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.

Friday Field Trip Fun

Friday was 66 degrees. In July. IN MEMPHIS. I was so disappointed that it was raining because we were supposed to meet friends at the zoo. We ended up over at the Pink Palace for their new bug exhibit. Oddly, Autumn liked the real spiders better than the fake ones which is oddly consistent. Remember this? And you should totally click that link because it's adorable. Back to today, Autumn and I did the spider cutout. Look at her side-eyeing my happiness.

Because I'm an embarrassing mom, I made her pretend like she was going to eat me.

Um, the kids had fun, too.

I promise I wasn't hogging the stage. :)

We went to lunch after the Pink Palace and by the time we were done eating, the rain stopped. It was only 1pm, we were already in East Memphis, and, seriously SIXTY SIX DEGREES. So we went to the zoo. Mimi had to go on home so Aurora could nap which was too bad but Sara was able to stay so Autumn had someone other than her crazy mom to hang out with. We saw this new bird feeding spot. It was a dollar for a feeding stick so I let Autumn get one. I am so glad I did! Check out the three birds!

Autumn was pretty good with the birds. She stood still and stayed calm the whole time. She was also patient with holding the stick out to tempt the budgies.

I had to include this because Jeffrey looks so happy and look at that cool bird takeoff! Plus, check out Autumn's travel outfit. She decided to be Fancy Nancy that day. She wore about 6 necklaces and some bracelets. Plus rain boots and rain coat.

The zoo was really empty so there was no line for camel rides. Last year I asked Autumn if she wanted to try and she said no. I can't remember if we were there with friends so it was either Autumn getting braver or the confidence of having a friend. Autumn loved it. They got to see a baby camel with a back mohawk running around, too!

Sara and I laughed so hard at the kids because they were all about pictures. They kept stopping for photo ops, like we were paparazzi or something.

Autumn doesn't quite have majestic explorer pose down but check out Jeffrey.

I might have to edit this one a little and give Jeffrey a copy. So cute!

More majestic exploring. I thought I had one of Autumn venturing forth but I seem to have caught her in the process of becoming majestic.

Look at the wolf!! She was chilling there on the ledge so we could see her so close up. There's a plexiglass wall in front of the rail where the kids are. It kind of looks like the wolf could just hop over!

SIGH. School starts in 2 weeks. I am not ready. I love having Autumn at home. Hopefully it'll be an easy transition. We have been doing some math, science, and writing over the summer to keep us both in practice. This is one of the projects from her Young Scientists Club subscription. I got it half off and so far we're enjoying it. We're enjoying it more than the math book we're working through, that's for sure!!!

Beach Two!

I didn't take a ton of photos at the beach so this is heavily supplemented by Mike who I can't talk into writing a post. Which is too bad! What is NOT too bad?? Check out Autumn's hand position on that noodle. It's the same hand position as the one I've been teaching her with a bokken and a jo. SHE'S BEEN PAYING ATTENTION.

This is how Mike utilized the noodles. That's a happy camper.

I spent the first few days trying to talk Mike into parasailing. I thought it'd be something fun and different and Autumn might like it. However, Mike thought it might be better to ease her into the crazy stuff with jet-skiing so off we went! Autumn was a little nervous but as we waited, she got excited. The water was pretty calm that day so they let us all go on one jet ski which is good because Autumn stayed sandwiched between us. We had a whole hour and it was a blast! Autumn spent the rest of the trip begging to go again and we had to break it to her that it's probably a once a year deal.

Here's what she thought about that. Hahaha, no. This is Autumn attempting to nap on the beach. She wasn't a fan but it was our last day so I thought she should take advantage of the time.

This is the first year that crabs didn't absolutely freak Autumn out. One night we took lanterns out and watched the little crabs scuttle about. I meant to bring our telescope but we had to settle for stargazing.

Back to non-beach pictures, this is Autumn playing horse shoes with her new friend. Mike got this fun shot. It looks like when she throws a frisbee.

Here we are attempting a selfie on the way to the fireworks. Not too bad!

