Holiday Review!

Oh, my goodness, what a holiday! Mine was a little short because of the trip and being sick but we got a lot of celebrating in during the two weeks I was in commission! Lainey came out to help me with the Winter Party at Autumn's class. I forgot to edit these AND I forgot to turn off the auto watermark so not only are the "photobooth" photos not very photoboothy, they are marked with the wrong blog name! Ah, well!

I had to take a turn, too! I got these props from Target for such a great price it was worth not having to make them, print them, and then put them on sticks. Yay for the popularity of photobooths!

I even used the props for these little monkeys. I'd say I got my money's worth.

After Autumn's class party, we had our dojo party the next day. This was our largest gathering of current and past members ever and we had a BLAST. Look at how many kids we had! Christy helped me out with this part; we did a white elephant party with new or used $5 or less gifts. Christy led the kids in the breakfast room and I guided the adults in the living room at the same time so it was fun and loud and silly. I'd love to do this again next year! This was definitely a year to celebrate--I got my black belt and Stephan graduated from college. Yes. I threw my own party. Don't tell Miss Manners! I justify it by calling it a "thank you for putting up with us while things were crazy" party.

Afterward, I found Autumn in her bucket of stuffed animals. Too funny. I think she was kind of done.

We had a late visit to see Santa. Autumn asked for two things. The first was a bell. I had no idea what she was talking about until she mentioned the Polar Express. One trip to hobby lobby and that was taken care of. The other took some serious googling. She asked for this Elf Talker. I tried all kinds of Google searches based on her description. I never had any luck and then FINALLY I plugged in North Pole Phone and LIKE MAGIC the thing was right there, exactly as she described it. I have no idea why no other search terms brought it up. It only "works" in December so Jerry the Elf brought the Northpole Communicator, although he usually just brings acts of kindness. Incidentally, Jerry found it at Walgreens on sale and he had a coupon.

Christmas morning was pretty great. Molly even joined us for the unwrapping. She had a present under the tree, too. Catnip toys! Seriously this company makes the best cat toys.

We didn't want too crazy of a Christmas this year so Santa only brought Autumn stocking stuffers and this outfit to match her late birthday/early Christmas gift of an American Girl doll. When Mike's mom first mentioned American Girl stuff, I had Autumn read as many of the books as were on her reading level so she could pick an historical doll that she liked. I was a little surprised that she chose Kit until she explained that it's because Kit is a writer. Santa brought Autumn this outfit that matches Kit's! Autumn even has red shoes because I got her some to go with the Christmas dress I made her! That wasn't planned but it's a happy coincidence.

My mom spent the night with us Christmas Eve and had Christmas morning with us like she has done for a few years now. It was extra fun because we watched Elf and ate pizza and then we had french toast for breakfast.

Autumn insisted on wearing her Kit outfit all day which was cute but it was a little cold for it. I made her put on leggings but Autumn took them off as soon as we got to Lainey and Pd's house. She and Ellie made an accessorized pair.

Something fun and silly, later that night after naps, Mike, Brad and I sampled one of Brad's gifts: blini, caviar, and creme fraiche! This is what Brad thought. I ate two. The first was fishier than I expected but the second was pretty good. Mike chose not to partake a second time which is hilarious considering he like sushi (nigiri!) so much.

Fun times! Not too crazy once the parties and tests and decorating was over. I'll post pictures of the house on my other blog soon. I'm very proud of myself for getting it done, haha. I know it's silly but I guess it's my thing. Anyway, I hope your Christmas went smoothly and that there was joy in your time with family and friends!

Fancy Nancy and Her First Aikido Demo

A couple weeks ago, we had our first Aikido demo that featured some of our elementary age students! Aren't they adorable??

Autumn's partner, who is also an orange belt (none of my yellow belts could make it), had to temporarily move to Florida because his dad is undergoing a certain kind of cancer treatment. So, I let the white belts work together on some of the more simple moves and then I let Autumn do her thing with me. Here she is doing shihonage which is a throw.

And ikkyo which ends in a pin! Look at that serious face! She did super well and my mouth is open all weird like that because I was narrating, haha. I feel really bad for people who have to watch me teach because still shots of me always look crazy.

At the end, Autumn and Ella demonstrated an exercise we do at the end of class. Going...

Going...

Gone! I CANNOT STAND HOW ADORABLE HER FEET ARE. I know. It's weird. And normally feet are kind of gross to me but something about Autumn in seiza just tickles me.

Anyway, changing gears...they had dress like your favorite book character day at school earlier this month!! We did some going around about it but Autumn settled on Fancy Nancy. She wanted to be Elsa or Anna but I told her no, unless she wanted to be the Snow Queen because Frozen was a movie first. I felt kind of bad because when we got to school, guess what we saw? Like 10 Elsas. And a Lego Movie character. Sooo, yeah. I told her never to tell any of the Elsas I said this but that I mainly wanted her to do something more creative than throwing on her Elsa dress.

