Band buddies

Eric and I worked on our bracelets this weekend.  E finished his daddy's first (sweet boy).  Then he finished his own and helped me finish mine.

Blueberry Picking

Well, I finally have a moment to go back and blog a bit.  Back in July we went blueberry picking.  That was a different experience for us.  We are not big berry eaters of any kind, but we love blueberries in smoothies.  It was a hot, very sunny day.  And the berries were heavily picked over, so we had to dig to find them.  I was afraid that I would need to limit us to one bucketful.  Not an issue.

We would search til we found some dark blue ones.  They start as green, then turn red, then dark blue.  We were told they would not continue to ripen once picked, so we needed to only get blue ones.  After we picked them, we looked through to make sure they were all blue before putting them into the bucket.  

Cutest helper ever!!!!!

After finishing up and getting a drink.  Look at the boy's hair.  He is a seriously sweaty boy.  

We joined other homeschoolers for some blueberry science.  Yep, homeschoolers meet all year long.  

This boy loves some chemistry.  He was a happy fella.  

New friends

We made some friends this summer on the swim team.  This particular family is homeschooled.  We have gotten together with them once a week to swim, and Eric has lots of fun.  This picture was a couple of weeks ago when they found a praying mantis on the rail.

There are three boys - 13, 10, and 6 - and one girl - 1.  

This one is from earlier this month also.  

The nice thing is when we swim with them now, we are usually the only people at the pool.  :) 

New game

Eric is always creating or coming up with new rules for games.  I really need to show you his Lego Clue adaptation sometime.  It is quite impressive.  But, he made a new game for us that uses a Lego gameboard he made and a deck of cards.  We had fun playing it last night  He is such a creative fella.

That was my character.  I won.  Just sayin...

Food Truck Fun

Friday Robert got off early and came to Eric's swim practice.  We decided to go afterward to a food truck festival that was being held nearby.

The lines were LONG.

After he decided what he wanted to order, we let Eric wait with the chairs.  She went a lot harder on them Thursday and Friday, so he was worn out.  

But still super cute!

We chose to get savory crepes from The French Truck.  They were so yummy!


Then we got King of Pops bars.  King of Pops is native to Atlanta, and is run out of lots of carts and trucks.

I got Blackberry Ginger Lemonade, and Eric got Key Lime Pie.  They were sold out of a lot of them by the time we got there.  The Key Lime Pie was delicious.  Even had a graham cracker crust.  Mine was good, but not as awesome as Eric's.  

And then it was time for some hula hooping.  :)

We had lots of fun.  

Rainbow Loom

The Rainbow Loom craze hit most of Eric's friends a couple of years ago.  He never was interested in it.  However after bible class a week and a half ago, one of the students showed us her pretty awesome creations.  Eric was very impressed and instantly wanted a loom.  We did some research online, and he bought a loom a few days later.  Of course, he didn't want to make any of the easy, plain, simple bracelets.  Nope, he wants to go straight to the 3D creations.  (sigh.  I get it.  I am the same way)  I convinced him to start with a bracelet, but not one of the easy ones.  He chose red, blue, and black because that is the colors of the empire in his Star Wars Commander game, and he thinks they look cool.

He took right to it, and is doing great.  He's making his dad a bracelet too. 

Back to swim

This boy has missed the water.  He has played in it, but not to the extent he is used to living in that chlorinated second home.  Swim started back this week.  I had one nervous, excited fella.

She has gone pretty easy on them this week.  We are very thankful for that.  He is still sore and tired, but she is easing them in.  Here is a drill they have worked on.  On breaststroke and butterfly, you do not flip at the wall, so this drill helps them learn to come off the wall fast.  He is about in the middle of the pool.  His goggles look dark.  When they come up, one boy comes up first, then two come up.  Eric is on the left of the two that come up second.  

Here is a time they were doing the drill on my side of the pool. 

E's group.  He is 3 to the right of the coach.  

Lego Weekend

So we had some Lego stuff all weekend.  

We knew Eric had an event at Legoland on Saturday to launch the new Airjitzu spinners.  Eric had one, but had not really been able to play with it much.  It flies kind of crazy and would go all over the living room.  So Friday night we went to the field in our neighborhood and played around with it.  It turned into a competition to see who could catch the spinner first.  

Unfortunately I have no pictures of the competition.  We were all actively playing.   But here is Eric practicing with his launcher.  

Saturday was another Creative Crew event at Legoland.  This fella was pumped and ready.  

