Saturday: progressive dinner

Tonight we had a progressive dinner.  It was a lot of fun.  We saw some people that we haven't talked to in a while and met some new people too.

Friday: love story

Lately I've found it interesting how you can see some parts of a couple's love story, but you never see all of it.

I was reading through some letters that my Grandpa wrote in August 1931 to his sister and found the following:

"I'm going to Battle Creek [where Grandma was living] again Sat morning!  If you could only feel as I do just for a minute, you wouldn't think so badly of me.  I'm not sure whether I can wait that long or not.  ...I've learned what love is."

Thursday: class

I had a few laughs in class today.  I'm usually not funny, so the laughter was nice.

To be fair, the things weren't really that funny.
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Since it was the day after testing at karate we did fun things.  We worked with bo staves.  Usually though, they set up the obstacle course and I know it is one of Isaac's favorite things.  So at the very end they set up the obstacle course.  The next class started and so Isaac was able to run it all by himself to his heart's content.  Just one more reason I really like our school.

Wednesday

First, a few photos:

Ben made a sword while Isaac and I were testing yesterday.  It's improved since the picture.

Isaac got a little triangle snake thing from the dentist and wanted a bigger one.  It was bigger!  The first was about a foot long, this one was about four feet!  It surprised everyone.

Joshua still likes sitting on laps.  Ben got some extra love from both boys today at church.

In other news, I feel like I got quite a bit of work done today.  I finally cleaned up a bunch of piles that had been sitting around for a long time as people are coming over on Saturday.  I checked off several smaller items on my to-do list.  I finally feel like my to-do list is getting shorter...and it's amazing!  (I wouldn't call it short, just shorter.  I'm doing some of the things from the bottom of the list that have been ignored for quite some time.)

Tuesday: karate testing

Isaac and I tested for our next karate rank today: green stripe.  It went fine.  It wasn't our best test by far, but good enough.

Also, the snow day calculator is showing a 99% chance of a snow day tomorrow.  I had some plans, but at the same time it wouldn't be a bad day for a snow day.  However, when I look at the forecast I'm not sure that I agree with the prediction.  I don't see a lot of precipitation in the near future.

Monday: sick

Isaac's teacher has been out sick quite a bit.  She was back this morning but left after lunch.

Isaac and I were talking in the car on the way home about some other stuff, and I mentioned that Isaac should ask her in the morning.  Isaac grumpily said to me, "If you have a fever you have to stay home for 24 hours fever free without medicine."  He sounded like such an adult that I couldn't help but laugh.

I emailed Isaac's teacher the question instead and mentioned the story.  It turned out that his class has had a ton of people out sick and she had given a lesson on germs that morning...and was glad that someone had learned something.

Sunday: around

Isaac was back to his normal, crazy self today, but we stayed around the house anyway.  I was feeling extra lethargic and don't know if I had a mild version of what Isaac had or if the lack of sleep from the previous night had caught up to me.  I reminded myself that, as I learned from when the boys were babies, it's usually the second day after a bad night that is roughest for me.

During quiet time the boys decided to hold hands and run around the table.  Needless to say, it was not quiet during quiet time, but at least they were not quiet together.

After rest time I played a game with Joshua.  He kindly got the pillows off of his loft so that I'd have a soft place to sit.

While we were doing that, Ben and Isaac worked on a triceratops.

Saturday: girl clues

We play on-line Codenames with some friends once a month.  We play guys vs. girls, and always joke about how different the clues are.

Girl clues tend to be more...abstract and we get the answers by thinking 'this is kind of like something'.  Guy clues are much more technical and knowledge based.

Tonight's first game had some especially good clues.  The first one was 'pit boss' and we weren't 100% sure what it was.  We got a few good answers though.  A few clues later we had 'boll weevil' which we also didn't really know.  We talked about it a little and ended up with the words 'disease' and 'maple', neither of which are described by a boll weevil.  We finished the the game by the other two girls feeling 'platypus' in their hearts.  We talked ourselves into that word and won the game!  It was awesome!

(In other news, Isaac was sick today.  He laid on the couch pretty much all day.  I offered him some screen time and he refused.  He told Ben to stop screen time after a bit.  The laying around was the main clue he was sick, but it was confirmed with the screen time.)

