I made some naan with my sourdough. The bread was good but it could use a bit more flavor. (Also, not as good as the restaurant's but better than the store-bought stuff.) The sourdough started was recently named Brad. It's not quite bread yet.
Monday Ben was able to drive himself to work and I was telling the kids how weird it felt. Isaac said, "aw, he's all grown up" in just the right voice. He did it again today, but I don't remember what the context was.
Last night I came home to this. Joshua had cleaned the raspberries and covered them. However, there are big holes in the basket so the cover really doesn't do anything at all.
We bought two tomatoes at the store. I gave one to each kid and told them to keep it safe. That meant a note in the fridge. Speaking of the store, we were all there for school supplies. It. was. terrible. There were barely any college ruled anything. We had to dig through boxes and then open one up to find the college ruled notebooks. There was one box of college ruled composition books that took five minutes to find. There was one box of 8 expo markers. There were no boxes of Ticonderoga pencils. We never found glue sticks.
Isaac spent most of the day with Cheryl today. Joshua and I had a lovely day with just the two of us. One of the summer projects has been to put together the Mario Lego sets we have. They were all in a box, because they're much easier to play with if they're put together, but in reality they were falling apart. I think we have two or three sets left, but it's been fun working together to restore function. Once we have them together, they can get played with for a bit and then they'll get stored as built sets but in separate bags; hopefully that will still make play somewhat easy without it being too crazy.
We also bought Joshua some shoes. I don't understand shoe shopping. At all. The little mat in front of the kids shoes clearly said he was a size seven. PSA: kids shoes only seem to go up to size 5, and there aren't many of those. Ok. So we walked around a bit and we used an actual shoe sizer, which said he was a size 4. He tried on some of the shoes and we ended up with a size 5 so there is a bit of room to grow. I'm still not sure what to do when Isaac needs new shoes; men's shoes don't seem to come in small sizes. I cannot wait until we get out of this weird sizing limbo that is "big kid" shoes and I don't have to think so hard about it. I will not be sad to never wonder about shoe sizing systems again.
Isaac got his first set of Invisalign retainers today. (An equivalent of braces. They are trays that can be popped in and out. They must be popped out while eating, but you can eat anything. They also look a ton more comfortable on the inner mouth than braces. They take a bit more responsibility, but Isaac can do that.) The first few days he might be achy, but that should lessen as time goes on.
Brian and Amy and family came over for the afternoon. We played some games and talked. Joshua and Emily played together the whole afternoon (Legos and in the lake) while Carolyn joined them a little bit. Isaac was feeling a bit under the weather so he played games with us and relaxed instead.
We went to Larry and Cheryl's for dinner and it was lovely to see them again too.
Joshua finished his kitchen week. He had a much different approach to kitchen week than Isaac. Isaac tried to keep the kitchen clean. Joshua did the bare minimum needed to keep the dishwasher processing. If I had to have guessed, I would have switched the actions of the two kids.
It was a pretty normal day today. I dropped off Ben, Joshua and I went grocery shopping, we finished our escape room, Isaac and I finished a different game. After lunch was an appointment, a nap, a few chores, and my bakery time - pizza crust and another sourdough loaf.
While I was originally a bit sad that we only had a vacation Sunday to Saturday (although there were good reasons), it turned out to be very fortuitous. Tropical Storm Chantal was forecasted to make landfall early in the morning on Sunday.
Isaac and I joined Heather for an early morning walk again. We needed to leave pretty early, but the uber was scheduled to pick us up a bit after 8am.
We left the first of all the families, skipping out on the last clean up (again). (There weren't many exit chores though, so we didn't leave them that much work.) We got to the airport just as it started raining and ...they delayed our flight. Of course...we're traveling with Ben. Luckily we had a long layover, so weren't overly worried. Also, they were doing construction in the airport and so there was only one set of bathrooms in our concourse...I'm pretty sure the line for the women's bathroom extended over 30 people at one point. It was crazy! I walked to the other concourse and found a shorter line.
We did manage to fly out in between rain bands - luckily it let up just long enough for us to get out. While the other families were waiting for their flights they saw a double red flag at the beach - no swimming allowed.
Our flight in Baltimore was also delayed a bit. I was so tired it felt like I was falling asleep on my feet. They finally boarded the flight and I was napping before they shut the doors. I vaguely remember take-off, but only enough to recognize that we were actually leaving. (There have been other vacations where I've fallen asleep only to wake up and still be sitting on the ground.)
In Grand Rapids we stopped at the Lego Store. Joshua was only feeling ok and we had all had a weird eating schedule, so Joshua and I got a smoothie while Ben and Isaac did the pick-a-brick wall. We picked up some food in Holland and finally got home. It was a lovely vacation, but it's always nice to be home too.
The plan for today was an easy one. Ocean in the morning, fly-over at 1pm, fireworks from the balcony at night. And pack up somewhere in there too.
The ocean was a green flag for the day and honestly, it was a little boring. Great for relaxing bobbing, not so great for fun boogie boarding. I'm not sure I talked about the flags at all in the previous posts. Tuesday was a red flag during the day, which worked well because we had other plans. One day it was a yellow flag, but as I was getting ready to be done I realized it was hard to walk back to shore. (The water was knee deep. I wasn't worried, but had to wait until the waves were going into shore to move.) Right as I was getting out a red flag was put out instead. Most of the time it was a yellow flag, and those were definitely the best.
Fly-over...most people crowded onto the lower balcony, although maybe a few went to a different one. I elected to stay inside and eat my lunch. The beach was packed by this time, so we were really appreciating our front row balconies.
The rest of the afternoon we just hung out.
We finished the puzzle.
