Birthday Boy

Stephen is the big SEVEN! His birthday was last week, and we had a party for him in the park, since the weather always allows for outdoor activities, and it worked better than our apartment. We invited the boys from his school class. We designed a pretty easy scavenger hunt, with picture clues leading to the next item. The guise was that a cake bandit had come and stolen the birthday cake, but left clues as to where to find it. Eventually, all the clues led to the trunk of our car! It was fun to watch the two teams race from one end of the park to the other and delight in being able to recognize and find the next clue. Stephen opted for chocolate cake, decorated with Scooby Doo. (Yes, a few of you are thinking this sounds an awful lot like last year's party. Same party plan, different city, different friends - hey, recycled ideas work!) We went to the party store to get Scooby Doo plates, but they didn't have any, so we ended up with a mixed theme of Scooby, other cute dogs, and camouflage. They actually make bouncy balls in camo - pretty cool to a bunch of first grade boys.





In other Stephen news....some of you remember for Halloween last year, Stephen was a loon. As in, the actual bird. The craft in his Big Backyard nature magazine was a loon costume, and Stephen really latched onto it. "THAT'S what I'm going to be for Halloween, Mom." It was July. I thought for sure he would forget by October. Nope. Good thing I kept that magazine, just in case. It wasn't hard to make - just a paper plate, some paint, and a few pieces of craft foam. Allen really delved in and made it happen last year. Top it off with Stephen learning the actual loon call and you've got one crazy night of trick-or-treating. (Thanks again to the Speichers for putting up with that!) So, this year, we thought, hey, no one here has seen this costume, or had the chance to be wowed by the loon call, so let's....RECYCLE this idea, too! Today at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, there was a costume contest. We thought it would be a great Saturday to spend at the park, and why not get out the loon and let him strut his stuff. Well, can we brag a little? Stephen won the GRAND PRIZE in the 7-12 age group - a safari caravan for four, which we'll promptly use when Grandma comes to visit in two weeks. It was his loon call that put the judges over the top. We hit the right crowd - a bunch of zookeepers couldn't help but be a little biased for a loon over Ariels and Darth Vaders.



Video of Stephen doing his loon call...

And the Winner Is....

...Denny Sivcovich. Not that any of the rest of you knew there was a contest, but we've been wondering who would be the first person to visit us from St. Louis, since everyone has told us how they want to come see us in beautiful San Diego. Denny was here in southern CA for a business trip and he called and asked if we could get together. So, on breezy September 10, we met him in Oceanside and had a delicious barbeque dinner 2 blocks from the ocean. (We'll take you there if you come see us, too!) This meant a lot to us, especially since Denny bravely fought his way through an hour and a half of infamous CA traffic from Los Angeles just to meet us. Now, I know it's been 5 or 6 weeks since that evening, but today is Denny's birthday so we thought it fitting to finally get this posted. Happy Birthday, Denny! You're a good friend.


On a totally unrelated note, I know you're waiting to hear about our rat adventures. (Ok, ok, some of you are laughing that we would write about Denny and the rat in the same post...c'mon, get ahold of yourself. Really.) We think our houseguest has bitten the dust. After placing the snap traps, he successfully ate the peanut butter off it twice without getting snapped. Smart rat. No wonder they're used as lab animals. I told this to the maintenance man and he said it was time to resort to poison, which he doesn't like to use, because the rat could crawl off anywhere and die, and, well, you know what a decaying carcass brings. He bought these poison packets and threw them up onto the roof, hoping the rat would eat them. So, Sunday we came home from church and saw what was most likely our rat laying unmoving in the corner of the rock garden under our stairs. I didn't stick around for the next part, but apparently, he wasn't quite dead yet. He crawled over, barely breathing, insisting "I'm not quite dead yet," (apologies to Monty Python) where Stephen and the two boys downstairs (so, we've got three boys, ages 7, 9, & 11) watched him with great fascination. Some weird sympathy reflex kicked in and the boys felt bad that the rat was going to die, so they decided to FEED him. Irony, anyone? Raisins for his last meal. "At least he'll die with a full stomach, Mom." We didn't see his body again, so hopefully, the poison won out over the energy from the raisins. Our neighbor said the racoons probably got the rat during the night. Racoons, rats, anything else? All you people visitors are welcome to come see us. You small rodentia, find your own hotel.

