Sunday, June 30, 2024

Sunday: instagram

We started an instagram account for our Lego builds.  Joshua is the most prolific, but I've been trying to get others in too.

Find us at itsjustanotherbrick


Its = Isaac
Just = Joshua
Another = Amanda
Brick = Ben

We were contemplating names for a little bit and poor Ben always got stuck with 'brick'.

Saturday, June 29, 2024

Saturday: Joshua's best life

Joshua had a great day.

The sleepover went very well.  He was asleep by 8:30pm last night and slept the whole night.

Ben worked on getting Minecraft Dungeons, a game he's been asking for for about six months, up and running for everyone.  We had finally found it on sale about a month ago.  He was so excited.  (And, it worked.  Sometimes when we try to get something like this up and running it doesn't work so well, but Ben got the kinks ironed out before telling Joshua.)

His friend decided to try rock climbing after a year of periodic declines.  (We didn't ask too much, but it would come up once in a while.)  I don't think he loved it, but he really did a great job for his first time.

Friday: sleeping bag

Joshua is at a sleepover tonight.  We were going rock climbing right before dropping him off, but forgot his sleeping bag.  

Isaac finished his first V4 in the cave and promptly fell off the route, landing straight on his back.  He completely had the wind knocked out of him.  He was super excited that he got the route, but he was done climbing for the day.

Since we finished a little earlier than expected and because Joshua has had a hard time actually staying at the sleepover in the past I decided we could run home to get the sleeping bag.  Usually this would end up adding about 15-20 minutes to the trip, for an expected total of 25-30 minutes.  An hour later I was finally pulling into the driveway.  I'm not sure what was going on, but I think there was a train that was just sitting across a major road.  Due to construction, I wasn't sure I'd be able to go the alternate route.  I was a bit grumpy when I got home.

I got a text at 6:30pm saying Joshua was feeling a bit nervous about sleeping over.  I gave some reasonable suggestions, but deep down I was thinking, "You better not come home because I got that dumb sleeping bag for you!"

He didn't come home.  I also didn't hear any further updates, so am assuming that everything ended up fine.

Friday, June 28, 2024

Thursday: TreeRunner, Fiber, Craig's Cruisers

It was a busy, but wonderful day!

It started out with TreeRunner, a ropes and zipline course, for Ben, Isaac, and me.  Joshua said he didn't want to go at Christmas time but was hemming and hawing yesterday.  I looked up the ages and he wasn't old enough for the harder courses, so we all used that as an excuse for him to not go.  In hindsight, I think it was the correct decision.  Even if we had waited until the end of the summer when he could have gone on a third tier course with parents, he would have struggled.  (For perspective, we only went as high as the third tier courses.  There were some large steps.)  He will enjoy it more in a few years.

Anyway, I only embarrassed myself once by forgetting to put the zip trolley on the line.  I was just so used to doing the click-click of the safety loops that I forgot to add the trolley on the first zip line.  The staff member was more than happy to come get me though; I think it was a nice excuse to actually do something.

The zip lines were probably the best part.  The second tier obstacles were probably my second favorite part.  They tended to be interesting and challenging without actually being hard...except that the safety cable was often exactly where I needed my center of mass to be.  The third tier obstacles were mostly interesting, although there were a few that I would have been ok skipping.

Anyway, it was a lovely morning for the three of us doing something rather different that normal.  Ben hurt a lot afterwards, but we were expecting that.

We got home and found the fiber people had ended up digging a hole in our yard.  They're laying fiber down for internet, and so there have been lots of flags all over the neighborhood.  I was hoping that they'd be able to ignore our yard for the most part, but that was not the case.  It was pretty much what I was expecting even.  So we had a reasonable sized hole when we went to take our nap, but when I woke up there was a ton of machinery in the yard and they were drilling a hole (I think).  So much for being ignored.

Lastly, we went to Craig's Cruisers for Cheryl's birthday.  It was a lovely time.  I played a few arcade games, but air hockey with the kids was my favorite.  Everyone did a round of go-karts (and it was just us, which was fun).  Joshua did the bouncy thing while everyone else started mini-golf.  We joined them before too long and took charge of the scorecards.  I was going to give Joshua my second attraction ticket because I knew mini-golf was going to take a while, but he ended up having a really good time being scorekeeper for the kids so we just stayed with it and brought the second attraction home.








