Thursday: VBS

Today's VBS went a bit better than yesterday.  People listened during the lesson.  There was a skillet and phone book incident though.  (Two of the kids got the relics of a strongman show...but then didn't want to let us carry them for the rest of the morning.  Seriously...we couldn't let a kid carry around a skillet with so many kids around.)

Here's Joshua with his class.  He's the one in sunglasses.

Wednesday: today

Well...VBS day 3.  We had two new students today that were a handful.

Isaac and Joshua are spending the night at Cheryl's, so it was a relaxing afternoon.  I did do some work, but I could do it while not talking to anyone. 

Tuesday: VBS day 2, evening

VBS was good today.  Our class got to go on stage to dance with a sloth.

I sat almost next to Joshua while Isaac was on stage, but I don't think that he ever noticed me.

It was a cleaning day, and Tornado snuck into the pantry one of the times I opened it for cleaning supplies.  Then I opened it again a few minutes later and saw this...

This evening didn't work very well for Joshua.  I'm not sure exactly what the problem was, but the problem he was crying about was the bath foam.  He didn't like it.  But when we ran out of foam he wanted to make sure I got more.  But he wanted to play with it.  But he didn't.  Ben and I both talked to him and I finally told him if he couldn't calm down and play he was going to bed early.  He didn't calm down.  On his way out of the tub he hit me again.  (Again, not hard; but it still isn't ok.)  I called in the reinforcements, since he seems to listen to Ben better than to me.  After a double talking to by Ben (about slightly different things) he finally went to get his pajamas on and calmed down.  He still went to bed early.

Monday: VBS day 1

Today was the first day of VBS.  It nicely didn't rain during VBS (but of course rained before and after).

This year I'm teaching 2nd grade, because Isaac wanted me to be his teacher.  It turns out that (so far), I really like 2nd grade.  They can read.  They are mostly independent.  But they aren't too old to be excited about everything. 

We also had a small group.  I felt a little bad, only having seven kids instead of the 15 that some groups around me had, but not too bad.  I usually end up with the super small groups which is weird, but fine.

The scheduled activities also ran quite behind schedule today.  I feel like this is somewhat normal for a Monday, but it felt worse than normal.  So we only had fifteen instead of thirty minutes for the official Bible lesson as a class, but it was fine.  I cut out some of the extra stuff and then we went to outside time.  I could tell they were ready for it.

Leaving was a pain though.  One of the exits from church is unavailable due to construction.  Normally by the time we're ready to leave the parking lot is busy but almost empty.  Today the parking lot was still backed up...so we went to the playground for a few minutes.  Not all that long, but it was better than waiting in a car.

Last Saturday: Brickworld

Last Saturday we went to Chicago to see Brickworld.  It's held at a large convention center and you see what other people have made out of Lego.  It's rather amazing.

Joshua loved the mechs the best, especially the two below.  We took a lot of pictures of mechs.  Joshua was a bit to short to fully enjoy the show, so I carried him quite a bit.  He could see things, but a lot of stuff involved looking down and he really could only look across.

We kept going around.  In the end, we probably only saw about half the show.  What we saw was all really cool though. 

We also took a break for the kids to play at the green block table.  There were about four sizes of bricks, all in green.

Joshua made this puppy and I was so impressed with it.  I could tell it was a puppy right away!

Then he made another one.  "They're both puppies, but they like each other."

Isaac was working on some wheels, copying something else on the table.

After lunch, we saw the Great Ball Contraption.  It is kind of like a Rube Goldberg machine, where many individual pieces work together to move a bunch of little balls around a circle.  The favorite module was the Ballcano.

This is the leader of the group.  Ben 'fan-boyed' over him just a little bit.

Then we saw some selected exhibits.  I loved the flowers.  There was a potion shop that was rather amazing too.

Some photo places:

And on our second (or third?) try we finally made it out.

Saturday: friends

We had some friends over this afternoon.  The kids played.  It was nice and relaxing.  The weather was beautiful.

Friday: repairs

Dad came over to help with some home repairs today.  We (he) got through the first three really quickly.  He changed a bike chain, dealt with a toilet, and fixed a rub in the ceiling fan.

Joshua was a bit bored, and so made a whole bunch of traps for us.

