Friday: a new low

 I reached a new low this week.  On my to-do list I put that I needed to clean up my to-do list.

To be fair, it really needed to be done.  There were several items that weren't important anymore and could be removed and several items relating to books that just needed to be put in a different place.

I also got a ton of stuff done this morning.  There were many short tasks, but they all need to be done.  I also finished going through and doing a quick clean-up of the rooms I thoroughly cleaned last year.  I was hoping to finish by the end of September and I did!  I'm excited to start new places.

Overall, I also reached another low in my number of to-do tasks.  I've been tracking them periodically over the last few years.  I average about 68 items, but had a high of 98 at the end of the summer.  I'm now down to 48, but we'll keep in mind that not all of those are important.

Thursday: same ol', same ol'

It really wasn't that exciting of a day.  I feel like I've had a lot of those lately and honestly, I'm fine with that.  

Teaching went fine.  We moved on to pivot tables.  I sort of hate teaching when some students have Macs and some have Windows machines.  I try to be inclusive of the Macs but miss a lot of things.  It would probably be a good real-life analogy for several other issues society faces.  I try, but I miss stuff because I can't even see that their screen looks different from mine.  Most students are able to jump that hurdle of being different, but sometimes it's too big.  I don't really know how to change it, so I just keep doing what I'm doing and making notes when things are different to do them better in the future.

All our after school events were canceled, and it was nice.  It's good to do things, but it's also nice not to do things.  We bought some new shoes for the kids.

I made twice baked potatoes for dinner.  I added a bit too much milk, but they still tasted wonderful.

My computer was messed up.  Ben fixed it, (yay Ben!) although it required a reset.  All the files were saved, but I need to download all the applications again.  I don't have a ton that I'm using right now, but it's still a bit annoying.

Wednesday: walk

 Aunt C and I went on a walk at Hemlock Crossings today.  It's been about a year since I was on this side of the park and the river was so low!  It might not actually be low, it just seems low compared to the last few years when the water was so high every where.

Ben and I got a kick out of Joshua's alligators on his math test.

Tuesday: normal

 It was a pretty normal day.  Work, pretend to work, pick up the kids, piano, karate, relax.

Monday: weather

Today was a rather boring day.  I was impressed with how much I got done by 9am, but my progress slowed down after that.  I did clean the office quite a bit as part of O:CtH.  It needs a bit more work and then one more area to check before moving on to more fun stuff again.

The kids had rock climbing today.

As for the weather, it was weird today.  It would rain really, really hard for 30-60 seconds and then stop for a while.  Repeat for most of the day.  Also, today was cold.  It's been cooling of quickly, but today is the first day it felt really cold.

Weekend: crazy

The whole weekend felt crazy.  It was mostly fine, but sometimes a "take your crazy to the basement because I can't handle it anymore" 

Friday: Food

Today was centered around food.

I made banana bread first thing in the morning.  I made two batches of curry...the second batch the timing was a bit off so I had to make half of it in the morning and then I finished it up in the afternoon.  In the future I know I need about two hours if I'm going to make two batches.  The freezer is stocked with curry now though!

I had lunch with Betsy.  The time went by so quickly and we had a nice chat; we had paused for the summer.  I rode my bike over because it's actually rather close.  I almost didn't because it was cool out, but it was the right choice in the end.

It was Friday, so we had pizza for dinner.  'Pizza Friday' as Joshua and I call it.

Thursday: normal

It was a pretty normal Thursday.  Busy, but that was planned.  The boys enjoyed rock climbing.  Joshua went up and down one of the auto-belays 12 times.  I thought that was a bit much, but he was super happy with it.  And I know he had to work hard to get up there the first time.  I think he has a very slight fear of heights, so it usually takes him several times to get to the top of something.

Traffic was better tonight.  Still not great, but it was moving.  I was able to get to karate on time.

Wednesday: a full day

Today was a busy day!  It started with a haircut.  I finally donated my hair.  I had heard of a place in Holland that is taking donations to make local wigs.  She talked quite a bit about the process.  The wigs will cost about the same amount in the end, but the people making the wigs should get a living wage (appx $20-25/hr), although she's paying by the inch.  It's something they can do from home for just a few hours a day.  Also, the people that get the wigs can be sure the hair is ethically donated...there are some shady practices within the hair industry.  She's hoping my hair can make a whole wig and I might even get to see a picture.

I did a very fast grocery store run.  We really needed a few things that included a pillow and rainbow shorbet.  Joshua wanted to share a special treat that his class made.

Then I went on a walk with Cheryl...it was a beautiful day.

