Monday: this and that

 Tornado started waiting for Ben in the mid-morning.  It was just a tad early. :)

Other than that, it was a relatively normal day.  I got many things done in the while the kids were at school but as normal it would have been nicer if I could have gotten more done.

Weekend

 It's been a pretty normal weekend.  Joshua made the bag in his DoodleCrate and had a great time with it...even if we could have used a bit of practice before the final product.  Oh well.  He loved it.

Friday: O:CtH - pantry

Today I officially finished the pantry.

Here's what it looked like at the beginning.  The stuff on the floor was overflowing and the lower wire shelf was a mess.

Here is the cleaned up version.  The floor has especially been organized.  The applesauce packs were put into a container because I never know how to store them and they're so annoying to remove from the cardboard.  The few bags of food have been put in a container on the wire shelf.  Things have been resorted, at least for now, so that like things are back together.  I got rid of some food, but more so just put things back in the right places.  The opened snacks went in the snack shelf in the kitchen (and we're quickly eating them up).

This is also the place where the backpacks are stored on the weekend, so it really looks more like this:

Next up: quilting area.  This is another small area, but it has a futon that has been used as a storage location for several years.  If we're not going to use it to sit on, it seems like we should get rid of it and put up some shelves instead?  I'll need to think about it for a bit.

Thursday: sore throat

Joshua had a terrible sore throat last night.  So much so that he woke up in the middle of the night crying because it hurt.  It was a bit better this morning, so we sent him to school.  When he got back in the car after school he wasn't doing so well.  I was a bit surprised to have not received a call to come pick him up, but sometimes kids hold out just long enough.

Anyway, I brought him to the doctor tonight.  Nothing seemed wrong; he didn't have strep (nor any signs of strep besides a sore throat) or an ear infection.  They said to continue using ibuprofen to control the pain.  Hopefully it'll be gone shortly.

Last week was 100 days of school.

"If I had $100, I would buy candy.  

I wish I had 100 options for this.  

I would not want 100 bugs.

When I am 100 years old, I will watch TV.

I could eat 100 black beans.

I could not eat 100 atoms.

The best thing I learned in my 100 days at school is that recess is fun."

I was a bit confused by the atoms, but then he said that he couldn't just eat 100 atoms; they would be too small.  Also, while his spelling is still very appropriate for a 1st grader, it's starting to get better.  I can more easily read what he writes now and some of the weird words with double or hidden letters are starting to be correct once in a while.

Wednesday: pantry moths

Remember a few months ago we had pantry moths?  Well, the moth traps worked really well.  I thought they were gone.  But now they're slightly reappearing.  I see one every few days.  I still have the traps out though, so hopefully all the males are being caught and I'm only seeing the females.

Tuesday: 2-22-22

I know the kids had "big" celebrations for Tuesday, 2-22-22.  I...didn't.  However, I did write the date once today and surprised myself with all the 2s, even though I knew it was a big deal today.

Haha...I blogged about 11-11-11 too.  I also missed all the 2:22 times, today due to sleeping.

Monday: O:CtH

I feel like O:CtH got started again after the lengthy office.  I did the pantry today.  I did the whole pantry, although I need a few storage solutions before I can show final pictures.

I didn't get rid of a ton of food, although I did get rid of a bag of rocks. I found some scarves I had been missing, and cleaned up some curry from a spill three years ago.  I didn't find as much cat hair as I had been expecting, possibly because up until about two years ago the floor was relatively clean.

I also got through all my "do today" tasks, so I suppose the day as a whole was rather productive too.  It helped that we had Bible Study at our house yesterday and so it was already quite clean.

Saturday: cheating

The boys and I played Forbidden Sky today.  It's a co-op game and the hardest of the Forbidden series.  We played the novice level.

Things were going pretty well until the last quarter of the game.  In order to prevent people from dying we redid a few moves...no big deal.  Then to prevent Isaac from dying I made a completely new rule that was that I could use all my actions to get a card to save him and I gave it to him.  We ignored one or two of the bad cards.  We reused the good cards.  I looked through the deck and picked the card I wanted.  The boys noticed what I was doing pretty quickly, but couldn't quite wrap their heads around it.  At one point I said, "Isaac, were is that good card you had?"  

"I used it."  

"I don't think you did."  

"Yes, I did."  

"No, I don't think so."  

"Yes."  

"Seriously, can't you tell we're cheating big time already?  We would have died about ten times already.  Take the card."  

Laughter from both boys.

I had to put the game away because I was the biggest cheater.  However, the whole thing reminded me of when Mom would slip us $100 in monopoly so that we wouldn't be out in the first half hour of the game and that made me happy too.

Thursday

 Joshua: what does Rosa mean?

A: Rose

J: like the flower or the how pancakes are?

A: what???   Well, um, the flower.  Obviously.

A: Oh, hmm.  I bet he means rows of pancakes.  Rose, rows!  A new homophone I've never thought of!  But still, rows of pancakes??

***

Isaac's fort looks more like snowhedge now.

***

Everything is back in the guest room!  It looks great!

Tuesday: questions

The boys have been on a question streak lately! 

Joshua: What is the hardest part of a baby to change: the diaper, shirt, pants or socks?

A: I answered diaper but sometimes shirt in a long answer involving poop

Joshua: What is the easiest?

A: pants.

Isaac: what would happen if there were two stars in the solar system?

A: We looked up binary star systems and learned about the different planetary orbits.  I found thinking about day/night interesting

Isaac: So in this case it would be getting warmer and warmer and then a slight cool down because a sun is behind a sun?*

A: um, I'm not sure but I don't think so.