I'd say she was creative! We pulled everything in this costume from home except for the wig which I got really cheap at Target. We put a handkerchief over her hair because the wig was itchy. It did the trick and Autumn wore the wig all day. It was awesome. I had a good time, too, obviously. But it wasn't just Autumn's costume, I got to take pictures of all the kids and they were so fun! Costumes are the best. Speaking of, I still don't know what I want to be for Halloween. Maybe I'll be Fancy Nancy...I bet I can find some stuff...

Yay! Orange Belt

I have beach pictures to share but I absolutely had to post these first! Autumn got her orange belt and she did a fabulous job. She had to do some extra training to get all the elements down. A couple of piece of footwork gave her some trouble but she knocked it out of the park on test day. She had to demonstrate two versions of one technique in addition to basic footwork, strikes, etc. and it's one of the harder ones. I think we learn it first because no one ever really masters it, ha! Of course, I just say that because it's one I still have trouble executing on certain people. This is the version where you move to your partner's front.

And it ends in a pin. Look at that posture and those cute feet!

This is the back version and it's fun because your partner ends up kind of flying around like a helicopter blade! Stephan took these pictures and I am so excited that he got this one. It's excellent ukemi on Jeffrey's part and Autumn looks good. Her knees should be more bent than her back but, seriously, this is fantastic.

And this is one happy student. She was so excited about her test that she put on her uniform and belt before lunch time! She's lucky we're in summer uniforms or she would have had to wear the jacket around! I found out that Jeffrey was pumped, too. He wore his uniform to get a hair cut. I love it. Autumn hasn't always loved aikido and not every day is as great as this one, but I'm glad we were persistent and kept at it. I don't want to *make* her do martial arts but so far my plan of making it casually part of our life is working. Perhaps not forever but for today and hopefully long enough to give her some good tools. As a side note, I have no idea why my uniform is so scruffy. I blame it on the preschoolers!

Other than testing, last week was a full week! We had swim lessons with Mrs. Christy and we rescued a doggie. Autumn has been playing Nintendogs on my old DS and she was absolutely thrilled to get to walk a dog for real. I know she was hoping that we'd never find the owner but with some detective work we did. The dog had on a LEASH (so dangerous!!) but no tag. I called our vet to see if they could scan for a microchip if it came to it. I would have also had them bathe the dog because he was, while adorable, smelly as all get out. I walked around a bit asking people if they'd seen someone walking the dog and ended up at a stretch of apartments across from where we found the dog. We were looking for a yard with dog things when the owner came our whistling. She seemed alarmingly unconcerned that her dog had been wandering with a leash on across a busy parking lot. :( But, Mike is just glad we didn't have to bring the dog home!

Speaking of animals, Autumn is a cat. She's sitting in the cat bed the our friend Amy gave us. Her cat wouldn't sleep in it. Molly won't either. But Autumn uses it to look out the window. We had a random, terrible storm blow through Wednesday. We watched it come in until Autumn got nervous and then we did some chores to take her mind off it.

This is just cute.

I believe that's it for now! Next week we'll have beach photos and some long lost Uncle Brad! While we were gone I think Molly realized that the betta fish is a real, live fish. I don't know if this is going to end well but at least I didn't throw away the lid. Molly was watching the fish HARD this afternoon. Autumn and I laughed about it and then she said, "Are you getting a nervous feeling?" Hahahaha.

Summertime, FINALLY

Can you believe that it's June 23 and I am FINALLY done blogging the month of May? Seriously, that it exactly why we had Autumn's birthday party in June! Speaking of, Part 1 of her Frozen party is over at Passing Pinwheels! Part 2 should be up tomorrow. The summer has been pretty good so far! Not too stressful which is good. Autumn is going to camp a couple days a week and that's fun. On non camp days, she gets a bit in the morning to chill and be lazy. Like this:

That bag next to her is Autumn's swim bag. She's doing swim lessons with my friend Christy since the level 4 and 5 Red Cross swim lessons are at times that we can't make it. I'm also taking her once a week or so to swim a few laps and then play a bit at the gym pool. I'm not sure if we're going to do the swim team again this year but we'll see! She loves to swim, though, so swim team or not we're really working with her this summer.

The beginning of June was crazy wet. We've been able to play in rain and puddles and even entertain ourselves with drops while waiting to get into a restaurant! We don't go out very often and I can't for the life of me remember why we were eating out that night but there must have been some reason.

We have the sad news that Kyle and Lindsay are having to move out of the house across the street. We're all super sad. They even tried to put an offer on the house but the owner wasn't interested. The neighborhood is lamenting big time! I'm so sad that we won't be able to just tap on the door and do this kind of thing. Have I used the word sad enough in this paragraph?

My aikido classes are ongoing throughout the summer (YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO COME) so we're still at it! How cute are these guys? We did a jo day and they did a fantastic job. Summer is either feast or famine in all my classes--everyone or hardly anyone depending on travel. This one was pretty small but it worked out because they are all roughly the same age and skill level so class when quite well.