The last project should have also gone easily and, of course, didn't.  We were trying to take off a bi-fold door to replace the hardware.  We had taken off some of the same doors in the laundry room a few years back and I remember it being a lot easier than I thought it would be.  Well, we tried and it didn't work.  We tried again.  (And by we, I mean Dad.)  We looked at the hardware from the other doors.  We tried again and got somewhere, but it was still stuck.  We looked at the track in the laundry room and then tried again.  We pounded and prodded and the door was not coming out.  We had just given up and were about to put everything back together when Dad lifted the door one more time...and it came out of the bracket.  Easy peasy, like it was just waiting for us to give up so it could gloat.  Anyway, we switched out the hardware with the doors in the basement and now Isaac's closet door works.

After Dad left Joshua and I stopped at both libraries.  One to get some books on hold, and the second to get "The book of Monsters."  (A lego book.)  Joshua wanted to show something to Ben, and was deeply disappointed when I returned it before the showing.  He remembered by himself that he wanted to get it back, so we did.  Along with a ton of other Lego books.

Thursday: Q's Race to the Top

Joshua and I got home from dropping off Isaac and decided to play a 'box game.'  (As in, a game in a box vs. a game with imagination.  Box games are my preferred game.)  He got out Q's Race to the top, which is not my favorite game.  He insisted though, and so we played.

However, it didn't end up being so bad.  That's because neither of us played by the rules.  For that matter, we didn't even play by the same rules as each other.  Joshua picked a card color, rolled the die, and then went that many colors up (like candy land).  I rolled the die and then took a card of the matching color I landed on.  We never looked at the other side of the card.

The game was over in about five minutes.  Joshua won, not surprisingly, but I was pretty close.

Wednesday: today

It was a rather normal day today.  Dropped Isaac off at science camp.  (Although before that we went to see Dad at Hope College and as always the kids (almost) cared more about the treats they'd get than seeing him.)

Then I picked up Ashlyn.  Our normal house cleaners are on vacation for several weeks, so she's going to play with the boys while I clean.  It worked very well.  I just put on my audiobook and pretty much ignored them for the whole time.  The only downside is that I see a lot of the nit-picky stuff that gets glossed over when other people are cleaning, so I didn't get quite as much done as I was hoping.  But the kitchen got cleaned and the floors swept and laundry put away.  The table was clean for about forty-five minutes too, but then Joshua got a Lego set out again.

We went on a short bike ride.  (Well, Isaac on the bike and Joshua in the stroller.)  It...didn't go as well as I expected.  Isaac almost hit someone's garage door.  (BRAKES!  How do you even get so far up a driveway that I need to yell that??)  He didn't want to pedal down the bike path because he was going the opposite way from normal.  But we survived.

Tuesday: Nemo

Nemo with Nemos.

We had a bit of a meltdown this afternoon.  I wanted him to clean up a bit.  I told him what to clean up.  I would even tell him the exact thing to clean up, but he "couldn't."  So he cried in his room.  Then he complained that his throat hurt because it was too loud.

Then he threw some water.  (This is his normal operating procedure.)  Throwing isn't allowed, so time out was initiated.  He opened and slammed some drawers.  (I'll admit though, it was a rather weak slam.)  He wouldn't go to the time out spot so I picked him up and he hit me.  This is a first time for that.  They were weak hits as hits go, but I had to use the "let's go talk to Dad" threat.  I've never threatened to go that route before but I didn't really know what to do.  Luckily, the threat worked.

Ten minutes later he finally started work and finished before too long.  The tantrum was way longer than the cleaning, but I'm sure that was lost on Joshua.

Monday: we got in - we got in - we got in!

Ben and I put our names in a lottery to do an Inside Tour at Lego in Denmark.  We didn't get in.  But Ben got an email today saying that there was a cancellation and we got the spots!

We spent the day being excited and making preliminary arrangements.  I was able to get off work (we go in September) and parents are willing to help with the boys.  Next up, besides RSVPing, are to get flights and figure out exactly where the boys are going to stay.  There are several other details to deal with too, but one thing at a time.

https://www.legohouse.com/en-gb/whats-on/lego-inside-tour?ignorereferer=false

Sunday: Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to a wonderful Dad


Happy Father's Day to my dad too, even though I only talked to him for a few minutes today.

