Friday, March 26, 2010

Ducks, colds and yellow belts

Before I forget, I had a few people who asked, so here's the info for square foot gardening. I suggest buying the book this guy wrote (All New Square Foot Gardening). It's got everything you need to know!

http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

I'll be sharing more info about our garden once we get it planted next month.

Also, I've had people asking me about the ducks and I keep hesistating answering because I keep hoping that if I wait long enough I'm going to have good news! Unfotunately I don't.

If you didn't follow my blog last year, the short version is that we have a mallard duck couple that visit our backyard every spring. The same two ducks have been visiting our backyard every spring for several years and two years ago they decided that our landscaping was a good place to start a family. We've had the best time the past two springs watching duck eggs hatch and enjoying the sweet fuzzy ducklings.

Unfortnately we haven't seen the ducks this year. :( I literally jump out of bed every morning and go straight to the window to see if they're back, but so far we haven't seen them. It's actually weird, there are usually several little duck couples waddling around the neighborhood in the spring and I haven't seen any this year! Where have all the ducks gone??

I'm hoping that they're still enjoying their winter vacation and just haven't come back yet, but the closer we get to April the more I'm starting to think that they're not coming back this year. I'll really miss them if they don't visit us this year. I'll keep you posted if I see them!

In other news, our family has been passing a cold around for the past two weeks and we're all sick of being sick!! Josh got and ear infection, Clarissa and Matthew had fevers and runny noses and Shawn and I have been coughing like crazy for a week. The other night I woke up at 3am coughing so hard that I pulled a muscle in my stomach. Ouch. For the past two days it has felt like someone punched me in the stomach.

We're starting to get better now though and I'm going to Lysol every inch of this house!

In taekwondo news, I am SO proud of my boys for how hard they're working and how much they're learning!! In order to test for their yellow belt there are some steps they have have to pass. They get a green stripe on their belt when they're ready to break the board, which they got a few weeks ago, then they get a red stripe when they've successfully broken the board, which they also did. Then they have to learn a complicated series of moves in order to get a yellow stripe and they have to memorize a bunch of Korean words and phrases to get their black stripe. Once they do all of those things they can test for their yellow belt.

When we first signed the boys up for taekwondo I knew right away that Matthew was going to love it, because he's a physial kid who loves things like that, but I was a little iffy about Josh. He doesn't really love sports and he struggles with coordination. Josh is amazingly smart and talented in so many ways, but unfortunately he inherited his mothers lack of coordination, lol. But it turns out that taekwando was exactly what Josh needed! I've watched him make amazing progress over the past month or so. Yesterday at the end of class he told the teacher that he was ready to test for his yellow stripe, which is the series of moves they had to memorize (called form). He went out on the mat by himself and demonstrated it for the teacher and earned his yellow stripe and I don't think I've ever been prouder of him. Knowing how much he has strugged in the past with sports and physical things I just wanted to cry with happiness watching him do such an amazing job!

The taekwondo school they go to is only a few months old and the instructor told him that he's only the third person out of 70 students to earn his yellow stripe! Josh came home just beaming. He was SO proud of himself. Taekwondo has been such a confidence boost for Josh and I'm really really happy to watch his progression.

Matthew is also doing really great! He's almost got the form down and I think he's going to test for his yellow stripe very soon. He's one of the younger kids in the class and I'm really proud of how well he's keeping up with the big kids. Taekwondo has really been wonderful for both boys.

So today we're working on the Korean terms they have to learn. A few of them are easy and things we already knew, like how to say "thank you", but there are a few phrases that are a little trickier. Josh is actually going to webcam with Jin-Ha tonight and she's going to help him with his pronunciation. Once again, what would we do without Jin-Ha? I love my Korean sister. :)

So things are going pretty well around here right now. We're looking forward to going out of town next weekend to my moms house for Easter (which is on my birthday this year!). There's lots of fun stuff coming up!

In Clarissa news, she's as cute and wonderful and ever! :) She's starting to talk more and I cherish every single word. I love that kid SO MUCH!! I put a few new pictures of her up on the dropshots site. (www.dropshots.com/wenders11). Enjoy! :)

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