We did have a sad (there's that word again...) Saturday night/Sunday morning. Autumn forgot that she had pizza on Friday and had ice cream on Saturday which is a recipe for sad tummy times. I didn't know because she went to eat without us so I was surprised when she ran into our room at about 4am, saying her tummy hurt. She climbed in and I tried to calm her down. She had her head on my shoulder and she's not much of a snuggler these days so it was kind of nice. BUT. Thank goodness Mike got the barf bucket because right as I was falling back to sleep, she sat up and said, "I AM GOING TO THROW UP" and immediately did so into the bucket. CLOSE CALL. She settled down a after hanging out in our bathroom for a while and we made her a pallet on the floor (because she likes to sleep like a starfish and also because puke). Note the ponytail for better puking access. She made it about 2 hours before it all started over again. So sad! But, by 10am, all was well again!

While all this was happening, this is pretty much how Molly took it. She's like, whatever, I puke alllllll the time and you don't see me being dramatic. Full disclosure, I didn't take this photo that day. She was doing some wildlife watching sometime this month.

Kind of funny thing about Molly. A friend gave us a cat bed that her cat turned her nose up at. Molly didn't even acknowledge it after burying her face in it a time or two to smell. What does she lay on instead? Blocks and shoes. Cats are weird.

I hope everyone is having a great summer so far! May you have occasional times when you are as comfy as a kitty.

Autumn's last days as a 6 year old...wah!

OMG, EVERYONE. Autumn is going to be SEVEN on WEDNESDAY. How can this beeeeee? I've been working on her present. Her birthday party, which won't be huge, will be in June. It's a frozen party and I've been looking for one of the nice Elsa dresses but they sell out quickly and only those pricey 3rd party sellers have them--for $200!!! Which, no. So, I'm making her a dress and I'll give it to her on her actual birthday. I finished the dress remarkably quickly (I still have to hem it but I'm going to do that after she tries it on) but the cape is giving me some trouble. I'm back on track after a consult with nanny so I'll put it on the other blog after I do my Tamara's wedding post.

In other news, we went to the Fair on the Square in Collierville. I worked the Collierville Arts Academy booth Saturday and did a short demo on Sunday. So far no new students but a sensei can hope. On the plus side, I got to play with lightsabers.

We met one of Autumn's friends from school there Sunday and we had a good time. I am terrible at playdates so the Fair was a super fun way to do something different.

We met the neighbors at the school park on Wednesday. I don't know why, but it never dawned on me to hang out after school on a day when I don't have to run off to work to let Autumn play. She had a good time.

And while we were there, they decided to meet again at the library on Friday. That went better than I expected. They had fun for about an hour, looking at books and playing on the pretend fire truck.  By the way, Autumn read her biggest chapter book yet! She read the junior novelization of the Frozen story--26 chapters! I'm going to have to direct her to different books now that I know she can handle that length.

Oh, and check it out, our roses are blooming! I need to prune them big time so I cut a whole swath and put it in Mike's office.

And, last thing for this week, Autumn and Mike went swimming at a friend's house. The water was super cold so I wasn't going near it! They were pretty cute, though. I swear Autumn is part fish! She splashed around and danced and practiced her swim strokes long after Mike wasn't able to take it anymore. Nice job 6.98 year old!

Fall Mobile Moments!

OH MY GOSH IT IS SO COLD. Seriously it's in the TWENTIES. I don't think that the earth got the memo that Memphis isn't supposed to be this cold pre-Thanksgiving. Fortunately, Autumn and Kiri are prepared:


We have also had a TON of soup to combat the chill. I tried something new--I made homemade ramen! I know it's terrible but I looooove the 25 cents a package ramen so when I saw real ramen noodles at the store, I thought I'd give it a try. It was super easy to make and way delicious. Plus, Autumn was excited to get to use her training chopsticks. Eventually, her hands got tired and we made her take a fork but she gave it a solid try.


In preparation for the book fair, the school had a book cover contest. Autumn ended up doing a different book but she started about trying to draw a cover for her Fancy Nancy book treasury. It didn't go well and there was a LOT of grumbling and muttering. When she showed me her first attempt, I said, "Look, it's great! Wasn't that fun?"


Then she turned her paper around. APPARENTLY it was so NOT FUN that she wrote NOT FUN on the back of her paper! I laughed hysterically and made her take a picture with both sides. She didn't quite get that what made it funny was the timing (I said "wasn't that fun" and she turned her paper around at that moment) and started writing "not fun" on everything and laughing like a hyena.


Anyway, in slightly normal news, we went to the Shanghai Ballet at GPAC! My mom took us which was really nice of her. The ballet was lovely but also baffling. Here's how I described it to Autumn: "The girl is dressed like a boy at a school for some reason. She falls in love with a boy but he doesn't know she's a girl. There's a bully who is mean. The boy finds out that she's a girl and they fall in love. Then, the girl has to marry someone rich. Turns out it's the mean bully. She doesn't want to. Her dad will make her. She meets the boy. The mean bully has him killed. And then...she...goes to the grave and dies...either in a snowstorm or from sad? And then...they, well, come back to life as butterflies. The end." Autumn assures me that she died in a snowstorm so I guess she knew what was happening and didn't need my help!


On the other end of the spectrum, we did this:



Fun!! I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! If you want to see what we'll be doing this December, visit passing pinwheels! There's also a free advent calendar printable if you're interested. We're still looking for ideas for the 25 Days of Kindness so definitely chime in if you have any suggestions!