Science Night

With Diana working at the elementary school, she sometimes gets roped in to helping out with some of the different activities. Well, this is one she actually volunteered for! Science Night at school has been something we have participated in since Ledger was in first grade. It's always been a fun event that he loved. The school goes all out- they have different STEM type activities in a bunch of the different classrooms, things like popsicle stick bridges and making their own slime.

This was always a highlight for Ledger, he loved to dig in and make stuff, especially if it was messy! The best part, the thing we would spend the week before Science Night building, was the good ol' egg drop. The principle would get up on the scissor lift in the gym and drop the students' creations from 25 feet and see if the egg survived. They still do it and all the kids totally love it!

This year Diana got to help out at one of the activity tables, helping the kids build shapes and towers out of straws and connectors. Ledge and I stopped by for part of the time and got to see her doing her thing with all the different kids, each of them so excited to see Miss Diana and introduce her to their parents! It was a lot of work for her, but to see the sparkle in the kids' eyes made it all worth it for her!

A Slender Halloween

Ledger's favorite holiday has always been Halloween. He loves to go out trick-r-treating, but has been a bit annoyed with some of his costumes in the past. He loves the costumes that are blow-up suits, but the last couple have either had too short of legs, which means he has to shuffle and take baby steps all night, or the fan stops working and the whole thing just flops over and looks sad. This year he picked the character he wanted to be nice and early so we could find just the right costume. He wanted to dress up as Slender Man. We looked around for a while to find a good one, and eventually we settled on one that was actually pretty creepy! When we first got it and he tried it on, Diana was not ok with it! She was supper freaked out by how tall it was! Ledger, of course, used this to his advantage and would try to creep his mother out all night while wearing it!

On Halloween evening we got him dressed up in the really unsettling costume and started our quest for free candy! Diana stayed back at the house passing out candy and fawning over the cute costumes that the little ones wore. Granted, she knows almost all the kids who stopped by thanks to her teaching job! All the kids would yell 'Miss Diana!' and run over to see her and get some candy. 

Ledger and I? We had plans to get some candy and creep out some kids! What makes the costume so strange is that there is a fake head that Ledger strapped to the top of his head, and then these shoulder pads that ride up to the top of his head. The shirt and tie that fall down over Ledger's face is see through from the inside, so all together it looks perfect- you can't see Ledge at all! With Ledge being five foot ten inches tall, and then another 8 inches above that with the fake head, this Slender Man costume was a towering six and a half feet tall!

As we walked down the sidewalk he would get a lot of strange looks, partly because of just how odd and tall he looked, but also because he was totally playing the part- he didn't talk and would intentionally walk too close to other people around. He would stop in the middle of the sidewalk and point at kids across the street until they noticed him. Usually they would get a little chill, give a spooked out face, and keep walking away faster. Ledge was absolutely loving it! It through off a bunch of kids, and because he was so tall in it, a bunch of the parents would cringe as well! All of this was delighting Ledger to no end!

Finally it was getting dark and the chinstrap and shoulder pads were getting rather uncomfortable, so we made our way back home. It looked like Diana's candy supply didn't last too long- she was snuggled up inside by the time we got back. All in all, another successful Halloween celebrated!

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Leaf Pile

The most annoying part of Autumn is raking up the leaves. I never did it growing up. We didn't have any trees in our back yard and any leaves in the front yard would blow away onto someone else's lawn so it wasn't our problem. Well, we have tons of trees in our yard, so we have to do the work to clean it up.

I had had enough of doing it myself, and I happen to have a large 13 year old boy who lives with me, so guess who's helping this year?

I had gotten a second rake earlier, so there was no excuse! Ledger and I both trapesed out to the front yard and got to work making a pile. Fortunately, our town comes around and sucks up any leaf piles by the road, so all we had to do was pile it up out there. It took a lot of work and effort, but we made a huge pile! It didn't take long for the neighbor's kids to decide that all our effort would be the perfect pile to jump in. Ledger honestly felt the same and he joined them jumping in the leaf piles and having a ton of fun!

It just took a little work to get the leaves back into the pile after they had exhausted themselves real good. Ledger said he had a surprisingly good time helping out. Great, because the trees still have about half their leaves left- we are definitely going to have to come out and do it once or twice again before winter!

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Boys' Night Out

Diana had made plans to go see Lissa in Detroit for the weekend, so Ledger and I were on our own. I spent some time during the week looking up different stuff that he and I could do to try and make this 'boy's night' a little special. It took some research, but I found just the thing!

I had been building up all week that he and I were going to do something special for the night while Mom was gone. He likes surprises, but sometimes it gets to be too much for him and he just desperately wants to know! Tough luck, buddy, I ain't tellin!

Finally Friday came around. We said goodbye to Diana, and we hopped in the car. I still wouldn't tell him what we were up to. We stopped and got a little food on our way to Grand Rapids. He was really curious now, kind of getting annoyed that I wouldn't tell him. I finally explained 'Look bud, we are going to go do something that I don't think you even know exists. Like, I could tell you what it is, but you wouldn't understand it anyway. How about we just go and experience it together.' He wasn't quite sure how to take that, but was willing to go with it and just let it happen. We made our way to the west side of downtown and pulled into a place called The Comedy Project. He had a really confused look on his face. I told him 'Have you ever heard of Improv comedy?' He had not. I explained that we are going to see an improv show where the comedians on stage will create a whole show based on the suggestions we yell out. This was really strange to him, but to his credit, he was up for it! We walked in and immediately Ledger was hooked- the whole design of the place was weird and fun robots! We found our seats and ordered sodas and mozz sticks (his favorite). The place filled up before the lights went down to start the show. The show itself was basically a long live episode of the old show 'Who's Line Is It Anyway?' (which he had never seen). It was very funny and full of energy. Ledger absolutely loved it! On the way home we stopped for a late dinner and he kept recounting all the funniest bits.

We had an absolutely grand time- boy's night was a rousing success!

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The Hangout House

Ledger hangs out with his friends all the time, almost every single day after school. The thing is though, its only online. He hardly ever sees any of them in person, even on the weekends, which I guess is pretty normal for his generation.

Well, I am not a big fan of that! I have many fond memories of seeing my friends all the time after school, riding my bike over to their houses or playing behind the school across from my house. In middle school I would probably hang out in person with friends three to four nights a week, and that wasn't even including Saturdays when we would spend basically the whole day at each other's houses or out getting in to trouble! Growing up I would always go over to other friends' houses. Partly this was due to having an annoying older brother and sister, but also because my mom would get annoyed if we made a mess. I didn't want that same thing for Ledge, so we decided to do something about it: we decided that our house is going to be the hangout house! Unfortunately, none of Ledger's friends live just down the street, so that means if he wants to have them over I have to coordinate with their parents and pick them up or drop them off afterwards. No problem, I say. With the school year just starting, we figured Ledge should invite a few friends over on Friday, so I texted with their parents and got it all worked out. The four of them walked to our house after school and spend the rest of the day hanging out and having a blast! Mostly it consisted of them playing games together on their phones and tablets, but to hear them chatting and bursting out in laughter makes it all worth while!

Diana and I usually end up hiding in the guest room and watch tv, listening from time to time to make sure no one lost a limb. For dinner I went and picked up a few pizzas and the boys chowed down! Finally, around 9pm, the boys and I piled into the car and we brought them each home. On the way back to our house Ledger kept talking about all the funny stuff they did and how much fun it was. This will definitely be something we do regularly this year!