Wings of all Kinds

The first week of November was all about TKD.  Titus and Jared had their normal classes/work, plus Titus had a prep-class for his Black Belt Test and his Black Belt Test (click here for more on that) and the day before that the boys attended a Sparring Seminar held by Master Kim's Sparing Coach and current coach of the US Olympic team.

Needless to say we were "flying" around a lot the first week but we still managed to squeeze in a Field Trip to Hawk Manor.  This was one of my favorite field trips four years ago and the repeat visit did not disappoint.  He brought out a Red-tailed Hawk (beautiful and much better choice than falcon), a falcon (loud when not under his cap), an imprinted vulture (quite comical as it hopped around the room) and a cute owl to pet at the end.  We learned so much about the habits of these birds, their quirks and features if you will and Chip did it in an incredibly entertaining manner.  Chris was very glad he was able to come this time.

Then it was back to Taekwondo.  This time the focus was Jared as he successfully completed his Third Tip Test on 11/9.

Then we managed a little decorating for Veteran's Day (I didn't know about putting green lights out till this year) before more TKD.  

This time TKD was an all day tournament in which Titus and Jared participated and then assisted in all day on 11/12.  This was their first tournament (about 150 participants) and it was great that it was at their dojang.  Both boys did well and we look forward to more formal tournaments in 2023.

While we were all busy at the tournament.  Lance was busy at home putting the finishing touches on Homer.  Homer has been apart in the garage while Lance fixed....Engine mounts, transmission mounts, rear wheel bearings, sliding door rollers both sides, window regulator driver side, passenger side brake light housing, valve cover gaskets, intake gaskets, PCV valve, new brake pads, resurfaced rotors, new front bumper, and new front left quarter panel.(Try to say all that in one breath)

Today he put him all back together.  Chris did a nice detail job of the interior and then Lance touched up the engine paint.  Now all that is left is to paint the Shark Teeth on the bumper and replace the timing belt when the weather warms.

You'd think a TKD tournament and fixing a car would be enough activity for one day but Lance and Jared thought otherwise.  Soon as the tournament was over they cleaned up, picked up four friends and headed out to an English Country Dance; as always, they had a marvelous time.  

Okay you say, now is a good time to take a break, at least for Sunday right?  Wrong.  William stayed over night after the dance and went with us to "Warbirds over Monroe" on Sunday.   This is our third year attending this event and this year did not disappoint either.

Lance remembered to be in his seat for the finale this year :-)  The heat was very welcome.

In between all the TKD Amber was certainly not left out.  She was busy riding twice a week and improving her craft just like the boys. (I just love this photo)

In between all the chaos above we managed to go out for our anniversary.  We were originally going to go alone but in the end we really just wanted to be with the kids, together as a family.  Therefore, we went to everyone's favorite restaurant Alpaca.  It was definitely the right decision.

We finished out the month with a huge Thanksgiving celebration.  This year we actually had a friend grow our turkey for us and grow it did, topping out at 27lbs (without the neck and giblets).  Cutting took a little longer for Alex and Chris this year but like big little boys they had great fun doing it. This is my favorite holiday of the year and it was wonderful to spend it with so many friends.

Long Time in the Making

Titus started his Taekwondo journey back in January 2018.  We looked around a long time for the right dojang; one that would love and discipline him to strengthen his character.  From the first trial class at Kim's Yong-In Taekwondo, I knew we'd finally found the right place and Titus was hooked.  He was so cute in his first dobok, Master Kim adored him and enjoyed spiking up his hair.

Fast forward four years (less 18 month break because of "The Stupid") and today Titus finally earned the right to test for his Black Belt.  This is a real Korean dojang, they don't just hand these belts out (like in some American schools), you actually have to earn them and sometimes you fail in your attempt.  

The test consisted of many parts:  Poomsae, Self-defense, terminology, kicks, sparing, and breaking.