I really liked this. Mike took a picture of us taking pictures. This is everyone who was at the beach, except for Mike. Also, check out how long Autumn's legs have gotten!

Aaaaaand the infamous ferris wheel. If you are on Facebook, you heard that I didn't like it. At all. I was very nervous and nauseated. I like roller coasters. I like jet skis. I like go karts. I don't like ferris wheels. I'll probably end up trying another one, though, because I'm that optimistic that next time it'll be different.

Here are Mike and Autumn being neither worried nor nauseated. Sigh.

Vacation Pics!

I'm just going to lead off with this because it's hilarious!

We were at the beach last week. By ourselves Friday night through Wednesday afternoon but Wednesday night, Tyler, Hudson, PD, Lainey, and part of the Denny family joined us! We had a great time. At least a couple of blog posts worth! Back to the photo, Autumn wasn't angry or crazy (craziER than usual, at least)...I caught her mid-yawn. When I was scrolling through the photos, I laughed so hard that everyone wanted to see the photo, including Hudson who then had to reenact the yawn.

I figure this post I'll go with mostly non-beachy photos, although I do have a couple of super short but funny videos for the end. I need to get pictures from Mike because he got some great ones. I might even see if he'll do a post! Speaking of Mike, here he is helping Autumn with her summer math. I got this math skills book for students between first and second grade. Mike and I are terrible at math so we're trying to help Autumn not become us!

Lainey and PD got a sofa this trip! It was a resounding success with Autumn. She found niches for her friends...

And got in a few acrobatics. She taught Tyler how to do an aikido front roll to an upside down position last week so...sorry, Leah and Ryan.

We don't have cable so Autumn only gets to watch Octonauts (which is great--Mike and I decided it's steampunk for kids) and Doc McStuffins at the beach or at someone's house. Access to Doc McStuffins has set Autumn on a major doctoring of animals run. On the way to dinner, Kiri got a full checkup, including her blood pressure. Ah, I just remembered that Mike has a fantastic picture of Tyler and Autumn doctoring the animals together!

She and Tyler also did a ton of Booboos Be Gone pictures. This is one of Autumn's. We need to have an apostrophe conversation, it seems.

We finally went to the snow cone stand which was very much like a beach-side Jerry's. Someone liked hers quite a bit. She also made a bunch of little friends! They all hung out and played horse shoes together. Autumn was quite the socialite last week. She made a friend at the ice cream shop, too.

Oh, haha, this one should have been at the top. I tried to get a picture of these monkeys smiling. Not a single on with all of them looking at me or with all of them making a picture face. But the silly photo? Perfect.

Hey, look at us! It's actually a great photo of all three of us!! This was at the fireworks which I'm going to post about at Passing Pinwheels. Mainly because I went on a ferris wheel AND IT WAS A HUGE MISTAKE. Roller coaster? Yes. Ferris Wheels? NOPE.

Teehee. This is how Lainey and Mrs. Donna rode to the fireworks.

Ok, two seriously short videos and we're done. The first couple of days, the waves were too fun! Not the biggest but still nice to play in. And it was so warm that I got in with no drama. I do not like cold water.


Later, after Tyler got in town, he and Autumn had the best time doing all kinds of crazy stuff together. The one that made me laugh so hard was what I'm calling sand surfing. They'd get on the little boards and let the waves take them to and fro while they giggled like maniacs. At the beginning of the video, you'll hear Mike talking about the chillest crab in the world. It washed up by Hudson and just froze. It let us pet it and everything. Mike finally helped it back into the water. Another one came up later and tried to take us out so I'm guessing it was the same crab out for revenge. He was thwarted when PD put some sand on him and Mr. Crab decided just to sit in the sand a while. ANYWAY, Tyler and Autumn get going pretty well at the end of this one.


All that fun ended in great naps! We'll wrap it up with some hard sleepin'!

Hi, all! I am OFF this week!! No classes so I am also taking tonight off of blogging. If you happen to stop in and want your Autumn fix, visit Passing Pinwheels and check out the latest birthday post!

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.