Saturday, February 18, 2012 & Sunday, February 19, 2012 – Entries 1,046 & 1,047



Saturday morning, Melissa went out with one of her aides for a few hours. I took Alexa to her judo class, where Sensei had another guest black belt in to work with the older group while he worked with the younger/newer kids, and Alexa really got a good workout today! That guy had them doing all sorts of squats, bunny hops, alligator crawls, and all sorts of stuff she wasn't used to doing, in addition to practicing a bunch of throws. She and a few others even stayed late for a bit of extra training and practiced joint locks and such.

Luckily, Ben had brought a video game along to play and was content to go back and forth between watching the class and playing his game most of the time, and I'd brought a book (11/22/63 by Stephen King, which I'm loving), but eventually, he and I just went out into the empty corridor and played with hula hoops and a bouncy ball for a while.

Back at home, we had lunch and all did our own thing. The kids played in the backyard with their cousins. Late in the afternoon my youngest nephew came inside and ended up staying for a late dinner. The kids put on a movie afterward and that's what they occupied themselves with until bedtime.

As I was putting Ben to bed, late, he said he wanted to learn how to tie shoes and asked if I would teach him. "Yes, tomorrow," I promised. "Ask me then."

"But I'll forget," he said. "Can you put a note on your phone that you check every day?"

So I sent myself an email via my iPhone: Teach Ben to tie his shoes.

Sunday, however, when we got up and I asked him if he was ready to learn, he said, “Nah, I'm never going to get shoes that tie,” and he decided he just wanted to play on the computer and do his own thing instead. Maybe another day! Or maybe he'll just wear velcro forever. Who knows!

After breakfast and morning chores and getting ready for the day (which for Alexa included ibuprofen and a hot shower, the poor kid was so sore after yesterday's workout at judo), I told her I wanted to do our Meet the Masters art project which we'd never gotten to last week.

To wrap up our Winslow Homer unit, she was supposed to trace a line drawing of his, but rather than using the point of a regular pencil and tracing actual lines, she had to use the side of a charcoal pencil and do a value drawing, working with light and dark, and only adding in very few actual lines at the end for a touch of realism and detail. She did quite well with this, and as there had been two line drawings to choose from, her dad did one, too.









Other than that, she rested a lot today because, as I said, she was quite sore from yesterday's judo class. She eventually finished her Nancy drew library book (The Scarlet Slipper Mystery, just in time for tomorrow's book club), watched some TV, and played Minecraft. She did walk a bit outside to try to stretch her muscles some, too, but mostly she took it easy.

Ben had his cousin over again and they played in the backyard for a while, but it was only around 38 degrees out today, so mostly they played in the house. They played together all night, with my nephew even eating dinner here again and not going home until around 9 PM (he lives just three houses away).

Other than some laundry, and me playing more of my Final Fantasy 13-2 game and reading more of my Stephen King book, that was really about it for our weekend.

More tomorrow!