Needless to say Titus was a little nervous going into tonight but his instructors knew he was ready and in the end he earned it without a single mistake.  When Master Kim gave him his belt in the special ceremony he once again took the time to try and spike-up Titus' hair just like when they first met, bringing the journey full circle.

Tonight was wonderful and very emotional... a night to be remembered.

We are very proud of who Titus is today.  He is patient, kind, sympathetic and strong.  I love watching him help out the younger kids in class. We are forever thankful to our Taekwondo family for the sincere love, caring, and leadership they give our son.  We believe it will continue to be instrumental in helping him become the man God wants him to be in the future and we look forward to the rest of his Taekwondo journey. 

 

Moving Forward

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.

 

STUNNING!!!!!

She truly is, the boys have their shotguns at the ready.  Amber is very crafty, learning to crochet, sew and arts/crafts of all kinds and she loves all animals, not just horses.  So each year her birthday has an animal type theme.

In the past we have gone to the NC Zoo for Amber's birthday but this year we decided to do something different. We decided to go the Greensboro Science Museum (GSM), so glad we did!  They had a very unique collection of animals, including penguins, a stingray petting pool, sharks, red pandas and the one Amber most wanted to see a Foosa.  Amber brought he friend Kimberly along, the zoo/science museum is arranged in such a way that we didn't have to worry about them getting lost when they ran ahead out of site.  The enclosures were very enriching but also fairly close together allowing us to go through the exhibits twice to see different animal at different times of the day and therefore more/less active.

We went to GSM on Sunday.  Her actual birthday was Wednesday; with the traditional birthday ball pelting followed by a special breakfast with the her Great-Grandma's china.

Then Amber was off to her riding lesson. Kendall made sure she rode her new favorite horses; Eddy.  

After riding and Lance got home from practice that night, we took her to dinner at "Alpaca" (her favorite restaurant), culminating the night with spice cake.

She finished off her birthday week with having Kimberly over again on Friday to play with all her new Playmobil horses and go with her to the barn for her real horse lesson.

We are so thankful for our beautiful little girl and all she adds to our family dynamics.  At the rate she is growing I won't be able to call her little much longer.  So if she must grow up, we pray that as she grows in body, she will continue to grow in her character and her love of the Lord.

Labor Days

The month started with Titus(#3) and Jared's(#1) laboring through their next Tip Tests in TKD.  They both passed with flying colors, though Jared did try to break his hand by forgetting to use his hammer fist to break his boards.  Not to be left out, a week later Titus did a number on his hand in sparing class.  Thankfully as of this writing they are both back to snuff.

**Next was yard labor, I told everyone I wanted the backyard at a stopping point by Labor Day, ie. all the beds and paths mulched and lined with plants.  Everyone chipped in and we got it close enough to done.  Getting to the plants to line the one path is still a work in progress.  The Daylillies I wanted to move from front to backyard are in an area that has been left unattended too long.  However, as Chris dug up the Liriope up front for the one side I slowly made progress on the other other side, finding 5 missing blueberry bushes and then a large Harvester Ant mound (Titus and I are very allergic), sadly I hadn't quite made it to the Daylillies before we had to put the brakes on further discovery till the ants are dead.  As an alternative, the boys lined that part of the path with 4x4s for now.  Lance profoundly stated that the state of our yard is a reflection of the mental state of our family, so glad its all getting straightened out.  Here's the final product, quite a transformation!

We celebrated Saturday afternoon by meeting our friends at the pool for one last Hurrah! before it closes for the season.  We arrived at 3pm and I thought we'd all leave to go home around 6pm, but everyone was having so much fun (adults and kids), we stayed much later.

Having Monday off was a much needed day of rest for everyone, especially Lance.  Lance's schedule continues to be hectic but he's getting used to that.  They are now starting games and field practices and Lance is performing well.  At a charity event they recently worked, for "Miracle Kids", they got a team photo.   