I looked at Isaac's planner today (as it needs to be signed every day).  Imagine my confusion when I read they were learning about grate planes in social studies.

This evening we had GEMS and cadets at church.  Dad joined Isaac and Joshua in fishing at the pond.  Joshua caught two small fish.  I'm teaching 4th grade girls this year.  The first time went well.

Tuesday: Joshua

 To start with, we have some of Joshua's school work:

His Star Student poster

What he did this summer.  This was the bike ride when he fell down, but I guess it was still a memorable trip.

I really like his drawing of a character in his book.

We were driving home today and the car was quiet.  Suddenly I get a question in a serious voice.

J: Mom, what type of animal is a mermaid?  Fish, mammal, bird, or insect?

J: Because dragons are obviously reptiles, Phoenixes are birds, and unicorns are mammals.

J: But mermaids could be fish or mammals.

A: hmm.  Good question.  Well, do mermaids lay eggs or have baby mermaids?

I: I think baby mermaids

A: yeah, that's what I think too.  So that would make the mammals.  Dolphins are mammals too, so it is possible. 

Monday: life

It was a rather normal day today.  I helped out at kids' food basket.  I thought I had signed up to pack lunches, but apparently I had signed up for food prep.  We made turkey roll-ups and cut cucumbers.  The turkey was fine, but the knives they gave us to cut the cucumbers didn't stay straight.  I already can't cut things very straight, so they just exacerbated the problem.  My hand was starting to ache by the end, but luckily it was the end!  We got out early so I had time to make a quick trip to Menards.

I had a nice lunch with a friend from karate.  I picked up the kids from school.  My new statement is "tell me two details about your day" and it's worked quite well.  Sometimes I get random things like "a car drove really fast by the playground during recess" but I usually get pretty relevant things.

Saturday: corn maze, apple picking, Castle Panic

This morning we went to the corn maze and apple picking with Aunt C.  It was a beautiful day.  The kids were super excited in the corn maze and doing a great job with taking turns picking a direction...but then above the truck we got lost.  We went round and round until I finally pulled out my phone help us.  Joshua was flagging a bit by the time we actually escaped part one.  Part two went much faster.  Isaac was the main leader, and we examined the picture of the maze better before we went in.  We still got a little stuck in the bottom right section, but once we looked at a picture again we were able to figure out where we were and how to escape.

In the upper peninsula:

Isaac leading the way:

We picked some apples afterwards.  As always, it's easy to get a lot of apples.  Joshua was very vocal about Empire apples being his favorite, but he saw the variety and immediately knew.  (It was a very good apple).  However, I'm also not sure if he remembered from last year or if he just liked the name because of Star Wars.

In the afternoon we played a game called Castle Panic.  It isn't my favorite game, but it was Joshua's turn to pick.  Our castle was almost destroyed when a fortuitous boulder rolled through the middle of our broken castle and killed a bunch of monsters that were about to finish destroying our castle.  At one point after that we had a single castle section and a wall protecting it on one of six sides, which looked a bit ridiculous.  We won in the end with one castle tower and one random wall remaining.

Friday: gutters and garage doors

I cleaned two of our gutters today.  The rest of the gutters seemed ok from the ground, so I'm not too worried about them.  These two gutters are also 'easy' to get to so that helps the whole process.  I was happy that the whole process (including taking a shower afterwards) only took an hour.  When I got to the first gutter I was greeted by some plants.

We also had our new garage door installed today!  I don't have a picture of the new door, but they look very similar.  The windows are very slightly different, but not enough that you could tell with a casual glance.  This was the old door...you can see the bend.

Vacation Sunday (Aug 21): travel

Getting off the boat went well.  Picking up our luggage went quickly and finding the bus we needed wasn't obvious but it was rather easy.

On our way to the airport we got notified that our flights had been canceled due to thunderstorms in Dallas.  (They got a ton of rain.  I saw many pictures of flooding over the next few days.)  Anyway, they wanted to rebook us at 6:30AM the next day, which obviously would have been annoying.

Since we booked our flights via the cruise line and not independently, Ben was able to make a few phone calls and get our airline switched so that we could get home only an hour later.  (It was a bit hard to find the correct phone number, but he did a nice job.)  So we were at the airport significantly earlier than we needed to be, but that was rather good because the security check line was LONG.  We probably stood in it for an hour.  Turns out when three cruise ships all unload at the same time the airport gets a bit overwhelmed.

Our flight leaving Seattle was a little late.  However, we were able to stop at a bathroom and walk (albeit very directly) to our next flight.  We were just getting to the gate as they started to board.

