A Major Milestone

Erik is an extremely careful child.  He rarely even had a skinned knee as a toddler.  So when it came to riding a bike, it was a huge leap into the Danger Zone for him.  He has tried every summer, but never could quite get the hang of it.  Training wheels were a disaster.  Since the weather was warming up, we decided it was time to start the yearly ritual of seeing if this was the year that Erik would ride.  It was!
Here's some video of him riding like a pro.

Erik's interview

Erik talks about learning to ride a bike and gives advice for new learners.

October 2011

Schoolhouse Rock LIVE! jr.

Interplanet Janet

The boys participated in Fine Linen's production of Schoolhouse Rock this fall. They had a great time learning the songs that their dad and I grew up on.

Crazy Faces

In October our family also made a big announcement! We are applying to adopt from Haiti. More on that (and probably a different blog) later. God is really humbling us in this process.

September 2011

Erik entered a Lego building contest at a local toy store. He didn't win (it was a Facebook 'Like' contest) but he enjoyed seeing all the other entries.

This summer we added on a bit to Adler's room to solve a leaking problem so we can remodel our kitchen. I made new curtains for it and the inside still needs some finishing. The best news is-no more rain in the kitchen!!!

The addition is on the left side of the upper floor, above the breakfast nook.

July 2011

Happy 12th Birthday Erik! Turtle Cheesecake!
(there is a little glimpse of the broken arm)

This is the cake he had at his cousin's house. He loved having more than one party. We also got to make our own pizzas for this party. It doesn't get any better than this!

We took a big family trip this month to Minnesota to go to the Severson Reunion at Mavis' cabin. It was so good to see my
cousins again and get to meet their families. We also got to camp with my brother and sister and their families.

We took a day to go to Blackduck and visit Grandpa and Marion on the lake. It was a special time to go back to a place I hadn't visited in many years and for my family to see the places I tell them stories about from my childhood.

June 2011

We don't have pictures of it, but Erik goes on record as the first one of us to have a broken arm. He was just being a boy and tried to jump on a milk carton that still had the lid on and try to make the lid fly down the sidewalk. Those lids hold well! Not only did it not pop off, the jug threw him on to the sidewalk. Just a soft velcro cast for a month and he was good to go. He has hardly had a skinned knee, so this was tough for him.

May 2011

Erik is really into building stuff with Legos. This is just one example of the creations he comes up with.

Here is some magic trick fun that Adler has been doing. He reads and studies tricks a lot. His friends hardly trust him to shuffle a deck when they are playing a game any more!

March 2011

Happy 14th Birthday Adler!
Presents! A summer sleeping bag for Scout camping.

Tacos for dinner

Strawberries and Angel food cake
You are a great young man!

Erik the big winner!!At our credit union's Annual Meeting, Erik won a drawing for $100. He had lots of great plans to spend it on, especially LEGOS!

February 2011

Erik was working on a Boy Scout Merit Badge in Pet Care. This required him to take care of our Dog for several weeks. For the most part, ever since we got Daisy, Adler had been her main caregiver. This time gave Erik and Daisy a new, special bond. He did very good on his responsibilities, and since Daisy was not a good candidate to take to the troop meeting, he and Adler filmed this video to show to the troop. Things like this are more special now as they are the memories that we hold on to since we lost Daisy in August. (read more about that in the August post)

First LEGO League Robotics

This fall the boys were invited to join other homeschoolers on a robotics team program sponsored by FIRST and LEGO. They met every week to build a robot and work on a research project. We took 3 teams to Mountain Home, Arkansas, for competition on December 4^th.

We brought home trophies for Robot Performance, Robot Design and Quality Design. Our teams were also finalists in the award categories of Innovative Design, Champion’s Award, Quality Design, Gracious Professionalism, Programming, Project Research Quality, Judge’s Award and Robot Design.

Each team was required to do a research project on a body system and how biomedical engineering is used to help in that area. At competition, the team presented the project to judges. The teams chose vision, lungs and voice for their projects.

In the Robot Performance Competition, our teams placed 4^th, 5^th and 16^th out of 35 teams. One of our teams went on to win the single elimination competition.

I forgot to take pictures of the robots, but if I can get one from someone else, I will post it.

Scout Photography project

Erik's Scout group had a photography workshop last week. Here's what Erik shot!

Miss Angie- our instructor!

Erik's first Cardinals game!

Go Cards!

A friend gave Joe 2 tickets to the Cardinals for today and since he and Erik have been wanting to do an outing for just the 2 of them, this was perfect. They headed home after the seventh inning stretch when it was still 0-0, and as I post, there is still no score in the 14th inning. Enjoy the pics!