Carving Pumpkins...

This was this past Friday night. This was an interesting night. I was so sick I couldn't even sit up for more than 10 minutes because I was so sick but Xander did carve a little and Izzy helped to clean out the pumpkins. Dimon did a lot of poking the pick into the back of pumkins and feeding guts to the dog. It was cute.
Xan liked to stab the pumpkin. Izzy was covered in flour from head to toe, and chasing Uncle Ryan around.... but like I said I was sick so getting pictures was hard, cause everyone else was involved in carving, or chasing kids.

two of these are mom and dad's but the other 3 are ours, I still have 2 to carve, since I didn't get to do it Friday night.

The Wreck of the Black Cat

How many people do you know that love halloween so much they build a shipwrieck in thier front yard? Now you know of at least 2.... mostly 1, but I did help him. This is the wreck of the Black Cat. Under construction here....

I couldn't take pics of the skeleton of the boat, because I just plain forgot. But it is made from old parts of a trampoline and 2 poles from out hammock holder. Its amazing what people have lying around their garage. (Especially us....) While the wreck is still a little under construction it will be finished in the next 2 days..... it has to be! And no, we have no idea what we are going to do with it afterwards. But right now it is the most awesome clubhouse the kdis can have, they crawl under the front of it, between the "rocks" and sit under the ship and play. Its so fun! I'll post more pics when its finished.

We had to age the flag and the best way was to have a flag burning! Dad helped build the whole thing, but Andy did most of the work himself. Lillian helped name it, and the kids tried to get themselves painted brown a lot when the painting was going on! Its been fun.

Why a pirate ship you may ask? Because how else do you have a Pirate Halloween Party (On the Day of the Dead, Nov 1st) without a pirate ship? More on that later

Ahoy me hardies!!! Yo ho, yo ho A Pirates life for me!

so what else has happened?

Well Andy wrecked the car. (Silver Van) Mind you my green van has been in the shop for the last 3 months, lets not talk about that one. No everyone is fine, Dimon even slept through it. A bug or a rock, not sure which, flew into the window and hit Andy in the eye, he swerved and had an argument with a speed limit sign. It took the bug/rain sheild on the passenger side. ripped off the black tire thing (over the wheel well), and prety much took out the whole panel. It looks like someone just took a knife and cut the metal. I'll put pictures up shortly. But that happened last Friday, Oct 17. Now 2 days before that Lillian was in a wreck where a really stupid girl ran a red light and Lil couldn't stop and hit her! As she said "Its a good thing that I drive a big damn truck!" She is fine, but her car is in the shop now. And the Sunday before that my mom hit a curb and ripped the tire, and tried to take the undercariage off! Everyone agian is fine, but the cars are not safe in our family right now.

Oh and then on Saturday the 18th, our washing machine quit working! It just filled up with water, while there was a load in it, and just stopped. Just sat there. When we found it we assumed that the button had gotton hit and just stopped it. So I restarted it and guess what, it just kept filling with water! Needless to say the floor got mopped. It just kept filling and overflowing. So I bailed water out about half way,, called Andy told him, and tried the spin cycle, it wouldn't spin. Huh?!?!?!?!?!?!? SO...... we wait a day, try agian, same thing, only this time, the thing will spin, but the water just starts flying out, the best water fight in history is what that thing was trying to win.
So since it wouldn't drain and was now spinning out of control we decided that we were going to have to call around and find a repair man, guess what, a repair man visit runs about $100, plus labor, plus parts, we can buy a new washer for the trouble. So we start looking.
Well lucky for us Lowes swooped in and saved the day! We now have a beautiful new washer sitting in our laundry room! However, not all things are perfect.... it is a beautiful front load washer, but it opens up right into the furnace! So right now we are trying to figure out how to solve that problem. But it will all end up well right??????????

Tournament results

Bloomington ATA Martial Arts recently took 35 students to the regional tournament in Terre Haute. Participants were, from left to right, front row: Lane Barnes, Kaiden Bosstick, Jordan Messina, Lily Cooper and Bryce Raper; second row: Alex Kritzer, Dakota Black, Izzy Bartlett, Claire Freeman, Sabrina Bosstick, Tyler Goff, Tanner Goff and Dylan Robertson; third row: Leo Olavarrieta, Ethan Zaleski, Sydney Way, Lydia Freeman, Cordell Perian, Kacey Merrifield, Davin Crockett, Lindsey Way and Jacob Breedlove; back row: Charlise Pate, Riley Allen, Carl Factora, Mr. Wolfe, Jon Wolfe, Cody Gearhart, Jacqline Wolfe, Brynn Bosstick and Lauren Bosstick. Courtesy photo

this was in the paper today!

Tae Kwon Do...

Tournament!!!!!!!!!!!

So... the same weekend we had Xan's birthday, Izzy competed in her very first tournament! She got 1st place (but so did all the other Tiny Tigers) But that is not what is important. She was so excited, Andy and I, and Nana took her to Terre Haute on the 20th (saturday) and watched her compete in her forms class. She did all the forms correctly mirroring the black belt master that was helping with the class. She did perfect!

<-This is outside the Rose Hulman Center where the tournment was held.

This is a view of the floor at the opening> ceremonies the far right is where all the kids are and the left is all of the adults, black belts at the front on both sides. Really big!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the trophy table below! Izzy was in the back with all the other little White Belts Forms!

look at that highkick!

waiting for our turn on Mat 2 shaking hands with judges

look at the trophy! "Mom, its as big as Dimey!"

Xander's 5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes! Our little Xander is not little anymore. He is officially 5 years old!