My luggage wheels broke off during the flight.  I was very happy that they at least waited until our last stop to break, because I couldn't carry the 50 pounds easily.  Since it was already broken I just dragged it to the car.  The plastic got very hot (friction) and I almost burned myself getting it in, but reflexes kicked in.

We finally got home and the cats were happy to see us.

Thursday: traffic

Ugh, the traffic.

They've been doing construction on a road since...March or so...and it finally hit a busy intersection.  It's been a little annoying before, but for the last three weeks a major intersection that leads to the south side of Holland has been closed.  It isn't the intersection itself though, so while very annoying as long as I remember it the detour isn't too bad.

Fast forward to something this week when they decided to close a close-by intersection too in order to work on the railroad tracks.  Now they've closed a north-south road and an east-west road: my normal route and my secondary route.  This has caused traffic to become insane.  Last week I was trying to cross back to the north side of Holland and it was bad but the traffic was moving.  Today I tried and it took me forever to go a short block.  Google said it would take me 20 minutes to get home (instead of a normal five minutes) but I didn't believe it.  So I went the extra-long way around because there are only two real options to go between the north and south sides of Holland due to a lake.  There was still a busy stretch, but we were at least moving.  It took me 20 minutes to get home (so 30 all told).  I still think it was the correct choice, but I really hope they open up the railroad tracks soon.

vacation Saturday (Aug 20): mostly at sea

While the itinerary says Victoria today, the Victoria stop is super short and we didn’t book any excursions so we’ll just be having another boat day. We once again woke up at a decent time (7:30am) which means tomorrow’s wake up to go to the airport is going to be so annoying. Our internal clocks are changing just in time to go home, as expected.

It was a grey morning, so we decided to go in the hot tub. We easily found an empty one and brought our books in. We did take a brief dip in the pool which was refreshing and not nearly as cold as we had been expecting. However, the hot tub was right next to the fog horn. We heard it a few times as we got in and then it stopped, but around the time we were getting close to getting out it started again.  Every time it went off I jumped. A lot. So it encouraged us to get out just a bit faster.

Neither of us were hungry, so we were planning on having a late lunch and then seeing the magic show.

However, whales appeared! There were so many. We were actually talking to the kids when we saw

the first two (and the closest ones that we saw) and I yelled, “whale!” There were a few times we saw

four or five spouts all together. Most of the whales were pretty far away, but the spouts were still easy

to spot and the binoculars came in handy. We ordered room service near the beginning of the whales

and although it took a while to get to us it worked well.

Wednesday: Stu Visser Trail

I went on a walk with Cheryl this morning.  I finally made it to the end of the Stu Visser trail!  It seems like this shouldn't be a big deal as the trail is about .7 miles, but it's been flooded most of the times I've gone.  The last time we went it wasn't flooded, but we meandered for a while before then and so we turned back before reaching the end of the trail.  Afterwards Ben joined us for lunch.

Since the car is parked outside it gets all dewy and the boys really liked the patterns that were made once I started driving this morning.

vacation Friday: Happy Birthday!

We actually slept to an almost normal time this morning: 7am. I was a bit worried about this; I expect

that we’ll start getting used to the time change just as it is time to go home. We went to one of the

downstairs restaurants today for breakfast because they had a chocolate croissant and as always it was

delicious. They also had a pretty good almond croissant, but there wasn’t quite enough marzipan in it.

The weather in the morning was foggy. There isn’t really anything for us to see besides the waters of

the Pacific ocean today though, so I guess it isn’t a big deal. We do have some blue glass as our balcony

walls, and it always makes the water look bluer than it actually is. It’s a good trick.

Do you see my birthday cake?

We did a scavenger hunt this morning. We were paired with two other people which actually worked

out really well; they knew were a lot of things were. It was also a race, which was unexpected. We tied

for the win! It ended up being a lot of fun…we all got into it, even though at the beginning we all said

that we didn’t really care about winning much.

The winners!  Our medals even say 'winner' on them.

In front of the Discovery sign

Pretending to get out of the water

A wedding proposal by the chaple

By my fish that I never saw on the monitors

We rested for a while in the room and watched a movie. We did take another walk about the boat,

stopping for some pictures and to play some mini-golf. I won! They also were missing holes 5 and 6,

which seemed rather strange.

