We were suppose to be in Hilton Head for Michaelmas and the beginning of October for Lance's fall break. However, those plans were crushed by Hurricane Ian, much to the disappointment of everyone.
Instead of leaving for vacation on Thursday, Lance got Amber some new fish for her 11 gallon tank. As is our new trend, they were really cute miniature rainbows.
By Friday, we realized it was good we were home, as the hurricane actually ended up going over HH and then up and over our way and we wouldn't have wanted our house sitter to deal with all the stress. First, we lost a 130 ft tree on the side yard (Lance and I measured), it shook the whole house when it fell (we're leaving that where it fell as "new feature" in the yard). We also lost a huge branch from the maple in the front yard that blocked the whole drive way. The maple falling was a bit ironic since Chris had gotten a new toy (pole saw) to trim up the maple last weekend, good thing we did or we'd have had more to clean up on Saturday. Then we lost power around 8pm and it stayed out for 23 hours; thankfully we had the generator. Did you know that a generator can power two fish tanks, a dragon tank, a lamp, a refrigerator and an occasional computer for 10 hours on only one gallon of gas? Long live the ICE! But a I digress....
However, not everyone was still out of power Saturday morning, Chris had found a way to four-wheel Homer over the grass to get around the branch so that Lance could get to his 7:45am baseball practice. We cut up part of the branch that was in the road in the early morning hours for Lance to drive by and then the rest after he left. Rather than burning this time we decided to used the branches as a tool for cutting down erosion in the chicken coop, the chickens approve of the idea.
In an attempt to make lemonade out of lemons, Monday I ended up going with Lance on his day off from school to assist him in buying his first car; a 2007 Audi A3 Turbo Manual. We met the guy out in Wilson. Turns out he was a fireman and ECU student. He had the engine re-built only 1000 miles ago, new alternator, clutch, etc. Lance was in love as soon as he drove it and got it for a very reasonable price. Titus immediately offered to detail the car as soon as it got home. Lance knew it needed tires and brakes but didn't know how bad till he went to replace both. By providence his work was having a sale on tires that week for employees and the brakes aren't much when you do the work yourself. Now its all in perfect running order. He put on the last 500 miles (already) of engine break-in, so he also changed the oil and now he can run the RPMs as fast as he wishes. He's learned to shift it really well, its the perfect little fun car he'd been looking for and gets much better gas mileage than Homer ironically. By the way, the car's name is Plurp (A tip of the hat to Peep in the Big Wide World). Also, in putting on those first 500 miles he realized the need for a dash-cam, now both Plurp and Bruce have them.
The first FIAR field trip this month was to Page Farm for traditional fall fun; corn maze, corn crib, hay ride, pumpkin picking etc. After we got home with the pumpkins, Titus took it upon himself to have fun cutting one up all by himself. It turned out rather cute and the chickens loved the innards.
Titus is still on course to testing for his Black Belt in November. He successfully got his 4th Tip this month and completed his required Black Belt Project. Though Jared will not be able to test for Black belt till March, the Masters allowed them to do their Black Belt Project together. They decided to teach an "Introduction to Taekwondo" class, they advertised all over, begged a few friends and ended up with a class of 13 students. They did an absolutely wonderful job planning and teaching the class, the Masters were very pleased and as a bonus one of the attendee even signed up to start taking classes.
Chris took the day off for his birthday, he came with to see Amber ride and enjoyed a lazy rest of the day watching baseball. Since Lance was at an away game, we waited to really celebrated Chris' birthday on Saturday. We started with "Celebration" and a ball pelting, followed by French Toast, then later we had an early lasagna dinner, followed by his favorite Spice Cake for desert (Titus insisted on putting and lighting all 53 candles. To Chris' credit he blew them out in one blow). We had dinner early because the boys had a dance to go to that night, so in the evening the rest of us watched the movie of Chris' choosing. My loving husband works so hard for the family I'm glad he at least got a few days of relative relaxation.
Ballroom Dancing this fall consisted of learning Swing, Tango and Cha-Cha. Lance and Jared had a blast as usual dancing and even taught the group some English Country Dances for good measure.
The second FIAR field trip was to Bennet Place, the site of the final surrender of the Civil War. This was one of the best docent tours we've had in a long time. We learned so much about the civil war we never knew before. Piecing together what we learned there with what we learned previous opened up all kinds of different ways to view Abraham Lincoln's assassination and who may have truly been behind it. Jared spent a long time talking with the reenactors and got the inside scoop on how to become one; something he's very interested in pursuing. (Though when he does - the Union and Confederate soldiers will probably be shooting AT each other, not side by side LOL).
On the way home from Amber's B-Day celebration we realized Big Red didn't have running lights. So Lance brought Big Red into his Electronics class so they could diagnose a problem with lights. It was a great real life hands on experience for the students and it saved us a ton of money in diagnosis. After Chris ordered the part and brought it back for a second day of class to have it installed. This was a real team effort with the Chevy expert volunteering his help. There's some electrical issues still to sort out but Lance is getting the wiring schematics from the Chevy guy, so he'll learn even more fixing the bad alarm job of the previous owner. Not many people save money from sending their kid to college.
We don't normally participate in Halloween, but the dojong really needed help with their party, so we allowed the boys to volunteer. They dressed as a sniper and Long John Silver and had a wonderful time helping herd all the "cats" at the party.
While they were at the party Chris and Lance ran the first of two tryouts for Titus' Spring Baseball Team. Chris will be the head coach of varsity this year. A few days before, participation was looking rather sparse, thankfully attendance was much better than expected. After the second tryout on Sunday (All my boys attended this time) they are thrilled to have enough quality kids to field both a Varsity and JV team. Chris and Titus are very excited about the Spring season.
Jared is getting closer to monetizing J-Rod Studios and making his passion a business. This month one of his shorts reached 1M views and his subscribtions are at 7.4K. He just needs to find a way to get the 4K watch hours on his videos, unfortionately shorts don't count toward monetization.