 

The Thursday after Labor Day also marked the beginning of Titus in-person writing class with Miss Smelcer.  Thankfully he is really enjoying the class and there are even two girls from our new field trip group in the class.

FIAR FT group went to Cary Police Department K-9 Demonstration as their first field trip this month.  It had been quite a while since we had done such an event and the officers did a great job presenting and answering questions.  After the kids did what they do best, they played hard in an adjoining park, while we moms talked - what we do best :-)

 

In between school and field trips, Titus has been helping Frank with some wood working around his house. Their first project was to re-built the deck ramp into his shed.  It's so such a nice arrangement for them both because they have so much fun together and Titus is learning a lot.

 

FIAR second field trip of the month was to hike at Lake Johnson.  We had driven past the park many times but this was the first time we stopped to explore.  Highlight of the day for Amber was meeting the mounted police officer.  For Titus I'm sure it was their long game of Cops and Robbers.  We'll have to bring the family back some time to hike all the trails.

The Friday following I drove Jared to meet up with a friend at the Liberty Antique Festival.  The festival covered 100 acres, vendors from 20 states and is apparently a very popular event.  As the drive was a little over an hour one-way it seemed silly to drive him there, go home and drive back to get him later - I stayed but as soon as we found his friend they went their way and I went another.  Their goal was to find WWII items.... personally I really had no goal but to explore.  I thought I'd end up spending most of the day reading in the car (with the beautiful weather this was not a bad option) but after the initial awkwardness of being at a festival all alone I got into a rhythm and enjoyed myself very much. I met up with the boys on and off throughout the day and at the end of the day I found them so they could be my muscle to get my finds into the car.  Jared's one purchase of the day was something he'd been looking for a long time a 48 Star American Flag.  It has a "bullet hole" we used to negotiate the price down, though he and his siblings quite like the hole.  Jared looked up the manufacturer and found out it was actually rather a rare find, which increased his affection for his purchase.  Me?  Well I managed to control my self pretty good: Got myself a beautiful all metal bird bath, clip on earrings for Amber, a well preserved 1920s hand drill for Titus, a baseball holder for Lance, and a train book for the boys.  For Chris, I did NOT get a whole lot of other stuff LOL

In addition to being a self-proclaimed horse addict, Amber is our own private weather girl.  She's learned to read the clouds and frankly she's more accurate than the so-called professionals.  It's not unusual for one of us to ask her to go outside and tell us how the day will be.  She's also our art instigator.  Though she often does projects on her own, she loves it when we all join.  Frankly, art is therapy for us all.  She sees beauty all around and keeps us grounded in her excitement, even the simple sunset she'll drag us out to see in all her enthusiasm.

**  Technically the front yard pictured above was finished two weeks later.  Jared, Amber and I went to the Farmers market to get three specific plants.  We ended up not coming home with ANY of the intended plants, instead we found a cool  Szechuan Pepper Tree, a flat of pansies (the impetus for redoing the front bed, Jared and Amber wanted to have more color) and a flat of collards/bok choy to grow to feed Drago (to save cost and have fresh food on hand).  Most importantly, we got cookies so that made everything okay :-)

10 Years Ago Today....

Today marks the 10 Year Anniversary of Jared's Open Heart Surgery. We have been looking back by reading the daily blog/FB posts we wrote during our journey to and home from Boston.  It's been very emotional.  We are reminded with every post how much God was driving the boat and we were nothing more than passenger and how the prayers of family, friends and strangers all over the world lifted us up.  We are humbled once again.  There are no words to express the sincere thanks we have for everyone who joined us literally, emotionally and spiritually on that journey.   If you still follow my blog you'll see that Jared is continuing to do fantastically and we are thankful beyond measure.  Love to you All!

If you want to reminiscence with us here's a link to my blog posts during that journey (It's in reverse order so scroll to the bottom first):  https://chasinraisins.blogspot.com/search/label/BOSTON%20OHS