Maryland Fitness Dice

Sam

9 - Squats

9 - Toe Touches

15 - Leg Lifts

9 - Sit Ups

18 - Jumping Jacks

15 - Jumping Jacks

12 - Toe Touches

6 - Push Ups

9 - Squats

3 - Sit Ups

Patrick

15 - Toe Touches

6 - Squats

12 - Push Ups

9 - Leg Lifts

6 - Jumping Jacks

15 - Leg Lifts

9 - Sit Ups

12 - Push Ups

6 - Jumping Jacks

12 - Leg Lifts

Alma

9 - Squats

9- Jumping Jacks

3 - Squats

3 - Sit Ups

3 - Push Ups

18 - Toe Touches

12 - Leg Lifts

15 - Jumping Jacks

9 - Push Ups

3 - Sit Ups

The two biggest things learned are that we need to do this more often as Sam didn't really know how to do Jumping Jacks and the second thing is that none of our children have any ab strength what-so-ever. All three needed spotting to do their sit-ups.

The Hot Dog Dance!

Maryland Henry Boys' Food Art

Here in Maryland, the Henry boys have decided that they would like to create some food art!

Samuel has a lovely pineapple flower with a carrot-strawberry butterfly flying near a broccoli tree.

Alma has also made a pineapple flower with a celery stem, and a little pineapple circle sun in the upper-left.

Patrick has made his plate into a very happy smiley face with strawberry eyebrows, apple ears and broccoli hair.

Tyler also wanted part of the fun and was too excited to get to the eating part to actually make any art!

The Maryland Henry boys enjoyed eating their art creations just as much as making them!

Fitness Dice in Canada.  Chalise and her Canadian Cousins did the fitness dice today and here are the results.
2. Sit-ups - 3 times.
3. Squats - 18 times.
5. Toe Touches - 6 times.
4. Leg Lifts - 12 times.
1. Push ups - 3 times.
6. Jumping Jacks - 9 times.

In addition to these physical activities, Chalise also spent her day knee boarding, swimming, playing at the beach, and riding the horse tonight.  We also discovered that Chalise had sunscreen spread by her dad better than he did on himself.  Ouch.

Fitness Dice in Rigby

Dillon, Alyssa, and Rachel played fitness dice in some of their extra time spent in Rigby.

Here were our sequences

Dillon - 3 push ups, 15 sit ups, 3 sit ups, 18 toe touches, 12 leg lifts, 3 toe touches, 6 sit ups, 12 toe touches, 9 jumping jacks, 18 push ups.

Alyssa - 12 leg lifts, 3 sit ups, 3 push ups, 6 push ups, 9 jumping jacks, 18 jumping jacks, 18 leg lifts, 9 squats, 9 toe touches, 9 jumping jacks.

Rachel - 6 leg lifts, 3 toe touches, 12 sit ups, 9 squats, 18 push ups, 18 push ups, 3 leg lifts, 18 push ups, 18 leg lifts, 6 sit ups.  Those push ups got to me the third time around!

 Alyssa also ate some food art for breakfast

Heated hopscotch

Have you ever tried hopscotching in 80 or 90+ degree weather with 80% humidity?  (At 9 in the morning.) We don't recommend it.  This challenge taught me something:  heat advisories exist for a reason, and my kids DON'T know how to play hopscotch.  After some discussion as the course was being drawn (with the smallest piece of chalk possible), this is what we ended up with.

Several of the early spaces were only large enough for big feet if you went through sideways.  

We sorted out the rules:  your foot can't touch the line, you have to alternate one foot and two feet rather than just hopping through the whole course on one foot.  There were some heated discussions about whether or not individuals made mistakes, so we don't have exact counts through the course.
Annelyn and Jessa each got a couple times through before the heat was too much (they waited until later in the day and mid-90s with muggy conditions).
Alex and Lyndsey claim they did 15 times through, although I know they both had mistakes every fourth or fifth time.
Melissa was able to get 3 times in a row.
Adam had more fun running around and watching the neighbors across the street mow their lawn.  He got 1 square.

Once we all started to get red in the face:

we decided it was time to come inside and cool down.

Hopscotching

 Chalise drew out our hopscotch course with the only smidgen of chalk we had left.  Notice how small the number 10 box is?!

 Chalise had the longest stretch without mistakes at 9 times through the course.

Dillon took a while to get it all figured out but made it through 4 times with no mistakes, and 3 times on several other tries. 

 

Two year olds and Hopscotch don't really get along, so Alyssa topped out at 2 squares, but was really good at hopping on one foot all over the place, including each of the other kids' turns.

Obstacle Coursing

We turned our yard into an obstacle course and here's how it looked.

Our yard was a complete jungle due to days of heavy rainfall, and no lawn-mowing weather. 

Our fastest 3 times were as follows

Chalise - :47 secnts, 43 secnts, 38 secnts (Chalise was our recorder, so I'm using her spelling)
Dillon - 1:17 (1 Minit 71 secnts as recorded by Chalise), :55, :48
Alyssa - 1: 52, 1:48, 1:39
Rachel & Kyle - 1:27, 1:04, :33(I wasn't holding Kyle for this one)
Courtney - 15:32 +DNF - Courtney was later than normal coming home from work, and got started in his work clothes and everything.  Part way through the course, our neighbor spotted him and started discussing his backyard project he was working on.  The neighbor asked if we had any 2x4's he could borrow.  We did, they just happened to be the plank and board you see pictured, so we let the neighbor have part of our course and by this time Kyle was done with being outside and dinner was waiting to be made so we called it a night.

Do you make the cut?

