I promise, I didn't forget to remember Mom's death day. I will admit, it wasn't commemorated like normal though. It was the day after the eclipse, and the first day back to normal things after spring break and so I didn't have time to do it normally. It also took a while to get her flowers; I tried adding them to the grocery order and they didn't get in the order for some reason.
But I did eventually get the flowers, and they filled the kitchen with a beautiful aroma, reminding me of her.
There's also been a song stuck in my head, Untitled Hymn by Chris Rice. It probably helps that I've played it often this past month. It's the last verse that gets me though:
With your final heartbeat Kiss the world goodbye Then go in peace, and laugh on Glory's side
And fly to Jesus Fly to Jesus Fly to Jesus and live
Ben sent flowers for our anniversary. Horizon was very interested in them.
We went to Red Rock for dinner. Just as we were about to leave Jamie and Ashlyn showed up! It is her birthday and they decided to come to the same place. Jamie was kind enough to take a few pictures.
I started rock climbing with a membership today. I'm quite bad - there's a VB+ that I just couldn't finish. Isaac kept trying to help me with it but I kept forgetting it or running into other problems. Luckily, it'll be there for the next few times and I can try it again. (I can usually get the V0s though, so I think this one is an especially hard one for me. It's in a rainbow shape and I have a really hard time going back down.)
Joshua and I joined some friends at his school for math night. It was a lot more fun than I was expecting: the hour and a half went by very quickly. (His friend had several good pictures, but this was the only one Joshua decided to smile for.)
Ben captured a good picture of Horizon yesterday in a cave Joshua had made.
Today was a pretty normal day - I knocked out a lot of little things on the to do list, but not quite as many as I was hoping. Part of that is that Isaac offered to work on the puzzle together instead of screen time, and there was no way I was going to turn that offer down. Joshua joined us when his screen time was done.
I had a lovely Mother's Day today. Joshua hung up some cute hearts. They gave me a puzzle, chocolate, and a small Lego set. Isaac made a scavenger hunt. We played Space Base.
We went to brunch with Ben's family, and it was delicious. It was also nice to see them again; it's been a bit. We took pictures afterwards and I included all the ones of our family. The boys were trying to hard to smile nicely, but they're vampires and can't keep their eyes open and smile. Some of the results are pretty silly.
Joshua suggested we do puzzles together this afternoon, and it was perfect. I had recently been thinking it was about time for a puzzle! We also finished our movie and played some Poyo-poyo-tetris.
While it's been a great week full of seeing people and doing things, I was also exceptionally glad to have nothing on the calendar today. As normal, I got my chores started. I worked on putting away laundry for 30 minutes, only to still have the non-bedroom stuff to still put away. (To be fair, I didn't put away any laundry last week so there was more than normal.) I decided to take a nap instead. Sure, it was a morning nap. But things were just not quite working.
Luckily, all my friends were waiting for nap time.
I rested and slept for a bit and eventually got up to finish the laundry. I was pleasantly surprised to get a lot of work done after lunch, so the morning nap had been a good idea. I got through my whole "must do" list and was able to work on 'Operation: Clean the House - master bedroom edition' for a while.
I had gotten a thin crust frozen pizza on accident at the store. I know several other people in the family like thin crust but they're not my favorite so I was a little disappointed. I was also hungry later in the evening.
Today was the big day! The weather had been looking cold and rainy earlier in the week, but it was getting slightly warmer and less rainy as the week went on. By this morning it was 62deg and 40% rain. However, two hours later it was 61deg and 100% rain for the whole time. Needless to say, it changed several of my plans.
My plan ended up working quite well. I picked up Isaac and we quickly ate lunch at home. I dropped Isaac off at Hope College, putting him in my office, while I parked the car closer to the end of the parade. The parade isn't really all that long, about 1.5 miles, but I expected Isaac would be rather tired at the end and didn't want to make him walk a loop.
The rain was drizzly at this point and it continued this way through the rest of the afternoon. However, it wasn't windy so my umbrella worked well.
I dropped Isaac off and he exchanged the umbrella for a poncho. I then walked down the parade route a bit and found a place to sit. It was rather nice to be by myself. It made it easy to navigate and I didn't need to watch kids and make sure they weren't bored or wet. I saw a ton of people that I knew, although I didn't say hi to all of them since some were far away. (I also saw one friend three times! One while they were heading to street scrubbing, one during scrubbing, and one while they were coming back.) If I get to do it this way again next year I might consider doing the street sweeping. (Joshua had a full day of school since I didn't take him out for the parade. They watched a movie and I think it was the best choice for everyone.)
Isaac is the bass drum on the inside...so two people in from the edge.
After they went by my spot I got to walk the rest of the parade on the sidewalk with them. Usually this went fine, but there was one place that I went in front instead of behind and ended up walking in front of a few people. It wasn't obvious were I was supposed to go though! Luckily, a lot of it was empty chairs.
Afterwards we went back to the ice cream sandwich wagon from yesterday and both got ice cream. Isaac was pretty cold by this point...the poncho kept him warm enough during the parade, but he had wet hair (from before putting his hood up) and cooled down quickly. We decided to eat near my office which luckily had a blanket.
This morning, around 5:45am, I awoke to a chirp. Oh bother. It isn't an urgent chirp, and I don't want a repeat of a few weeks ago, so I continue to listen. I hear four chirps, evenly spaced. Ok, I'll figure out what's going on. I stand up and reach for my robe...and the chirps stop. Well, I'm invested now. I do my house check: fridge, oven, freezer. I continue to not hear any more chirps.
I think a bird was playing a trick on me. Ben thinks the bird will be back tomorrow to show its friends the new trick it discovered, but I'm hoping the bird got a good laugh and is gone.
Joshua seems to be enjoying rock climbing more lately.
Well, I've finished grades. Mostly - I still need to enter the grades into the system but that will only take a few minutes. I also went on a lovely walk with a friend and started to get a hold on the chores that I've been ignoring.
Joshua took Horizon outside today and took his job as handler very seriously. Horizon always runs out the back doors, but usually stays pretty close. It is mostly just annoying.
Oddly enough, Tornado is more likely to bolt out the front door, but if a back door is open for a while (as I try to corral Horizon back in) he might go out. Neither cat goes out the garage door because we honk at them and scare them.
As normal for exam week, I'm behind on house chores. I'm currently over halfway through grading the final exam...so things are moving forward. Slowly, but surely. I finally got around to running the dishwasher (twice!) and was able to sort the laundry and put away the last the groceries.
In an order to keep it real, here's what the kitchen looked like for most of the week:
All my exams have been given. All the non-finals have been graded. I just have the final exams to finish grading and I'll be done with the semester.
I have one student who insists on using the LOOKUP function. I didn't teach it in class because it's old and doesn't work as well as newer lookup functions. Now, I (usually) encourage students if they want to use alternate functions - I learn about a lot this way. However, I just really don't understand why this student won't update to XLOOKUP, which is significantly better. Oh well. They received some points for things that LOOKUP can do and didn't receive points when it was used improperly.