Becky

Of Mice and Men

And in other fascinating news this week, while Allen writes to you from Taekwondo Monday night, I’m at home with….a rat. No kidding. Like, the actual rodent. And this is NOT one we acquired at a pet store. Seriously, we’ve never dealt with pests on this level this before. We know it happens. But to other people, right?

We first saw evidence of this animal a couple of weeks ago when I noticed a hole had been chewed in my bag of potting soil in the laundry closet on our balcony. I called the apartment office and the leasing agent is our downstairs neighbor, and she had experienced the very same thing with her potting soil. So, friendly maintenance man Tim brought over some sticky goo traps, and we all put them out, but the only thing we caught in the two weeks was my foot as I stepped back into it while getting laundry out of the dryer. (And that goo was hard to wash off my foot, I might add.) We’re thinking we have just a little mouse, as we have a wooded area right next to our building. Makes sense.

In the middle of the night Saturday, I am awakened by loud clawing and biting noises in our KITCHEN. I wake up Allen, and he heads off into the kitchen, turning on lights, expecting to see a little mouse. Now, I’m thinking, “Do you have a plan? If you see something, what are you going to do? This isn’t exactly like killing a spider. Can you actually bring yourself to conk it on the head?” (Drat Disney and Pixar for personifying and cutifying small furry vermins.) Well, of course, he doesn’t see anything cuz the animal goes and hides. He comes back to bed, we fall asleep, only to be woken up 10 minutes later by the same noise. This goes on a couple more times till it finally stops. We get up Sunday morning to see small bits of kitchen cabinet on the floor. I mention this to my friend Margaret who informs me we have something more than a mouse, because mice don’t eat/chew cabinets. Great.

Then, Sunday night, after Stephen is in bed and Allen and I have settled down to check out the latest campaign garbage on TV (why we torture ourselves watching this stuff, I don’t know) we hear loud scratching and clawing noises in the kitchen again, this time from under the dishwasher. This goes on for about 30 minutes, escalating into loud ripping noises. Whatever it is, it’s having fun making a cozy nest under there. We bring the goo traps in from the laundry room and put them on the kitchen floor. Allen goes to bed. I’m sitting at the table working on bills, all is quiet, and THEN, a dark gray, 6-inch rodent darts across the living room floor, under the TV. This ain’t no mouse. I get Allen (not calmly, either), and we try to make a chute by putting our (still) unpacked boxes around the TV in such a manner that if he decides to come out, the only direction he can get out is the front door. But it’s 50 degrees outside and 70 under the TV. Would you come out? He pokes his little nose out from under the TV a couple of times, scampers around behind there and tells us we’re crazy if we think he’s going outside. Thirty minutes later, we defeatedly go to bed, but not before putting a goo trap around our setup, with pieces of macaroni from dinner on it.

Monday morning we wake up to find…..not a rodent stuck on a trap, but all the pieces of macaroni gone. Uh huh, he’s laughing at us now, all cuddled up in his dishwasher-insulation nest, thanking us for dinner, wondering what we’ll serve tomorrow night. I tell my downstairs neighbor leasing agent about our adventures, she agrees it’s a rat (and shivers as she says “ulgh”) and sends Tim over to set a snap trap. Now, regular mouse traps are what, 1” X 3”? This thing is the size of a small book, and it goes under the kitchen cabinet near the dishwasher hose hole, loaded up with peanut butter. So, now we wait. Of course, after all this brouhaha, we’ve heard nor seen nothing of Mr. Ratatouille since Monday and it’s now Wednesday. Did he go out the door, adventuring into the big world, visiting friends in a van down by the river? Is he traipsing around to all his penthouse nests in other apartments? Will he return when we least expect it? We’ll let you know. But for now, I guess we can add having a rat in our apartment to our “New Experiences in California” list.

