Tuesday: the worst

I hate final exams on Fridays.  This semester I have two.

Monday: Back to it

The day started out early, as I volunteered to be up in case our 6-9am delivery showed up in the 6-7:30am slot.  (It showed up at about 7:40, which was an ideal time.)  Anyway, Joshua was a bit crazy in the morning at one point only walking backwards.  It caused him to trip into the laundry basket, and then we had to recreate the whole scene for some pictures.

I felt as though I got a surprising amount done today...I just kept working through the list.  As normal, several items only took 5-10 minutes.  I can't, or don't want to, do them when I think of them though.  It works for me.  I did start O:CtH - kitchen.  There were two drawers/cupboards that I was thinking about tackling first.  Then I ended up in a completely different one as I couldn't fit stuff in it this weekend.

Before:

During:

After:

I remember doing this not that long ago: empty or stale chip bags seem to pile up on us fairly easily.  Hopefully it'll last a while though.

Sunday

 Joshua made a Christmas tree with presents during church.

We also went to Red Rock for Ben's birthday dinner.  I had a pesto-sausage-mushroom-feta pizza and it was delicious!

Saturday: Happy Birthday!

It was Ben's birthday today!  It really was a pretty normal, but very nice, day.  We did some work, put together some Lego sets, played a game, and had some screen time.

Joshua made a cute dragon.  It rolls up into a ball, although that's not pictured.

Yesterday I hurt my hand a bit while moving a TV.  I took on something that was just a little too much for me: getting the TV off the mount.  I was a little too short and a little too weak.  (Yes, Ben said we could wait for someone to come help but I wanted to get it done and thought I could.)  Anyway, yesterday my hand was rather sore.  Today it is bruised, although it doesn't hurt nearly as much.

Also, Joshua liked that Tornado was giving Horizon a hug and wanted a picture.

Friday: busy day

Today was surprisingly busy.  Not with bad stuff, but weird stuff.  Joshua played at a friend's house and so I transported him for that.  Ben sold our TV to Jamie so a lot of the day was dealing with getting packaging ready and taking it off the wall and then he went to Jamie's to help put it back up.

Isaac made a stop motion:

Thursday: Happy Thanksgiving

We had a relaxing morning: we looked through a box of used Lego pieces, played a game, and hung out together.  I guess I should say it was mostly relaxing: it felt like the kids were bouncing off the walls and wrestling and talking in outside voices a lot.

We went to Larry and Cheryl's for Thanksgiving and it was delicious.  I ended up carving the turkey.  It was my first time ever carving.  I'm not sure I did a great job, but I did get enough meat off for everyone to eat and some leftovers.  A few other people picked away at it after dinner to get some of the last pieces of meat.  So now there's one less thing in my life to 'fear' as I have conquered carving the turkey.  (Still up, actually making the turkey.  I'm happy to wait a long time for that one.)

After dinner we talked and played a game and it was nice just being with everyone.

Wednesday: finished!

I'm declaring the master bathroom finished!  I had been hoping to finish about a week ago, but sickness and snow days got in the way.  Luckily there's no real timeline, so it didn't matter at all.  Today all I had to do was add some paint to the trim by the window.  None of my sticky things to protect the wall paint would stick though; it was pretty weird.  The painter's tape, a sticky note, wall tape all just lost stick as soon as I tried to apply them.  I decided that since it was a really short area I was trying to apply it to I'd just be really careful.  (This isn't a foreshadow.  It really was fine.)  However, since I had the blinds open Tornado decided he needed to look out the window and managed to get three feet in the wet paint.  He was not happy with me as I cleaned him up.  Besides that, everything went smoothly though.

From the outside, not a lot looks all that different.  I changed the color of the hand towels for more contrast.  The lights are dusted and the hanging origami removed.  The biggest changes are in the drawers and cabinets and you don't really need to see all that.

Before:

After:

Next is the kitchen.  A year ago when I started this project I didn't think the kitchen needed much work but I was wrong.  It needs a lot of work.  However, it is also full of cabinets and drawers so it's easy to do one or two of them at a time.

In other news, the kids had a half day so we started putting up Christmas decorations.  I helped a little bit, but was curious to see how much they could do by themselves.  (I have a picture of Isaac, but Joshua was the one that actually did more work.)

Tuesday: double take

I recently got a Shutterfly order and put this picture from our Alaska trip on the counter until it gets in a frame.  I've done so many double takes wondering why there's a flier for ...something...life insurance perhaps...on the counter.

The day was rather boring.  Classes were a bit sparse since it is two days before Thanksgiving.  (I have plenty of thoughts on that, but I won't talk about them here.)  It turned out to be a rather short lecture with a lot of practice time, so I suppose it was possibly a good day to skip.