Dinner was in a special dining room. It was a five course meal and absolutely delicious. It started out

with bread and bruschetta, followed by fried calamari, linguini carbanara, veal, and an assortment of

desserts. I also got a birthday cake and off-key song, which we elected to bring back to the room for

later. (The cake that is, not the song.) If I did it again, I’d probably ask for half portions of everything. I

still only ate about half of everything and was still completely stuffed at the end. Speaking of birthday cake, it was my 40 th birthday today! There are digital signs all over the boat keyed to the medallion thing you need to wear, so they were often saying “Happy Birthday Amanda H!” But…they were rather tricky. They only did it sometimes when I was nearby. Or they’d do it after I was waiting there for a minute due to the elevators. It was so much fun trying to find them.

Although we had plans to find a hot tub at night, we ended up reading. We were both in the middle of

good books and sometimes that’s a hard thing to put down.

Tuesday: work

It was a pretty normal day today.  I felt like both classes had a good rhythm to them, which was nice.  Several students also realized they didn't have a good grasp of references ($) in excel, but now is a good time to figure that out.

We ordered a new garage door from a different company.  It will be installed on Friday and was significantly cheaper.

I went to karate.  We were working on our forms, which is always my favorite part.  He ended up splitting the class into groups and both adults knew our form well so we got to work on some of the more technical parts: how to stomp your foot, holding your arm at a 60deg angle instead of a 45deg, etc.  I really like it when we get this nitty-gritty because ...I'm not sure why.  I just do.  It doesn't happen very often though because I don't always learn the form until right before testing.

Monday: star student

Joshua is star student in his class this week!  (It's a bit weird because last year he was almost last and this year he's first.)  He worked hard on his poster this past week but I forgot to grab a picture of it before it went to school.  He's also been planning for his show and tell with great consideration!

Otherwise, not much to report today.  Joshua and I had great dental check-ups.  As part of O:CtH I worked on the purple bathroom, but since we had people over yesterday Isaac had actually cleaned/picked up a lot of it.

 

Sunday: play date

Isaac was supposed to have a playdate after church, but it was raining.  (It was very rainy which was lovely.)  So the family came over here instead and it was a lot of fun.  The adults played several games and the kids played well together.

vacation Thursday (Aug 18): Skagway

I woke up too early, but around my normal time of a bit before 5am. Today we were in Skagway. Today

the weather was beautiful! It had originally called for a light rain, but there was no rain, no clouds, and

even a bit of sun.

Due to a recent mountain slide, we had to go ashore via tender. We’re one of the lucky Princess cruises

that still gets to stop in Skagway; most of them for the month have been rerouted to Sika. (I’m sure

there’s nice things there too though.) We were going on a train ride up a mountain where the gold rush

path was. The train was right by the pier, so it was a quick hop-on. It was beautiful...so here's a picture overload.

Back of the train

Saw-tooth mountains

Into a tunnel!

At the turn-around in British Columbia

Another glacier

So while the port side of the train was definitely more beautiful with wide landscapes and soaring mountains, the port side on the way back was still very interesting.  All the rain caused lots of little waterfalls, and it turns out that I love waterfalls.  We probably saw one at least every minute or two.

We took a brief stop in town for more shirts, picked up some rocks from a creek for our rock -loving son, and walked back to the boat. After lunch we rested, but there were several helicopters making the

rounds to deliver cargo. One looked like two bombs. One looked like a giant roll of toilet paper. One

was a shopping bag with a box in it. Needless to say, we couldn’t come up with any reason that

helicopters should be used instead of trucks, but I’m sure there was one.

Rock slide area that caused us to use the tenders:

We had dinner at a different table that was right next to a window as we were leaving Skagway. Our

table is usually quite good, but it isn’t right next to a window. It was weird though because Ben and I

couldn’t see the same things at the same time due to the thickness of the window, the curtains, and the

table location. I’d say, “look at this cool waterfall!” and by the time he could see it it was out of my

view. It made for some difficult conversations, to say the least. Anyway, we wanted a table by the

window because we were in a fjord. (A fjord has steeper sides than a valley and has seawater and glacial water.)  The sides were pretty steep at the beginning but became normal mountains after an hour or so. After dinner we sat on our balcony to continue watching the scenery and reading. We saw one glacier, and even saw one of the officers taking pictures of it. It made us wonder if we had really good weather and that the mountain peaks were normally covered in fog.

We didn't get many (any?) room pictures, so this might be the best.

After dinner we sat on our balcony for a bit with blankets until it got too cold.

Both of us took some pictures through binoculars, but it's rather tricky.

The bridge took a small portion of our view away.  We were a bit annoyed, but nothing we can do about it.

We did try to see the northern lights again, but it was cloudy. 

In other news, today was the day the quilt show started!  I got a few pictures of my quilt.