I: But light can only travel in straight lines, right?

A: But what if  they're not on the same plane?

Isaac: could a planet's orbit be in a figure eight?

A: We looked that up too and while hypothetically possible, the middle of the eight would have to be in the perfect location every time.

I: Is the Earth changing it's orbit?

A: It turns out it is going farther away from the sun by about 1.5 cm/year

And this was just a small sampling of the questions I was asked in the last few days.  However, the questions have all been pretty good questions and not nonsense questions, which make them a lot more fun to think about.

*I said I don't think so, but really I have no clue.  If anyone has thoughts on this, I'm now rather curious.  The point in space that we are talking about is where the green circle is below.

Monday: Valentine's Day

As normal, Ben and I didn't do anything special for Valentine's Day.  That being said, we showed our love in much more practical ways:

*I picked him up from an injection appointment at the last minute.
*He let me have some of his breakfast.
*He let me stop by the fabric store and waited in the car.  (It had been on my errand list, but I wasn't going to go back over there just for that.)

*We both went crazy as we looked at the car next to us in the parking lot to see two dogs sitting in the driver and passenger seats.  They had dropped off their human daughter to get fabric and were waiting patiently for her return.
*I went to pick up his prescription.

We also had some chocolate cheesecake that we shared with the boys for dinner.

The children, on the other hand, seemed to have fun filled days at school and came home with a ton of candy.  Between Christmas and Valentine's, I don't think they need candy for about a year now.

Saturday: shennanigans

I went out to pick up dinner and was gone all of about fifteen minutes.  In that time, the boys decided to have Joshua change into a swimsuit and have Isaac squirt him with a balloon full of water/air.  (Not a water balloon.  A normal balloon mostly filled with air and a little of water that, when released, goes crazy.)

Ben came up and took the picture and made them get ready for dinner.  I was just glad they were doing it in the bathtub!

Friday: snowballing the driveway

We woke up to an unexpected snow day!  I'm not completely sure on the reason, but I think it was ice.  It was rather warm when we got outside around 8:30am, so things were probably bad right before then.

Anyway, we decided to go outside.  Joshua didn't really want to go and I hadn't been planning on it, but I made him get ready and he told me I should shovel.  However, the snow was so wet (as expected) that we ended up using the driveway for snowball snow.  It worked pretty well...while the driveway wasn't clean when we ended, it had melted by the late afternoon.

Wednesday: frog room

A friend is helping to redo the frog room.  I've disliked those frogs for a long time, so I'm very excited to have them gone.  It took her yesterday and both of us today to get the wall paper off.  (To be fair, they aren't super long days.  Kids' schedules need to be worked around.)  The wall paper didn't come off super easily, but it also wasn't too bad once we got into the rhythm.  Take off the top layer, soak the glue layer, and then take that off.

We found some writing behind the wall paper.  It says "Frog room ribbit ribbit" with a frog and a gun that says bang.  I call this room many things, including frog room, guest room, and school room.  I might keep calling it frog room because the family will still know what I mean.

The boys enjoyed coloring on the walls, as should always happen before painting or wall papering.

Monday: O:Ct - office

I'm calling the office done.  It isn't really...it still needs curtains and Ben has a few boxes to look through yet.  I know it isn't clean per se, but we use it a lot and Ben and I never manage to get our desks clean at the same time.  We did get a lot organized and decluttered, even if it doesn't really look like it.

I think I'll do the pantry next because it should be short.  The office took forever.

Saturday: normal

 Today was a normal Saturday.  We did Legos, the boys were crazy, and I didn't want to deal with dinner.

Yesterday I took a bunch of pictures of a quilt.  Horizon was quite sure that he belonged on it since he's black.  I only got one or two pictures without him.

Friday: the day

It was kind of a busy day today...but it didn't feel as though I got much work done.  I went to the Mom's group at church which was very nice.  I tried to give blood, but I didn't prepare properly so my iron was way too low.  So I went to Lowe's instead and got some paint and styrofoam.  The styrofoam is for the office window: we keep the blinds closed almost all the time and hopefully this will help keep it a bit warmer.  (It hasn't been put up yet, but I had to clean in front of the window first.  O:CtH has been having slow progress in part because there keep being things that go into the office that need to be dealt with.)

The other funny? thing is I realized that there were only two days in January where both boys were in school.  Oh, it's been nice to have them back in school even though the days have been full of errands and such.

Wednesday: snow

Today wasn't a snow day!  It did snow most of the day though.  The roads started out ok and by the end of the day they weren't quite as good.  (I did a lot of driving today.  The worst part was actually dealing with car windows.)

I brought my quilting machine in for a tune-up.  It's just a local, in-home place but it had really good reviews.  The quilter has never had a tune-up, so it was due for one.  I had never thought to look for local places, so we'll see how it goes.

Then I went grocery shopping.  Most things that I was looking for were back in stock, with the exception of orange cinnamon rolls.  

I brought the cats to the vet, only to find out that I had the wrong month on my calendar.  They had time though, so got us in.  Horizon gained a half pound and needs more exercise, but otherwise they're doing well.

Tuesday: school

Everyone was back at school (or work) today!  Huzzah!

Now that things are almost normal, I'm hoping not to have a snow day tomorrow.  Joshua is quite sure there will be a snow day tomorrow.  There isn't a ton of snow predicted, but it's supposed to freeze (after today's rain) around 2am.  So roads might be terrible.

I really have a lot of things I need to do tomorrow.  It wouldn't be a terrible day for a snow day, but I have errands and appointments and normal stuff.  The last two weeks have felt like just getting the minimum amount done...which is fine and all, but more needs to get done.