Monday: the day

I got all the things done that I wanted to get done today!  It was a bit surprising!  Meijer was rather busy, but I didn't have too many things that I needed to get.  Paint took a while...I was hoping that since it was just white paint for trim the worker would show me were it is.  The can I had was really old, so he ended up making a match instead.  

I also got some cat food and picked up a cat toy while at the store.  The cats like this toy; all the shiny things are off the old ones.  Well, I had it in the bag with the paint.  They always search through the bags a little bit and they found the toy.  And then they had the audacity to take it out of the bag and start playing with it before I gave it to them!

I'm also trying to not kill my strawberry plant this winter.  It's a low bar, I'm just trying to not kill it.  It's in the laundry room up high.  We don't have any good places that get natural light that the cats don't get to, but the kids forget to turn this light off enough that I thought it might work.  It also gets a cup or two of water a week, when I remember.  Anyway, imagine my surprise today when I saw some flowers!  I don't know if strawberries will actually grow because there are no pollinators, but we'll see what happens.

Weekend: unexpected but good

This past weekend ended up being a bit different than expected, but it was still an excellent weekend.

First of all, we had snow.  We didn't get dumped on like a lot of West Michigan, but we had enough to cancel the Saturday night plans.  Joshua's Saturday morning plans almost got canceled too.

Saturday morning Joshua and a friend from school went rock climbing.  They climbed for about an hour and Joshua was an excellent host.

Saturday night Joshua went for a sleepover at Larry and Cheryl's.  (It was a sleepover at Grandma's house, but Grandpa spoiled him more.  I think all it took was Larry telling him he could have as much candy as he wanted.)  The rest of us were supposed to have people over for a game night but, as mentioned, it was canceled.  We still played some games and introduced Isaac to MiB.  (He likes watching movies that aren't appropriate for Joshua yet.)  This one had some gross parts in it and was probably right on the edge of appropriate even for Isaac.

Friday: snow day

The first snow that didn't disappear turned into a snow storm, which in turn provided a snow day today.  It was only going to be a half day, but it did mess up my day a little bit.  In some ways things worked better and in some ways worse.

In the late morning another kid (named Isaac too) came over to play Dominion with Isaac.  I wasn't sure how it'd go after the first five minutes, but by the middle of the first game there was quite a bit of giggling.  They played two games and seemed to have fun.

However, I didn't get my errands done.  I got groceries quickly yesterday after work, but there were several other errands I wanted to do Wednesday that didn't happen.  They still didn't get done and now I've run out of a specific color of thread.  (I know, a serious problem.)

Wednesday: snow and sleepy

We've managed to keep the snow since our first snow fall on Sunday, which is rather odd.  Usually it all melts the same day, but it's stuck around.  It almost disappeared today as we had a sunny afternoon, but enough stayed around that there was still snow.  It was snowing again this evening and I expect there's a decent chance of school being canceled.

I also had to wake Joshua up this morning.  It's odd but happens about once a year.  It usually takes him a bit to get going, but he manages.  Today he did not manage.  For quite a while he was crawling around on the floor because his legs weren't working.  (This is a "chronic condition" that he has, although it hasn't flared up in quite a while.)  Anyway, he seemed to be doing fine by the time he left for school and so I put it out of my mind.

I got a call from the school an hour later.  He didn't have a temperature, but was feeling tired enough that the teacher sent him to the office.  I was in Meijer and had made it through two aisles.  I grabbed some cheese and headed out to pick him up.  Although it disrupted my plans for the day it was still a relatively good day for this to happen.  He rested for a while and then seemed back to his normal self.  I made him rest again after lunch.  He claims he didn't fall asleep, but I'm not sure he would have just laid on the couch for 1.5hours without getting so bored that he'd do something about it.  The goal was to make it rather boring since he wasn't that sick.  (I do think something was a bit off so picking him up from school was the right choice, but staying at home isn't a reward.)

Sunday: first snow

 We had our first snow last night!  It snowed through mid-morning and I was rather surprised at how much stayed.

Saturday: school pictures

I haven't shared school pictures yet because I made Joshua get a retake.  His first one is cute, but not great.  The second one is better, but I do wish he had shown his teeth.  (I think part of the problem is the flash.  The kids hate the flash so I always have it turned off, but then it's hard to deal with for things like this.)

Friday: cats again

The cats were very friendly again today.  Maybe because it's getting cold.

Tornado sat on my lap in the morning.  Then he went into his cat backpack so I took him for a walk.  We went significantly farther than normal...usually we only go to the end of the cul-du-sac (about .1 mi away) but he seemed content so we ended up going .3mi before I turned around.  It was about perfect because his first meow to get out was when we were at the neighbor's house.