Friday: in pictures

Isaac and Joshua decided to do ...a battle?...with markers.  They stood them all up.  Unfortuantly, running by the table can cause them to fall down, let alone curious cats.  They were put up several times throughout the day, although now we have a lot of markers on our floor.

We had to make a stop at Lowe's and Joshua loves driving the cart into dead ends.

We were going by the car wash, so we also stopped there.

We stopped at the library.  Joshua brought his scorpion to show Mr. Rob.  We also read together for a bit; I read my book and he read his.  It was lovely.

I got trapped a lot today.  More than normal.  I'm happier to do traps than get attacked though.  During this trap...I think I had on rainbow and gold chains so I wasn't supposed to move, but I kept trying to warm up my hands on Isaac's belly.

Thursday: normal day

It was a pretty normal day over here.  Isaac had an early dentist appointment though, so I did that.  Joshua was super, super excited that Ben was bringing him to school.  It was probably the highlight of his day.

We were praying tonight and I asked Joshua what he wanted to pray for..."that my treat box becomes less full."  He was so serious about it and I couldn't stop laughing and felt rather bad about it.

Wednesday: blood

I donated blood today.  I had a trainee doing it (supervised, of course) and it took forever.  It's important to learn, but it was also nice when someone else disconnected me so that it didn't take so long.

I also ate lunch with Betsy.  We've had to reschedule many times for assorted reasons, and it was nice to see her again.

We put the kids to bed early tonight.  It's been a while since we've done that, but Joshua was melting down like crazy.  He hit his head (I understand that one).  Then he was too hot.  Then he was itchy all over.  Then he hit his head again.  Then he couldn't do his chores because...I don't remember.  Maybe his legs stopped working.  That seems to be his common malady.  Isaac said his stomach wasn't feeling great and he has to get up early for a dentist appointment, so the early bedtime worked for him too.

Monday: kids

Joshua made me a Valentine today.  (The 4x1 sticks are a V for Valentine.)

Joshua pulled this one out to play by himself.  Both boys know that it's a game that is on the chopping block whenever I get around to cleaning the game closet as I was unimpressed with the lack of strategy on the game and it isn't played much.  (Note that it says "a game of strategy" right on the box!)  Well, today Isaac pointed out to me that it really says it's a game of strategy for squirrels and that I should have read the box more closely.  I got a good laugh out of that one.

Sunday: attack!

Because we can't go a day* without having some sort of an attack in this house, the boys set up a carrot army to attack Ben's carrot castle.  They used all the remaining carrots.  The carrots with flowers are extra strong.

*a day?  More like two hours.

Saturday: pick-a-brick

We pulled out the pick-a-brick today from Ben's trip this last week.

It included a lot of carrots.

This was Joshua's final creation.  You can see Ben's carrot palace with carrot bad guys in the background.

This is mine.  Besides the carrots there were a lot of plant type pieces.

I like my bush.  I didn't at first, but it grew on me.

Friday: power outage

At 6:30pm, all the lights went out.  After the first moment of "what's going on?" I quickly realized the power was out.  The boys were all confused though, as they haven't experienced many.  Luckily, it wasn't pitch black out so we could still see a little bit. 

Also, phones now have flashlights, which is rather awesome.  We got the little lanterns from the basement, along with some candles.  The boys still finished their chores.  Then we had a little bit of extra screen time because I was ready for the day to be done and it's hard to do some of the other things (i.e., Legos) with the lanterns.

I like this picture.  There are candles for light (and a lantern) like the olden days, but then he's using a phone as a calculator.

The power came back on at 8:30, right after I had fixed Joshua's lights for the 10th time and was about to crawl under a blanket.  It really was perfect timing.

Thursday: Valentines and sparring

This morning I got to my office and there were some Valentines on the outside.  The Women In Science and Engineering made valentines for the women around the building.  They didn't forget me.  I was a bit surprised as I'm kind of on the sidelines, but it was super nice.

This evening Isaac and I had sparring at karate.  I'm usually rather intimidated by it, and today was no exception.  I'm usually put with the adults and high schoolers and am always the lowest belt rank (by quite a bit).  We were playing one point matches.  I won the first one, although it was against someone I know so it was a bit easier.  Then I was put against a large high schooler black belt who has a lot of experience.  But I won!  The teacher gave some good advice ahead of time.  I lost the last match.  I watched Isaac a bit too and he did well.  He isn't the most aggressive, but he still puts himself out there and gets a lot of kicks and punches in.