I was exhausted.

Wednesday, June 26, 2024

Wednesday: activities

Isaac has been working in a new coding language.  The families know I hate jumping games, and yet his game started out with plain levels 1 and 2.  Then he made a 'secret mom level' that, while it still has jumps, doesn't have as many or as hard of jumps.

We've been working on puzzles this summer.  This one caught their attention, especially at the end.  We played a "which mini-figure is the coldest?" or "which mini-figure is the Giraffe-est?"  It brought up some interesting discussion.  The kids then did several rounds of picking out a piece and giving the piece and the box lid to the other sibling and trying to figure out what mini figure it was from.
 
This afternoon we went to a park with friends.  Then this evening was VBS family style...I wasn't really sure what this meant, but it was a low key VBS with a few activities.  Isaac and I helped out in the craft area and left Joshua to hang out with friends, which was weird since it was family VBS.



Tuesday: 200

We went rock climbing with some friends again today.  Isaac did an amazing job working on a V4 in the cave - I couldn't believe that he held on as "easily" as he did.  I felt like I made some progress and have an idea of what to work on next time we go.  Joshua got bored rather quickly and I almost gave him permission to go get his book, but then he found a project too.  He climbed (and jumped off of) a route in the alcove (formerly known as the kids' area) 200 times.  He was a ball of sweat.


I didn't see Tornado all day until 5pm.  The kids kept saying that he was around and that Tornado had snuggled with them, but I didn't even see him.  Normally it isn't a huge deal, but we recently got them some new feeders and I wanted to make sure he was eating.  I know that if I stick his face in the feeder he'll eat, but I don't know if he'll eat without me doing so.*

*I'm writing this on Wednesday, and it looks like he at least ate some overnight.

Monday, June 24, 2024

Monday: morning zombies

First, I get a morning hug from Joshua.

Second, I get a morning squeeze from Joshua.

Third, he turns around in my hug so we're facing the same way.  He's just the right height so my arm go under his armpits, making his arms stick straight out.  We have morning zombie time, where he says "brains" and I try to find something that has a brain for him to eat.

However, he will not let me take a picture of this.

Sunday, June 23, 2024

Weekend: cottage

The kids and I went up to the cottage for the weekend to see Dad and Pat and Nathan and his family.  It was a lovely weekend.  It was great to see Nathan and Liz and the cousins had a great time playing together.



We got there around 11am and the whole day was on-and-off rain.  We enjoyed being outside when it wasn't raining and enjoyed doing inside things when it was.  At one point we played a few rounds of boche ball.  Isaac threw the snitch first down a hill and it landed about half way down.  Then we threw the rest of the balls and they almost went in the lake.  We all laughed about it a lot.

Liz brought up a rubberband bracelet making kit and it was a hit.  Joshua made close to ten bracelets and Isaac made interesting creations.

We also finally got around to making quills.  It's been a project that we've been waiting for for about two years.  Joshua was given an eagle feather recently so the timing was perfect.



After Joshua was finished trying his out, I took it over.  It took a ton of ink!  Writing in cursive and print was about the same; all old documents must be in cursive because that was just the style of the times.  I also had a lot of splatter and double lines, but for my first try it wasn't too bad.  Since I had to dip the quill every word or two it took a really long time to write.

Dad needed help moving some dock sections up a hill.  The kids actually helped, Nathan and I just heckled Dad.  When he was debating if the dock section would fit between two things, we said helpful things like, "Someone once told us that taking a few extra minutes to make sure something fits is worth the time."  Or "I was taught by someone to measure twice cut once."  Or "if only there was this thing to help one figure out if something will fit through a space."

In the evening we played a game of space base.  Isaac won the game; it's been a while since he's won.  But he had an amazing strategy and ended up with 44 base income if Dad/JJ or I rolled a 3 or a 4.  