Becky

Taekwondo Lessons

It's Monday evening at 6:45PM. That means I'm sitting here at the Escondido Community Center watching Stephen in one of his Taekwondo lessons. He has these 2 times per week - Monday and Thursday and has been doing this for several weeks now. When we were in St Louis, Stephen expressed an interest in learning Karate and we found a place where he could take very early introductory lessons. He really seemed to enjoy it. When we found ourselves in Escondido, we began looking for a place where he could continue learning martial arts. The Karate classes were somewhat expensive but we found this Taekwondo class which is pretty good and not too costly.

There are 25-30 people in this class ranging from very young 5-6 year olds up to gray-haired adults in their late 50-60s. This works pretty well, actually, because there are plenty of young people who are learning the very basics and there are also older folks who make pretty good role models for them. They do alot of the same exercises for everyone from the white belts up to the black belts. Stephen has plenty of people to watch and model after. Sometimes, it gets a bit confusing for Stephen and some of the other young ones, but the teacher, Master Leonard, provides written instructions to the parents so we can work with our kids outside of class. I appreciate this because it lets Stephen and I spend time together learning which I really enjoy.

Taekwondo is a Korean martial arts form. The name literally means 'foot and hand fighting'. This means that it consists of various fighting forms incorporating kicking with the feet and punches, jabs, and holds done with the hands. There are several 'forms' which are basically just different stances and patterns of movement which allow for both defensive and offensive maneuvers. Some of these forms can be complicated but with a little slow-motion practice, they can be learned fairly well.

Perhaps the most difficult part of the process - at least thus far - is learning to speak Korean. All the moves and commands are given in Korean and all counting is done in Korean. This can be tough because it's just memorization. However, since they're doing it twice a week and are pretty repetitive with it, I think Stephen is starting to pick it up pretty well. I, on the other hand, need to spend some time with my notes. Stephen can count to 10 in Korean now and he's pretty proud of that. A few days ago, we talked on the phone with Andy Gilman and his wife Jenna in Taegu, South Korea. Stephen was pretty excited to show Jenna how he could count in Korean. She said that he did, "Perfectly." That made him pretty happy.

I think another really exciting thing for Stephen is that he has a Taekwondo uniform now. They did not get uniforms in his class back in St Louis. It wasn't important then because all the kids in the class were at about the same skill level. In this class, since they have people at all levels up to Black Belt, the uniform is pretty important. Stephen really likes his uniform. He can't wait to get his yellow belt.

The pictures I've included are from the night that they used sticks in their class. Occasionally, the teacher will incorporate lessons from other martial arts forms and the fighting sticks was one of those things. Stephen really liked working with the sticks but some of the forms were a little difficult (not to mention dangerous). He was a little frustrated but I promised him that we'd practice and he'd get it pretty well. The next day, I went on the web to look for a place to get a set of these sticks. It's amazing how much they can charge for a couple of 28 inch long sticks. Instead, I went to Home Depot where, for about $5, I was able to get 2 complete sets of fighting sticks (3/4" dowel rods) cut to the right length. Stephen was pretty excited when I came home with those. We began working with these and, within about 30-45 minutes, he had it down and was doing a great job. It really was a lot of fun.

Last week, a funny coincidence took place. On the way to the lesson, Stephen was talking to me about some older boys in his school who we making fun of him and being pretty mean to. One of them even pushed him and made him fall. Stephen was pretty upset, as you can imagine, and we talked about the right way to deal with this situation - I mean, talking with his teachers about it. Well, when class started, the instructor started out by saying that they would be learning about how to deal with a bully who might knock you down and sit on you. All the moves were about how to deal with a situation where someone is holding you down or trying to hurt you. He specifically talked about bullies on the playground. I thought, "Oh, no. Tomorrow Stephen's going to be suspended for using Taekwondo on some older kids at school." We talked it over and discussed the proper thing to do and the proper way to use or not use Taekwondo. Luckily, no one was injured the next day. :-)

The class runs for about 3 months. If Stephen chooses to continue, and I hope that he does, I might decide to join him in the class. It'd be fun to do it together and I think he wants me to join in. Well, we'll see.

Allen