Friday: play

Well, the boys played together a lot today.

In the morning they played while I did chores.

At the library they played while I read.

On the beach they played while I read.

While putting off chores they played while I quilted.

It was rather awesome.

Thursday: life

Today was another rainy day.  I love it, but I know the farmers need everything to dry out a lot so they've been a bit bitter sweet.

We started off the day with the math game prodigy.  It plays a lot like a video game.  Joshua wanted to try too.  The youngest grade level is 1st, but I shrugged my shoulders and said he could try.  It went better than I expected.  He knows his shapes.  He got about half of the number questions right, which is really more than I was expecting.  Teaching him how to use the interface was interesting though.  We found the "read the question to me" button, but then he would often just say the answer.  (Although there was one cute moment when he yelled (due to headphones) in his cute little voice: "Mom, I don't know what vertices are!")

We went to a church playdate at someone's house due to the rain.  The kids balked a bit at first, but they had a great time in the end.  As normal, they went downstairs and I pretty much only saw them when they were hungry.

Wednesday: today

It started out with school work.  The kids don't love this part of the day, but it's good to keep in practice.  It also gives me time to do some of my work.

We went on a bike ride down the street.  (It's hard to get photos of a moving biker.)  Isaac was so wobbly to begin with, but he made it down the street.  By the time he went back and forth a few times he was much steadier.

In the afternoon we went to see Aladdin.  It was really good.  Joshua sat on my lap with 3D glasses...he was rather jumpy at the beginning but finally calmed down.

We took another ride around the lake after dinner.

And then Joshua decided to dress up at bed time.  Somehow he ended up in 2T pajamas.  I think he was being a bad guy.

Tuesday: and there he rides!

We made it to IHop today.  The kids seemed to love it as much as they were expecting to.  The service wasn't as slow as normal, so that was nice too.

I restrung some chairs today.  Joshua decided to come out and sit next to me.  We talked a bit, mainly about nothing.  I teased him he is a puppy, not a human.  He denied it, but by the end of the conversation he said he can switch back and forth between both.

Isaac tested the fluidity of cats.  Tornado was unimpressed, but also unharmed, by the experiment.

After supper Ben came out to see the bike riding skills.  Well, he started pushing Isaac a bit on his back, and Isaac could totally balance.  So we put the pedals back on.  Ben still ran with him a little bit, but after a circuit or two he was doing everything on his own!  Oh, he was so excited!  So Ben got out his bike and they biked around the lake.  While Isaac still can't hold a great line, he was able to do the 90deg corners without stopping!  Whoo-hoo!  (This means he has completed challenge number 2: bike around the lake with only reasonable stops.)

Not to be completely left out, we got out the bike with training wheels for Joshua.  He's a bit to small to use it as a balance bike, so for now he can just use it as pedal practice.  He's currently at about walking speed, so we went around the lake too.

Monday: the first day of break

I'm afraid it was a bit of a disappointing first day of summer break for the kids.

We started with some school time.  Isaac wrote a letter while Joshua drew a letter.

We went grocery shopping.

We didn't go to IHop (although I still tried to give them a special lunch).

I made them finish cleaning their rooms.

It was rather cold out.  It rained all day yesterday and a cold front came through.

Sunday: trapped

A little before lunch time, there is a bunch of giggling upstairs.  After a bit Ben and I come out of the office only to see this:

Oh no!  We're trapped!  How are we going to make lunch?  Well...we then hear some little voices that they are making lunch.  (There is a summer challenge: make your own lunch.  Then I'll take them out for lunch another day.)  Isaac made the sandwiches (and Joshua's cereal) and Joshua made the crunchy beans and was the communicator.  The nutella on the top is an M and a D so we know how whose is whose.

After getting the sandwich, I opened it up to see how well the stuff was spread.

Well, the peanut butter was spread very well.  But...there wasn't very much of it.  And there wasn't jelly or nutella.  The bites with nutella were good, but the rest of it was a bit...bready.  We laughed about it a lot and decided we needed to still eat it.

Later I came upstairs just as Joshua was having a minor emergency in our bathroom.  Only there was a problem...

...well, the mother in me climbed over the obstacle because a kid needed help.