Wednesday: Lego Duck

The LUG (Lego User Group) that I'm a part of is having its members make the Lego duck.  We were given the instructions, but could then make it our own.

I chose blue.  But then I didn't want to make it all blue so I added grey and now it is a winter duck.  It's reading because I like to read.

Tuesday: writing

I was looking through Aunt Sue's book of memories today when I came upon this picture.

It's one of those pictures that I've seen several times throughout my life.  I looked on the back to see if there was a date.

There was.  In Mom's handwriting.  I don't run across her handwriting very often anymore, but it's nice when it happens.

Monday: Pokeball's birthday

This morning Joshua and I made good guy towers and bad guy towers.

I noticed this warning on a new cat toy.  "Adult supervision is recommended for children under 12 years of age."   Really?  For a little cat toy?

Also, it was Pokeball's birthday.  We sang to him and everything.

Saturday: escape room

Spoilers...there are some pictures of an escape room at Out of the Box.

We went to an escape room today.  It was Isaac's birthday present, but he had completely forgotten about it.  It was a rather nice one, in that it was a bit different than your normal escape room.  You just needed to solve a bunch of puzzles (like normal) to find doubloons but they weren't all interlinked.  There were also some doubloons hidden around the room, so it was easy for the boys to find some too.  (Not that they couldn't help with some of the puzzles, but finding the doubloons in between the puzzles was fun.)

Friday: a walk

Joshua and I were on the south side of town for some errands today, so we went to a different spot for a walk/sled ride.  There was just enough snow for the sled...any less and it wouldn't have worked out very well.

Thursday: class

I made it through my classes today, but they didn't go as well as normal.

Now, that being said, they didn't go that poorly either.  There were issues were I did something wrong.  While this happens frequently, usually I can spin it as a learning experience of what not to do and move on.  This time they were a bigger problems that I couldn't solve right away.  (Still not more than a few minutes and then we moved on, but enough to disrupt my rhythm.)

The computer was acting up again too.  I had been hoping that it was behind us because it worked well for about two weeks.  Excel restarts itself for unknown reasons.  Again, it is a fast restart but enough to jar me out of my train of thought...and when it happens over and over again it's just annoying.

Then I had a headache.

We worked with bo staves in karate today though, and that was fun.  We are supposed to bring them to every class but never use them so Isaac finally asked to do it and they changed the lesson plan to accommodate.  I was surprised, but it was a nice change of pace too.

Tuesday: important questions in the middle of the night

Last night I was in the guest room.  It was a good thing, because I found Grey Bear!  He had been lost for a few nights.  I said, medium loudly, "I found Grey Bear!", trying to tell Ben.  When I brought him into Joshua's room he was awake and wanted to know where Grey Bear had been...I forgot he's such a light sleeper.

Fast forward to the middle of the night.  I hear footsteps.  They come to my room.  

J: "Mom are bears still in real life?"

A: yes.  (And go back to sleep!)

J: are they on trails?

A: (how can I answer truthfully but do that he still goes back to sleep?). Yes, but not the ones we go on.

J: ok.  (And he goes back to sleep)

Sunday: shennigans

Isaac and Joshua built a "wall" so that Ben wasn't able to come upstairs for dinner.  They were so excited...they had even blocked both sides of the entrance to the stairs so that he couldn't get to the stairs directly from the office nor if he went the long way around through the bathroom.

They forgot Ben and I are always on the same team.

Ben texted me, asking for his shoes and that I unlock the slider.  I snuck his shoes down while the boys were figuring something out upstairs.

At dinner, the boys were super excited to watch how Ben couldn't come upstairs.  And then they were super shocked when Ben went out the basement slider.  A lot of yelling happened.  Isaac ran to the front door, only to realize it was locked and Ben wouldn't be able to get in.  He was just starting to run to the slider as Ben came in, all ready for dinner.

Saturday: normal day

It was a normal Saturday!

The cats watched the squirrels, and the boys played some sort of game.  Actually, they played several games.  One involved taking out all the books from Joshua's room and putting them in Isaac's room.  It was rather silly, because then they had to clean them all up and that was not as fun.