The morning was cold!  It was a bit of a shock after the heatwave this past week.  More bracelets were made, some games were played, and the kids still played outside.  They made up a game involving the swing and played it a lot.

Isaac and Joshua went tubing before lunch, but when they got out of the boat their lips were turning blue.  Pat turned on the fire for them.  The weather started to get nice just as we were about to go, but I also wanted to get home and see Ben a bit.

Friday, June 21, 2024

Friday: Terra Firma

We went to a rock climbing place in Grand Rapids today, just to do something different.  (Also, it was air conditioned and our normal gym isn't and it's hot out.)

We also met up with one of Joshua's friends.  Both kids had a great time.  They climbed for about two hours, then they left and we went to have lunch.  We went back after lunch.  Joshua didn't climb for long as he said his shoes were hurting, but he was content to read while Isaac finished up.  Isaac continued to climb for 1-1.5hours, getting in a ton of new routes.


On this route, which looked like a big rainbow, the top was at the end of the rainbow.  I suggested that he just use his toe to get it but Isaac refused.  The elation on his face when he figured out how to get it with his hands was cool.

The cave.  It wasn't tall, which was both nice and not nice at the same time.





Thursday, June 20, 2024

Thursday: sink

After the new water heater, our kitchen faucet, which was already on the fritz, really needed to be replaced.  It gave us water, but in a weird way.  The instahot had also died about a month ago, so I decided to try and replace both at once.

It was a day of ups and downs.  I got a lot of things unplugged, only to have a really hard time getting a water filter out.  Joshua and I picked up some strap wrenches after swimming lessons and were able to loosen it up.  Hooray!  Everything was out!  We had lunch and I took a nap.


Things were going well and I got to installing the instahot.  I ordered the exact same unit so it could just be switched out.  Of course, that didn't quite work.  The fittings looked different.  Turns out, I needed some compression fittings.  Ok.  Off to Lowes!  I found what I needed, with some help, but the 1/4 nut didn't seem like it was going to fit.  (I carried the old instahot all around Lowes like a baby.)  It was the best option, so I bought it anyway in case the new one was a little smaller.  It wasn't.  I was on my third call of the day to Dad while Joshua filed down the hole and ended up making it big enough.  Like I said, it should have fit it just didn't quite fit.  So I was able to tell Dad that I didn't need his help...this time.

After that, I was almost home free.  It took ten minutes to get one of the screws in the garbage disposal back in, but after messing with it the screw finally caught.  A few more steps and we were done!  No leaks!


Now, keeping it real, this project did take most of the day (with the exception of swimming lessons, nap time, dinner, and karate).  The rest of the kitchen looks like there was an explosion.  I'm not all that optimistic that it'll get all cleaned up tomorrow, but hopefully at least the floor.  Obviously, I didn't put anything away because I want to watch for leaks.  Yeah.  That's it.




Weekend: brick world Chicago

 This past weekend we went to a Lego show.  It was the same one we went to five years ago.  It was busy at times, but super fun again. 



It's hard to choose favorites, but this dress was one of them


There was a study in color, only some shown here, that made Ben's to 5.




This was made of spider webs

This table had a lot of flowers, and many of them used fabrics (capes mostly) for the pedals







Isaac's favorite part was the great ball machine.  I only have one shown here but marbles move around in a big square over lots of machines.

This was in the top five for Ben and me.  It layered trans-blue pieces on other colors to make the painting effect.

This was in everyone's to five.  There was a black light to make the reef glow.


We got to build some city buildings.


And saw a landmark from home.




This was by far Joshua's favorite, a big and deep Minecraft scene.  Before finding it he was flagging and almost done, but then we spent 15 min here.




We thought that was the end, and it was about 45 minutes from closing.  Then we found the activity room!  The kids had asked about the green bricks because they remembered them from last time, but we didn't see them in the main room so thought they weren't around.


Joshua and I both built creepers

The back of my creeper had his mouth closed because he was underwater, so I also made some kelp.


There were several other tables, but they were all a bit busy. The lawn games were clear, so we spent some time there.  That rounded out our time nicely.

We did stop at the Lego store for some pick-a-brick boxes and then went home.