In August, we celebrated Tyson's 42nd birthday. I thought Tyson didn't want us to celebrate his birthday, so instead planned to celebrate the 42nd anniversary of the day Anne Marie made the world a better place. But somehow the cake landed in front of him.
So did the presents.
Tyler's first school project for 3rd grade was to photograph plants. He did a great job!
Such a relief that he once again has a teacher who inspires a love of learning, and seems to enjoy the pleasure of his company! BASIS is known for being a very challenging school, and since Tyler doesn't enjoy doing anything that wasn't his idea, homework time can be pretty rough. But any time of day when I approach the school yard, I hear children's laughter, and the kids are never in a hurry to leave at the end of the day.
Tyler earned his youth purple belt. He is great at grappling - he's strong, he's solid, and he has good technique. I have a video of him grappling with his arch rival, CJ, and Sensei Tony is heard encouraging CJ, "Good job CJ, just try to survive." Meanwhile, Tyler is known for being gentle and kind to the younger, smaller kids.
I'm still studying krav maga, and just starting to get ready for my Level 2 test. This request requires sparring. I was given advice from a Level 4 (brown belt) - a grown up version of Tyler named Amir - large stature, skilled, intimidating, yet kind. He told me, "I'm just going to keep wearing you out because I can outreach you. You need to move in." I answered, "I'm afraid of you. You could kill me." He replied, "You're going to have to learn to eat some punches. Move in." I wrote down this advice several months in a row on my fitness calendar. I also overheard my instructor coaching a new student, another big guy, who had years of experience but was out of practice, to work with me, saying, "She is brutal - do NOT go easy on her." Hearing that made me realize, I better always stay on my game, or else I risk getting seriously hurt. So I wrote that down to, to help motivate me to keep training hard.
The training paid off - in my first sparring class, when I went up against a black belt, yet another big guy, I took Amir's advice, and kept advancing upon my opponent. I smiled the whole time to remind him that I didn't have a mouth guard. Amir was right, by staying close to my partner, he couldn't hit me as hard. The teacher was filming, and he exlaimed, "Cheryl's a brawler! She doesn't give a f---! She's all, 'I will punch you in the face, even if it means I get hit.'" At that point, my partner performed a take down, and down I went. But you just gotta get back up and keep going. One minute feels like a long time. Four minutes is exhausting. The last level 2 test, they sparred for 26 minutes. I have my work cut out for me. Guess it's time to buy some equipment and start sparring on a regular basis.
For Halloween, Tyler decided to be a World War II soldier. He found a jacket at our local Walmart. I found camo cargo pants at a different Walmart. We ordered what we thought was a helmet from e-bay, waited for it to ship from China, only to discover we had paid $8 for a net. Our oversight. So we ordered a helmet from Amazon for $13. Tyson found Tyler a toy M-16 at Miller's surplus. I helped him paint his face camo colors. Overall, we probably spent $50, but, he wears the jacket every day to school, he wears the pants at least once a week to school, the jacket came with a tshirt that he also wears, and he seriously wears the helmet and plays with the gun for at least 30 minutes a day on school days, and longer on the weekends. Our front yard is perfect for sniping and ambushing, as is the truck.
We used to go to either Buckelew Farms or Marana Pumpkin Patch to select a pumpkin, but we realized the price of admission for 4 people was out of control, not to mention the long drive. Brian & Kelly's pumpkin patch works just fine for our purposes.
Tyrien decided to dress as Pocoyo - a little boy who wears all blue. We ordered a hat, sweatpants and hooded jacket online from Amazon. We spent about $40. But, just like Tyler, he's wearing the clothes to school on a regular basis. Tyson's strategy of avoiding store bought Halloween costumes is paying off.
To entice more trick or treaters to visit our house, I put up purple lights early in October, all the way around the Holmes and the Irving side of our house. This way, students attending Peter Howel Elementary School and people driving along Irving would know that we are big on Halloween. I also taped black construction paper bats up on the wall. Unfortunately, it rained quite a bit and they fell down. I never got around to fixing it. But still, at least we got the message out there early.
Next, I listed our house on the Next-Door Trick or Treat map as a "haunted house" instead of just "passing out candy." This forced me to up the ante, in case people believed that it really was a haunted house. I bought a skeleton, named him Javi (short for Javier). Tyson was concerned that he would get stolen, so I used a cable lock to secure him to the bars on our front window, and then added Christmas lights. I also got a guy who Tyler named "Null" who I hung from our roof. Unfortunately, he did not show up very much. I'll have to do something else with him next year.
At some point I installed the blacklights in the carport light. Then I waited until the Sunday before Halloween to add the tombstones and cobwebs, and began measuring white streamers, so that Halloween morning I could hang them up quickly. Halloween morning I work up early to make brains using gelatin and tonic water. I also made jars of eyeballs with gelatin and tonic water, and other specimen jars with tonic water and food coloring. Halloween morning was still too early to hang stuff - it rained and was very windy, so I had to re-hang alot of stuff Halloween evening. I left work at 4:15 to do so, and wished for more time. I added more cobwebs and spiders and put out the other black lights and the fog machine. Finally, I set up the spider spotlight and added spooky music.
These strategies worked. Cars stopped in front of our house, I'd see people looking on their phones and saying, "Yup, this is the one." Parents and kids alike expressed appreciation for the house, with some kids telling parents "This house is awesome!" as they walked up the driveway, before they could even see the decor. Kids dissected the brains, they quickly dissolved into a mess. Next year I should make several and replenish them. We did a good job of forcing kids to walk through the streamers this year. One kid complained, "This is not a haunted house!" and then the fogger went off, scaring the crap out of him. He thought a spider was on his neck and frantically tried to get it off his back.