Our little man is growing by leaps and bounds. We celebrated his birthday on the Sunday following his birthday (Sept. 16th was his official, but that was on a Tuesday, so we made it Sunday.) Plus he took in cupcakes for his friends at school. But what was so exciting this year is that he was fully participating in the festivities. He opened everyone of his presents, and reacted with them! Of course he opened some little "Cars" figures first, and then we had to convince him to open the others, by holding the cars for him. But he opened all of them by himself!!!!!!!!!!!!! He has never done that before! He also blew out the candles on his cake and when one didn't go out, he moved to blow it out! he was engaged and excited! In attendance at this wonderful event were: of course me and Andy, Izzy and Dimon. Then were Ti-Chi, and Chi-Chi (Dave and Lil),and Nanny (Great Grandmother of kids) Nana, Papa, and Uncle Ryan (Marie and Larry), and Audrey and Israel, Nathan and Julian. (I think I spelled that wrong. Sorry)

It was so exciting! And to top it all off on Wed, the day after his official birthday, he said Mama for the very first time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here are some pictures!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please love and protect....

Andy's cousin Paul Rieger has been sent to Iraq for his tour with the Army. WHile he is gone we want him to know that he is loved and missed and we expect him to come home safe!

love you Paul!

The Zoo!!!!!!!!!!!!

This past weekend we went to Cincinnati to go to The Beach. (Our favorite water park in the area.) So we got Dave and Lillian (Andy's parents) to go with us and we all headed over to Cincinnati on Thursday night. (Yes I skipped Spanish and Math, and pulled the kids out of school.... so worth it!) After a long time in the car with the kids and 2 movies later we arrived at the hotel. Izzy spent the night with Ti-Chi and Chi-Chi in their room while Andy, Me and the boys crashed in the other room. The next morning despite the rain we got up got dressed and headed to the water park. (all wearing our swimsuits mind you) It was only drizzling so we figured it would still be fun. Well we pull up to the park and it looks like they aren't open... so we pull in, past where you should pay for the parking and look around. There are maybe 10 cars in the lot. Weird, they should be open. We came on Friday because they were going to be closed on Saturday and we didn't want the kids to try to recover from a day at the park. Well Andy gets out to go look for someone and find out what is going on. After 5-10 minutes Dave gets out and goes to help find someone. Soon they find someone and find out that they decided to close the park all week! This however is not what we were told when we called or what is posted on the main part of the web page! So after some time and words, Andy comes walking out to get the tickets we bought (In May). He tells us what is going on and says that because we were told wrong, they are going to refund out money. Good thing. SO... after a few more minutes Dave and Andy come walking back. They also gave us discounts for the Zoo. (Which Lil had been looking up on her nifty new I phone.) So we decide we are going to the Zoo. So we stop to change out of our swimsuits, thankfully the boys were still in normal clothes. Then headed to the zoo.

Now starts a whole new adventure..... FINDING THE ZOO.......
We get downtown to where the directions say the zoo is and find that the road is under construction. Ok, so we drive around a little looking for a sign that says Zoo this way ->. Does one of these signs actually exist? No, that would be intelligent. So after a few roundy times around a few blocks we stop and ask one of the construction workers, how to get to the Zoo. he tells us to go down one block and turn right and it should lead us right in. Well we say thanks and drive down one block only to realize that the road, that the construction worker just told us to drive down is closed and torn up! Now common sense would say that he should know what is being worked on right? Appearently not. So now we are driving all around the city trying to find the entrance. Now if anyone has ever been to the zoo, you know that it is located in a very hilly part of town and there are a crazy amount of sharp turns and steep hills. Well we drove around every single one of them. At one point I thought we should just park on the street and crawl over the huge fence in someone's backyard and get into the zoo that way, but I got outvoted for actually finidng the real entrance. So 30 minutes later we find it..... It was kinda funny, because it was so crazy.

So we get there and head in. Kids are more than happy to get out of the car, and we rent a stroller and load that up and strap the kids into it (and their leashes for the boys)and head for the animals! we had a great time. And the rain made it so that there were not a huge amount of people, most of the time when we were at an exibit we were the only ones. It was kinda nice. During the big rain drops we found shelter in one of the many buildings. There were so many animals that I havent' seen since San Diego and some I have never seen. Several of the Wild Cats were new to me and it was awesome! Izzy, Lillian and Dimon all fed a giraffe, Xander chased Peacocks and Pidgeons, We were amazed at how fast armadillos run and just how crazy they are! We saw a sloth, though he was all curled up and sleeping. The reptile house was full of cool snakes, including an 18 foot Burmese Python and Chinese alligators. ( I didn't know China had alligators.) We saw Elephants, Zebras, Flamingos, Vampire Bats (just for you Mel!), Ardvarks, which are very funny to watch fight for the prime spot to lay down on. ------------------->

We saw Manatee's, which I have not seen since Sanibel. (12-14 years ago) And I have never seen them in a zoo. Xander loved them, he danced and watched them for about 20 minutes. He really seemed to love them. We saw eagles that have a 8-10 foot wingspan, and guess what???? Andy has the wingspan of a Turkey Buzzard! (The larger wingspan is the eagle we saw.We saw Sigfriend and Roy's white lions. Rhinos, Polar Bears, Spectacled Bear, Black Bear, Siberian Tigers, Kudos, Warthogs, Seals, Lemurs, Parrots, Toucans, Monkeys,and an Anteater andf tons more!. It was really fun and we had a great time.









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stuck in the Turtle shell. Dimon seeing Elephants!