minutes, all the kids turn in their straws and mark down how many they did. Then the PE coach tallies their laps down and they earn charms for a necklace based on their distance. The first morning everyone got participation medals for walking, even Rett!

General conference weekend Seabiscuit pushed a hole through his fence and escaped! We didn't realize it until late in the afternoon and we hoped that he was hiding somewhere in our yard. The next day we looked everywhere for him but still couldn't find him. I was really hoping that he had just hid himself so good in the yard that we didn't see him. On Monday morning Anthony put missing posters at the beginning of our street and the phone calls started! It seems like every neighbor on our road saw him at one point over the weekend except for us! I talked to one woman who said someone pulled over and took him in their car and said that they were going to give him to a rescue place they knew. She told me she thought they lived at the very end of our street, over the railroad tracks. Our street is pretty divided between the front paved section of houses with small lots (1ish acres) and the other side of the train tracks where the street is not paved and the lots are more like 5-10 acres. So I took the boys down the dirt road section of our street and knocked on 6+ doors until I found the house who knew where Seabiscuit was. It turns out, the people in the car were their grandchildren who live near orlando and they had taken Seabiscuit home with them and then given him to their friend who has tortoises in Deltona. It took about a week of phone calls back and forth trying to get a hold of the right people, but we finally got him home. What a trouble maker!

Now he is living inside the house until we can finish his more secure pen made of wood in the backyard. It is kind of cold for him in the house, so he mostly just sleeps in whatever corner he feels comfortable in that day. We did use a non-toxic glue to put a gps tracker and a dog tag with our contact info on his shell just in case this ever happens again. Hopefully we will never have to use it!

I brought our tortoise out to meet him. He was too busy chowing down to notice. We aren't sure but we think ours is a girl based on the rate it is growing so hopefully these two will give us baby tortoises one day!

We spent way too much money at the pet store buying things for the festival goldfish tank. We even bought a few fresh water fish to keep them company :) James' goldfish died soon after we set them all up, but Rett's is still going strong.

We took our annual trip to Kennedy Space Center! We had a great time, the boys loved it and they were tired out before we were! There is always so much to see there, even though we have been there quite a few times I still don't think I have seen everything. Our first stop was the bus tour to the Saturn V center and to see the launch pads.

Rett is terrible about taking pictures right now. As soon as you tell him you are going to take a picture, he tries to hide.

The boys both went into the international space station model to crawl around and then they came back out of the entrance. The exit has them crawl through a see-through tube that is two stories in the air and when they got to that part, James told Rett, "We can't do that, we have to go back".

After they came back out, Rett went right back in, crawled all the way through the see-through part and as soon as he popped out he said, "See James, I told you I could do it!".

Anthony and the boys went down the shuttle slide a few times:

James was tall enough to go on the launch simulator ride this time, but Rett has a few more inches before he can make the cut. They let us all get in line and then right before it started, they took me and Rett to the "VIP viewing area" that has tv screens set up like mission control that show what is happening inside the ride. They let Rett push the big green button that starts the ride and even gave him a silver NASA coin. I think he had better time than James did!

See you next year NASA!