Presenting our world debut -- the Bateman family in "I'll Make a Man Out of You"

This was a lot of fun to choreograph.  It allowed everyone to use their own creativity while still keeping us together with the main choreography. Even in the midst of the screams and bumps and crying, we stuck it out. We hope you enjoy our craziness as much as we did. :)

Playing with food

JACK Challenge #4 -- Food Art
In no particular order, here are the Bateman children's entries for the Food Art challenge:

Jessa's Chickadee

 Jessa's Chickadee was made using fresh pineapple rings for the head and body, a banana half for the wings, olive eyes, strawberry beak, grape-filled tummy patch, and julienned carrots for the feet.

Melissa's Person

Melissa used a pineapple ring for the body, cantaloupe chunks for the head, grape eyes, banana mouth, carrot hair, and a strawberry belly button.

Annelyn's Loki and Frienemies

 I'm actually not sure on all the representations here, but Loki is the top middle.  She used an assortment of grape halves, banana bits, green and red pepper strips, cut-up olives, cut-up strawberry and half of a pineapple ring.  (A random side-note, she and Jessa spent some time after everyone else was in bed last week putting up "Loki'd" signs throughout the house.  They also switched the backgrounds on all the kids' computer accounts to a big "Loki'd" image.  We've had fun finding these hidden pictures.)

Lyndsey's Chef

 Lyndsey created a chef using a sliced mushroom hat, strawberry head, grape eyes, olive nose, banana chunk mouth, pineapple ring body, green and red pepper limbs, cantaloupe apron with grape and blueberry polka-dots.

Adam's Plate of Food

Getting a photo for Adam was tough, because he was eating everything as fast as we handed him food to use for his sculpture.  He did carefully place the banana inside the pepper ring (after sampling the banana).   He also has mushroom slices, a carrot, olives and grapes.  (And more grapes sampled from the bowl, and a strawberry, and more olives . . .)

Alex's Silly Person Weird Mutated Walrus

Somehow Alex's original plan of a trashcan morphed into this creation.  He used a pineapple ring, strawberries, banana half, carrots, olives, grapes and cantaloupe wedge.

And now, here's the proof that these creations tasted as good as they looked:

Jessa

Melissa

Annelyn's in-progress

Look Mom, all done.

Lyndsey

Adam -- sorry for the grape-filled mouth

He managed most of it.  In his defense, he did eat the equivalent of a couple plates-worth.

Alex

Kung Fu Fighting

Here's how the Hansen's spent our Friday night.

We love Kung Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

The Delmonte & Dancing Queen

 All the experts are raving about the latest motor bike to hit the market.  It's called The Delmonte, but more commonly known as "Dirt Damage" by the creator himself.

 

 With the official start of summer here, this little dancing queen is ready to move and groove in her two tone high heeled shoes.  

 Here's proof positive that these tasty creations were just as appealing to the tummy as they were to the eyes.  Dillon's looking forward to snorkeling with his citrus peel mouth piece. 

  Chalise truly enjoyed her rainbow of fruit flavors. 

Alyssa has been under the weather, so her creation will be forthcoming.  Can't wait to see what the rest of you come up with!

Fitness Dice with the Batemans

We completed JACK's fitness challenge #1!  We did the Fitness Dice activity for part of Family Home Evening.  Here's our results:
Annelyn -- 3 jumping jacks, 12 squats, 12 sit-ups, 15 leg lifts, 6 sit-ups, 3 sit-ups, 18 push-ups, 9 jumping jacks, 18 push-ups, 18 squats
Jessa -- 12 push-ups, 18 push-ups, (an hour of complaining) 6 squats, 18 jumping jacks, 3 toe touches, 12 toe touches, 15 sit-ups, 3 squats, 18 jumping jacks, 3 sit-ups
Alex -- 18 squats, 3 sit-ups, 18 leg lifts, 18 leg lifts, 6 toe touches, 15 toe touches, 15 squats, 18 sit-ups, 6 sit-ups, 3 squats
Lyndsey -- 9 toe touches, 3 push-ups, 12 push-ups, 12 toe touches, 15 jumping jacks, 6 sit-ups, 3 squats, 12 toe touches, 18 squats, 6 leg lifts
Melissa -- 18 toe touches, 6 leg lifts, 15 push-ups, 6 toe touches, 18 toe touches, 3 sit-ups, 15 leg lifts, 18 push-ups, 6 jumping jacks, 15 jumping jacks
Adam -- 6 sit-ups, 15 squats (to be continued on the rest)

Plus, Amy and Michael did 10 rounds (does that earn us bonus points?).
Amy -- 15 sit-ups, 9 leg lifts, 3 jumping jacks, 15 leg lifts, 15 push-ups, 15 jumping jacks, 15 push-ups, 3 sit-ups, 6 sit-ups, 12 jumping jacks
Michael -- 3 leg lifts, 9 toe touches, 6 push-ups, 3 jumping jacks, 15 squats, 9 toe touches, 15 toe touches,15 leg lifts, 18 jumping jacks, 3 jumping jacks

We're looking forward to completing the next challenge. :)

Month 2 results are in. . .

Congrats to Michelle and Chalise for topping our leaderboards this month, but watch out, they're comin' for ya, so keep up the good work!

Also a big shout out to the winners of our monthly drawings:

$10 to Amy for successfully exercising 3 times a week.

Also $1 each to Chalise, Dillon, Alyssa, Sam and Alma.  Great job keeping track of your healthy eating kids!

Now, gear yourselves up for the third and final month of my health challenge.  Adults, make sure you track your progress on your chosen goal; kids, talk to your parents and plan when and how you're going to complete the special challenges to earn more points and prepare for the final tally.

Have fun, be fit and live happy!

JACK signing off. . .