Thursday: Sandy Pines

Today we went to Sandy Pines to visit Uncle Lee and Aunt Susan in our yearly visit.

We started with a round of mini-golf, followed by lunch.  They have pretzels at the canteen, and they're always a hit.

Then we went on the ropes course.  This is the first time we've been around when the ropes course was open.  It was a good one!  I thought Joshua was going to freak out on the second leg, but he made it through that one and then he was good from there out.  He even did that leg a few more times with no issues.

We also walked in the creek for the first time!  We decided not to do the pool, so the creek was a perfect way to cool off.  And although most of the time it was only ankle deep, it was so cold.  We walked up it a bit to see their backyard.

Overall, it was a lovely time as always.

Tuesday and Wednesday: life

I made some naan with my sourdough.  The bread was good but it could use a bit more flavor.  (Also, not as good as the restaurant's but better than the store-bought stuff.)  The sourdough started was recently named Brad.  It's not quite bread yet.

Monday Ben was able to drive himself to work and I was telling the kids how weird it felt.  Isaac said, "aw, he's all grown up" in just the right voice.  He did it again today, but I don't remember what the context was.

Last night I came home to this.  Joshua had cleaned the raspberries and covered them.  However, there are big holes in the basket so the cover really doesn't do anything at all.

We bought two tomatoes at the store.  I gave one to each kid and told them to keep it safe.  That meant a note in the fridge.  Speaking of the store, we were all there for school supplies.  It. was. terrible.  There were barely any college ruled anything.  We had to dig through boxes and then open one up to find the college ruled notebooks.  There was one box of college ruled composition books that took five minutes to find.  There was one box of 8 expo markers.  There were no boxes of Ticonderoga pencils.  We never found glue sticks.

Who likes wide rule notebooks, anyway.

Monday: a nice day

Isaac spent most of the day with Cheryl today.  Joshua and I had a lovely day with just the two of us.  One of the summer projects has been to put together the Mario Lego sets we have.  They were all in a box, because they're much easier to play with if they're put together, but in reality they were falling apart.  I think we have two or three sets left, but it's been fun working together to restore function.  Once we have them together, they can get played with for a bit and then they'll get stored as built sets but in separate bags; hopefully that will still make play somewhat easy without it being too crazy.

We also bought Joshua some shoes.  I don't understand shoe shopping.  At all.  The little mat in front of the kids shoes clearly said he was a size seven.  PSA: kids shoes only seem to go up to size 5, and there aren't many of those.  Ok.  So we walked around a bit and we used an actual shoe sizer, which said he was a size 4.  He tried on some of the shoes and we ended up with a size 5 so there is a bit of room to grow.  I'm still not sure what to do when Isaac needs new shoes; men's shoes don't seem to come in small sizes.  I cannot wait until we get out of this weird sizing limbo that is "big kid" shoes and I don't have to think so hard about it.  I will not be sad to never wonder about shoe sizing systems again.  

Isaac got his first set of Invisalign retainers today.  (An equivalent of braces.  They are trays that can be popped in and out.  They must be popped out while eating, but you can eat anything.  They also look a ton more comfortable on the inner mouth than braces.  They take a bit more responsibility, but Isaac can do that.)  The first few days he might be achy, but that should lessen as time goes on.

Sunday: old friends

Brian and Amy and family came over for the afternoon.  We played some games and talked.  Joshua and Emily played together the whole afternoon (Legos and in the lake) while Carolyn joined them a little bit.  Isaac was feeling a bit under the weather so he played games with us and relaxed instead.

We went to Larry and Cheryl's for dinner and it was lovely to see them again too.

Saturday

 Happy cat day!

Joshua finished his kitchen week.  He had a much different approach to kitchen week than Isaac.  Isaac tried to keep the kitchen clean.  Joshua did the bare minimum needed to keep the dishwasher processing.  If I had to have guessed, I would have switched the actions of the two kids.

The rest of the day was pretty boring.

Friday:

It was a pretty normal day today.  I dropped off Ben, Joshua and I went grocery shopping, we finished our escape room, Isaac and I finished a different game.  After lunch was an appointment, a nap, a few chores, and my bakery time - pizza crust and another sourdough loaf.

vacation Saturday: leaving

While I was originally a bit sad that we only had a vacation Sunday to Saturday (although there were good reasons), it turned out to be very fortuitous.  Tropical Storm Chantal was forecasted to make landfall early in the morning on Sunday.  

Isaac and I joined Heather for an early morning walk again.  We needed to leave pretty early, but the uber was scheduled to pick us up a bit after 8am.

We left the first of all the families, skipping out on the last clean up (again).  (There weren't many exit chores though, so we didn't leave them that much work.)  We got to the airport just as it started raining and ...they delayed our flight.  Of course...we're traveling with Ben.  Luckily we had a long layover, so weren't overly worried.  Also, they were doing construction in the airport and so there was only one set of bathrooms in our concourse...I'm pretty sure the line for the women's bathroom extended over 30 people at one point.  It was crazy!  I walked to the other concourse and found a shorter line.

We did manage to fly out in between rain bands - luckily it let up just long enough for us to get out.  While the other families were waiting for their flights they saw a double red flag at the beach - no swimming allowed.

Our flight in Baltimore was also delayed a bit.  I was so tired it felt like I was falling asleep on my feet.  They finally boarded the flight and I was napping before they shut the doors.  I vaguely remember take-off, but only enough to recognize that we were actually leaving.  (There have been other vacations where I've fallen asleep only to wake up and still be sitting on the ground.)

In Grand Rapids we stopped at the Lego Store.  Joshua was only feeling ok and we had all had a weird eating schedule, so Joshua and I got a smoothie while Ben and Isaac did the pick-a-brick wall.  We picked up some food in Holland and finally got home.  It was a lovely vacation, but it's always nice to be home too.