Josh's latest

Josh loves riding in his cousins' go-cart

 Josh made this all-about-me poster for 5th grade.  Josh was so excited to move to Florida, where he'd have less homework than he did in Texas and where the school day is shorter.  School starts here at 8:20, instead of 7:45 in Texas.  But little did Josh know....
5th graders who do band go to the middle school 2 mornings a week at 7:15 a.m., where they are taught by the middle school band teacher.  (He is an incredible teacher and the children love him.  Rachel HATED her band experience in Texas.  The band sounded great, there were 3 full-time band instructors, but the band teachers only cared about winning trophies and not about the individual students.  But here she loves band and practices for hours each day, because she enjoys it and wants to move up a chair.) 
One day a week, Josh has to be at school at 7:15 because he wanted to do 5th grade Chorus.  They'll perform a musical and a concert in the next few months.
And another morning of each week, Josh has to be at school at 7 a.m. because he was picked to be on the school's Academic Team!  They have competitions against other schools starting in January.  He enjoys answering questions about lots of subjects and brings home a list each week of terms to learn (i.e. "Jehosophat," "how to get rid of tapeworm", "rhapsody", etc).  He'll be ready to be on a game show one day, with all this trivia he's learning!
So...  not quite the "sleeping later in Florida" that he was looking forward to, but at least there's ONE day of the week Josh can sleep in past 7 a.m. and get to school by 8:20. 

 When the cousins came over one evening, they played with toys with me for about 2 minutes (max) then spent the rest of the time playing trumpets and trombone.  They had a nice little Riley Band going.  Lyrad made the mistake of saying, "Can't you guys play any louder?" 

Lyrad and Josh found wheels from old lawn mowers and built these cub cars for pack meeting.  Lyrad loves being Cubmaster and Bear leader.  He and I have the most FUN church callings:  cub scouts (him) and nursery (me).