Horizon sat on my lap later and then he took a nap with me too.  

Wednesday: falling asleep

Joshua fell asleep on my lap again tonight.  Apparently there was a scary drawing of a witch in the Minecraft book he's reading.

He's currently sleeping in my spot on the bed, unless he's woken up enough to climb the stairs into his bed.  Not being able to put him in his bed was an unexpected problem with a loft.

Tuesday:

Well, another Tuesday's come and gone.  Nothing all that special happened today.  We found out Isaac did well on his ELA interim test, so that was super exciting news.  That's the one he struggles with the most, but he's been working hard at it.  Joshua doesn't like Tuesdays because we wait in the car during Isaac's piano lesson, but this dislike of Tuesdays always surprises me a bit.  He gets some homework done before chore time and then gets quite a bit of screen time.  I took a nap this time.

I finally got all the trash/recycle bins out to the curb.  (Oh, it is a slow news day, isn't it.)  I usually one do it every other week when recycle comes but I missed two weeks ago.  They come at like 7:00am and so if I don't get them out before Ben gets home it's either a lot of work or we miss it.  Surprisingly, it was the trash that filled up this month, mainly because of all the bags from the insulation.

I didn't vote today, but I did mail in my absentee ballot earlier.  So I've been watching the results.  It looks like I'll "win" some and "lose" some.  I can't remember all my different district numbers which makes the state congress significantly less interesting.  

Monday: cats

 The wisdom write-ups came home this weekend.

Joshua saw me taking a photo of his, and so photo-bombed it.

The cats got their flea medicine today, which meant that one of them was shut up in the cat bathroom most of the day.  (Otherwise they clean the medicine off of each other.)  Anyway, it meant that I had a cat following me around most of the day because they weren't able to see each other.

Saturday: insulation

 Phil from church helped me put some more insulation in our attic today.  It wasn't too thin, but there were some paths that needed more and just a little extra everywhere.  He's done this several times and said that it wouldn't take too long, but I didn't really know what that meant.

Anyway, it took a bit to get started.  With purchase of insulation from Lowe's you can rent the blower to put it in the attic, but the hose didn't have the correct attachment.  Well, Phil said no way to that and immediately went back to get the correct attachment.  He had messed around with the hose without the attachment before and said it just doesn't work.  So a little bit of extra time there, but we also didn't have to spend time finding out it didn't work.

After that everything went really, really smoothly!  The new hose also had a remote control, so either of us could turn the machine on or off.  I was in charge of halving the bags and sticking them in the paddle machine.  Most of the time this went well, but there was one bag that had opened up before I got to it and the insultation had expanded too much to go in the machine.  I stuffed it in by handfuls until I could put it in the other way.  And really, if that's what I have to write about it means everything really went well.  We also have some insulation over the garage now.

Friday: moral focus and ice maker

Both boys came home with some moral focus signs for the yard.  They didn't have them last month, so there's been a flood of them this month.  You can elect to send the picture to the school for social media, but since the kids don't have social media accounts I decided it was ok to just take the picture.  After the picture they were free to move the signs anywhere in the yard.

Also, I'd like to talk to day about Horizon's (somewhat) newly-found fascination with the ice maker.  Every time someone gets a drink from the fridge Horizon runs and looks at it.  When it makes a weird sound Horizon runs and looks at it.  It means he stares at this thing often.

Thursday: late Halloween

 I was going to make mummy dogs for Halloween but didn't have any crescent rolls.  I got them yesterday and finally made them.  Joshua especially appreciated the eyes.

Wednesday: vaccine

I received my latest COVID vaccine today.  It went rather smoothly and fast compared to some of them.  My arm is a bit sore, but so far that seems like the worst of it.

I also went for a walk with Cheryl today.  The weather is lovely today (and for the next few days).

Oh, I also got groceries today.  I got the vaccine in the middle of grocery shopping which is one reason it went so smoothly.  I don't have much in the way of grocery adventures any more, other than prices have definitely increased.  There are one or two things I have a hard time finding still, but that's not too bad.  The shelves are mostly stocked like normal.

Monday: take 2

Yesterday I got all my 'required' chores done a bit earlier than expected so I worked on the bathroom a bit more.  The shower is looking a ton better, but I'm still a little unhappy with it.  I'm not sure if I need to scrub more or if I'm just not going get it as clean as I'd like.  We'll see.

I also finished going through all the drawers and cabinets.  I was really surprised at how much is leaving as there doesn't seem to be that much storage space and we still have many things in the cabinets.  There's a little box full of recycle, the large box full of trash, and another large box and large bag that is 'deal with'.  About a third of it is old medicine that needs to be properly disposed of, a third is donation, and a third will move somewhere else in the house.