Ani – grade 10, 14 years old
Cameron – grade 7, 13 years old
Fritz – grade 3, 8 years old
Adrian – grade 1, 6 years old
Monthly Archives: October 2014
Pictures by Ani
Ani has a really good eye for taking unusual pictures. Sometimes she adds quotes to her pictures. All of these are pictures she took and edited using her iPhone. The quotes by President Monson and Elder Hales are from the October 2014 General Conference. The quote by President Uchtdorf (quoting Alma) is from the April 2014 conference. She made that picture at my request. I printed and laminated it to make a handout to give to my Beehives.
(Feel free to download Ani’s pictures and share them!)
First Stories
Last night Fritz couldn’t sleep so he asked if it would be okay if he wrote some stories. He even illustrated his stories. Here’s what he came up with (spellings and capitalizations are his):
The bear and ghoust
One day a frendly bear came. It met a ghost. It said im hungrey. The bear kicked the ghost over and over untell the bear lost its snack and the goust ate it.
[Note: He said he wrote “over and over” because he didn’t know how to spell “repeatedly.”]
The hungrey hippo
A hungrey hippo said im hungrey, feed me. He ate five houses and he was still hungrey. he ate the world and said im full.
[Note: This was inspired by Shel Siverstein’s Hungry Mungry.]
The lost werewolf
A werewolf lost its pack and then day came and became human. After day the werewolf found its pack.
A werewolf in love
A werewolf loved a perosan named Stiles. He loved the werewolf. They made a poster of each other. Siles wished to be together. Then a twister came. And then the werewolf went to Stiles and the werewolf bit Stiles. They were both werewolfs.
[Note: Ani gave Fritz the prompt for this one (write a story about a werewolf who is in love with a human named Stiles). It is apparently a fanfic of Teen Wolf – which Fritz has never seen. He wrote “twister” because he did not know how to spell “tornado.” He’s pretty good with substituting words or phrases when he doesn’t know how to spell what he originally wanted to use.]
What We’ve Been Up To
We’ve completed 7 weeks of this school year. Only two more and the first quarter will be done. Time is flying, but that’s mostly because we’ve been having lots of fun!
Four weeks ago we participated in our second taekwondo tournament. We were there pretty much all day this time. Adrian did an extreme weapons form using nunchucks to the Mario theme song. Because of his age, he doesn’t get actually scored yet, but instead got 12 thumbs up.
Fritz did an extreme weapons form using kamas to a Minecraft parody song. He also competed in sparring. He didn’t place in either category (but he did win his first bout of sparring!). His group/ring was huge and took an insanely long amount of time (they started over an hour before Cameron’s and finished about the same time as Cameron’s) and was very disorganized which was pretty disappointing and frustrating. Hopefully the next tournament in March will be better.
Cameron competed in four events. He didn’t place in traditional form, got first in traditional weapons and sparring, and second in extreme weapons (kamas). He was also on the demo team for our school. They came in fourth.
Jamie, Ani, and I competed at the same time and Cameron was keeping track of the little guys so no pictures of us. Jamie got first in extreme weapons (sword) and second in sparring. Ani got first in extreme weapons (kamas). I got first in extreme weapons (jahong bong to the Doctor Who theme song) and second in traditional form.
We do a lot of taekwondo. Someone in the family is usually there 5, sometimes 6, days a week, plus we practice at home. As they say, the family that kicks together sticks together!
Ani and Cameron participated in a special class with Seth Austin three weeks ago. He’s done martial arts dancing back-up for various artists on tour, been in Sideswipe (all martial arts act in Vegas), and does stunt man work (including on Agents of SHIELD), among other things. They were both so sore afterwards. They kicked a lot and worked on tumbling, too.
Both Ani and Cameron are also training to one day be junior instructors.
Not to be outdone by Cameron, I also did some kicks down by the Alamo.
My parents came to visit for 3 weeks. It was so great to see them. Adrian totally gave them a guilt trip when it was time for them to leave. He’s really looking forward to his “Honey” (what he calls my mom) being here permanently.
Mommie, Daddy, Jamie, and I went to see Bill Cosby. He talked for two hours straight and was just so funny the whole time. Truly awesome!
On Cameron’s birthday, I convinced him to go to the Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum. I’ve always wanted to go to one and can never convince my family to go with me. I said it was only fair since 13 years before I pushed him out of my body with no drugs and he hurt.
Last Saturday between Conference sessions we got some temporary pink dye and made Ani’s hair nice and colorful.
Mommie and I ended up putting streaks in our hair, too. Interestingly, the pink turned purple in Mommie’s hair!
And, of course, we’ve been doing school. We even mostly kept up with our schedule while my parents were here.
Science (REAL Science Odyssey Chemistry) has been lots of fun. We observed how things do or do not dissolve in water.
I put things (like peppermint essential oil and cinnamon) in balloons and the kids smelled them to see if molecules can escape through the balloon and be smelled.
We made atom models of the first ten elements on the periodic table. The instructions said to use marshmallows, but we used playdough instead. The white are neutrons, the red are protons, and the yellow are electrons.
And, one day, a two-headed monster attended our school.
Another teenager in the house!
Smaller on the Outside 