Joshua will be 11 tomorrow.....

....and somehow I messed up my numbers and will have to do another 2 years post tonight....not sure how I messed that one up?

Anyway at 9 Joshua received a gift of Tae Kwon Do classes from my parents for Christmas. They paid and got him to and from his classes. What better offer could I have gotten? I had always wanted to get him into Tae Kwon Do but partially couldn't really afford it and since we were both working the times were always cutting it to close and he would have been late most of the time. I couldn' t commit to it when it was us in charge. Also with my dad being the one to take him he was good about making sure we knew what he was supposed to do the rest of the week when not in class. He had a great coach who would ask every week how Joshuas behavior was and if he was not being very good he would have to do extra laps or pushups. Another cool thing abou this class is they tought them how to do in Korean. So they had to learn alot from example which meant paying attention. Joshua cought on to the words really well and by the end of the year was already in a green belt. Another really good thing about is it used up a lot of his energy and we had at least 2 nights a week where he went to bed on time with no fighting!

It was a good year for him though besides. He was used to the medication and in a pretty good routine. I had a whole year of no comments from the teacher about naughty behavior and since we moved that summer it was like a clean slate for him. No teachers used to his behavior as it had once been.

In the picture below he has his pants stuck in his bike chain. Don't know how he kept doing that but it happened all the time even when we fixed the chain. I'm not sure if he kept his leg to close or what but sometimes it was kind of comical to watch him trying to get the bike back to the sidewalk to undo it. He always got a good laugh out of it himself as well.
We took a lot of daytime road trips this year and there was a favorite rest stop we used to like to go to it had a big open area and a beautiful view of the river. The kids liked to roll down the hill and Joshua was always doing cartweels.
This kid instinctively figured out how to do them and was/is actually really good. I thought it was pretty cool since I was in gymnastics and we did a lot of working with him on the tumbling type things. He can do backwalk overs also pretty well.
At 10 Joshua continued to do the Tae Kwon Do and progressed to a green belt and then a high green belt before we moved, now we need to talk to one of the 2 schools here in town and find out which one is the same division as he was in so he can keep up where he was. It has been mostly a good year. We had the period of time, almost 4 months, when Kelly was gone and I had to do the whole single mother thing. I can say I really feel for moms who do that normally with out a husband. It was not a simple thing at all. Both boys really took advantage of the fact dad was gone including an incident where the boys stole a bike with a couple of friends. Fortunatly the parents of the other boy did not file charges or anything but our boys were in big trouble at home!

Joshuas 3 foot snake from the beach in Oregon..

Joshua took up the trumpet in the band at his new school.

The big move went over pretty well with the kids and Joshua seems to be getting along well with other kids at school. He actually ran for 5th grade vice president and only lost by one vote. Our only trouble we are having right now with him in school is homework. He just doesn't want to do it. I feel like I spend all evening harping on him about homework he could have done in under an hour if he would do it. Anyone have ideas on how to get an 11 year old to do homework when incentives, punishment, threats, etc......don't work.....frankly I'm exhausted.

Tomorrow November 14th at 8:20 am Joshua will be exactly 11 years old! 11 years ago right now I was on bedrest hoping this guy would wait a few more weeks.