How does he already look so big.  I ordered him an Adult S shirt at the beginning of the summer. And I have not dried it.  Sigh.  He is growing so fast!

First they had the creative crew build the new Airjitzu spinners.  

Then they let the crew practice them in the towers they had set up.  The towers were so smart.  Someone would definitely have been injured otherwise.  

Then they wanted the crew to help with the other kids coming in.  Eric was really the only kid who did this.  I think the age range of the creative crew was a little too young.  One of the kids couldn't even build his own spinner.  Hmmm... 

After about an hour and a half of this, they had a Airjitzu tournament.  They let you spin 3 times and see who got their spinner the highest.  

Listening intently to the instructions.  

They disassembled their spinners and then rebuilt them.  Eric was the fastest at that.  By a long shot. But that wasn't the competition.   

Here is the spinner he built for the tournament. 

Master Builder Aries was tallying the scores after each launch.  Eric hit the top of the tower on all three of his spins, so we knew he did well.  Another boy also hit the top of the tower all 3 times.  So, they had the two of them disassemble their spinners and have another round with just the two of them.  

They cleared the room of all but the two first place, and then the 3rd place boys.  This is a picture of the 3 of them.  The boy standing is the one who tied E.  Eric got a little over excited with his first pull, and it went wild, but the other two were great.  He came in second.  

They let them each choose a prize.  The first place boy chose the spinner that Eric already had at home, so Eric pretty much had a choice of whatever he wanted.  He chose this set.  

Professor Rod is pictured in the background above.  When we first got there, they let the kids pick a ninjago poster.  They had a poster of all the Ninjago minifigures (that's what E chose), and they also had posters of each Ninjago character individually, except Zane.  I couldn't believe there was no Zane (He is my favorite).  Professor Rod heard me and went and got me a Zane button for my shirt.  Then he asked me my favorite color (red) and went and got me a red one later as well.  Here is my first one.  

Then on Sunday I took Eric to the Lego day at the library.  Here is his Lego Safari.  You can also see his new signature in this one.  He started making a long slash after his S last week.  

Also, yesterday was his buddy Dawson's birthday.  He made a lego scene and we sent him a couple of pictures.  

Here is the cake with the two rods to represent the number 11.  

More first day pics

First day back at our once a week school.  Oh this kid.  He is getting so big.  He has to carry a laptop to school now too.  

I have started working there the same hours he is there.  I am a monitor and help the kids get to where they need to be, check their uniforms, and make sure the area is safe.   Since yesterday was my first day, we got there very early.  So, after our paperwork was turned in, we sat outside and enjoyed breakfast.  

My super serious thinker.  He has always had a serious expression when he is thinking.  I love it! 

In Chemistry his teacher gave them each a lab coat, safety goggles, and a badge.  How fun is that!

In art they are doing a project that I considered doing for the first day of school ourselves.  You trace your hands and feet and then draw yourself behind it.  I'm glad I decided not to do it.  

He had a great day and enjoyed seeing his friends.  

I had a tiring but good day also.  That place is huge, and I did a lot of walking. 

Sixth grade

We have started 6th grade.

How is this possible?

This boy is in 6th grade.

Middle school.

How in the world is my baby in middle school?

When we moved here, Eric labeled all the school boxes for me.  He labeled them as Watkins Elementary.  That worked for last year.  But, now we have had an official name change to 

Watkins Academy

Today was the first day of school.  So, we took the obligatory teacher/student picture. 

Isn't he the cutest thing ever?  Oh, I love that student of mine!

He started the day with 6 donuts (for a 6th grader of course).  

He had to make a new notebook cover for his 6th grade notebook.  

He did an About Me page and wrote a letter to himself with some goals he hopes to accomplish for the year.  He will open the letter at the end of the year.  

He did his English.  Then we played 3 rounds of Pick Two (a fun, fast, Scrabble type game).  

We are almost finished with our lunch break, so time to get back to work.  

This boy and his books

This boy.  This boy loves to read.  He loves books.  Starting in 5th grade, I had him log his books and record the number of pages.  We kept it up through the summer (and are going to continue this year as well).  His total of pages read was 38,404.  These are books he reads just for fun.  It does not include any books read for school or readings of the Bible (he read the book of Luke so many times last year for Bible Bowl!), nor does it include magazines or partial readings.  And I know that sometimes we forget to record books.  I think we have been recording for 47 weeks, so that averages about 817 pages a week, a little over 116 pages a day.  Gotta keep reading ahead myself to keep this fella in books.