And played some games.
We did so much laundry this vacation, although most of the time it was a little bit of laundry from every family. There were a few chairs in the upstairs hang out room that became laundry chairs as whoever was sorting the laundry divided it up.
At dinner it was leftover time as we were trying to eat up the remainder of the food. (By the way, we did a great job. There was barely any cold stuff left. There were quite a few snacks left, possibly because they were a bit hidden, but the Parrs had the ability to bring it home. Ok, all that being said, the oven stopped working. So most of the adults were pressing buttons or whatnot and Ben snaps a picture...only to have Joshua photobomb it in the cutest way possible.
Oh, we can also talk about this artwork. Here's it's form, sort of. You can tell that the horizontal spacing is different, but also the vertical alignment is incorrect. I was bothered.
So Katy and I flipped the outside panels upside-down. This didn't help enough, so then we tilted them in. The kids didn't love this because it looked like a Minecraft head and arms, but it was harder to tell that the panels were haphazardly put up.
Once it was dark the kids held a dance party.
And to cap off the day, fireworks! They were shot off the end of the pier by us, so we were able to just step onto our balconies and enjoy. Ben and I (along with Laura and Dusty), enjoyed them from the upper balcony while the rest went to the downstairs balcony.
This morning I did several errands, which included getting rid of a bunch of scrap metal. I was glad to get it out of the house.
We also picked up Isaac's clay giraffe. It looked so cute with its head sticking out of the box. It needed some minor repairs on the bottom, but I hope to get another picture tomorrow.
I often find myself categorizing summers - one summer was playgrounds and bakeries, one was games, one was puzzles. This summer it would just be contentment. Isaac could often be found reading his book. Joshua was often reading or putting together Legos.
I used a strap wrench to open a jar. I think this is the first jar that no one could open and we had to resort to drastic measures.
We started an at home escape room. We're pretty bad at this one, but we're having fun. We've all agreed to try, but also to give ourselves a lot of grace and look at the hint cards as needed.
And that brings us to the duck. This story actually happened last night. We were watching "Daily Dose of Internet", which has a collection of interesting videos. The narrartor said, "You'll never guess the reason for this accident..." as the video was showing a car crash. I said, "Duck!" ...and then the video panned to a mamma duck with several ducklings. Everyone was in awe and Ben paused the video to ask if I had already seen the clip. (I hadn't.) I do feel as though I've had to wait for a duck recently though. I also saw a turtle crossing the road a few months ago, but on my return trip there was no dead turtle so it must have made it across.
We're getting rid of the basement futon. It's old, shaky, and really we just use it as a shelf lately. However, no one wants it...I can't blame them. I put the futon mattress by the trash can today and the trash people didn't take it, so I was disappointed about that. However, there is a large item drop-off in a month and it should fit in the car, so I'll bring it then. In the meantime, it'll live on the front porch. This was the annoying part of my day, but there are still several different options for getting rid of it.
We also took apart the frame today. Tomorrow I'll bring the metal parts for recycling.
This afternoon Joshua went with a friend to Urban Air and Isaac and I went to a climbing gym in Kalamazoo. Joshua played hard for 3.5 hours and was dead on his feet coming home. Isaac and I stayed significantly longer than I was expecting. It helped that the other mom brought Joshua home and a friend brought Ben home so we didn't have to get home by a certain time. It was a really nice gym - there were several auto-belays, tons of ropes, and two nice (albeit small) bouldering walls. They were fun shapes and you got to climb over the top which is always fun. The worst part was that people aren't allowed to belay until they're 14, which meant Isaac couldn't belay me. (Maybe next year - and maybe we'll come back when we have a bit more time.)
On top of one of the walls.
Climbing up a large...doorway type thing.
They had some actually holds made out of rocks. They were fun to climb, but colder than the rest of the holds.
They also had some zig-zag walls, which created some interesting climbing spaces.
We were getting a little bit close to done when some people walked into the gym. (The gym had people most of the time, but it wasn't too busy. Just enough to be nice.) We knew the people! Leah is the manager at Scrapyard and she came with her husband. They were going to a concert later that night, but decided to hit up a new gym first. It was very fun to see them.
Ben and Joshua were kind about having a super late dinner and the fact that we ended up picking up food*. We got home at 6:30pm, and if I needed to throw dinner together too it was going to be a really late dinner.
*To be fair, people usually like take-out. It's not something we get complaints about, although we usually don't do it during the week.
It was a rather easy day today. Probably a boring one for Joshua today, but there were no complaints. Isaac and I met some friends at Scrapyard for rock climbing in the afternoon.
We had a friend over to play Root in the evening. I was one turn away from a quiet win but it was seen and so I didn't win. Ben allied with Isaac who won the next time it was his turn. I felt a bit jipped, but this was also the first time playing where I actually felt like I knew what I was doing and that was nice.
Joshua had some friends over for a little birthday party today. It wasn't anything big: cake and ice cream, swimming in the lake, and hide-and-seek. But I overheard one person saying it was the best birthday party. It was a lot of fun listening to their chatter. We also found out Joshua's teacher for next year and he is with Mr. Jackson, who I was hoping for. I don't know much about him, but he has seemed cool at pickup. He's also in a class with Jonathan, his best friend. (The other two are also in the same class, which is nice.)
Isaac had a pretty boring day. I'm of the opinion that a few of those before school starts are good though. He's also getting really close to outgrowing all of his large-sized t-shirts, so he's wearing his favorites much more often.
When we first got the ceiling fan in our bedroom, something happened and it really scared Tornado. Now, we don't have it on very often because it makes a funny noise. It works well - we don't have it on, he is willing to come in the bedroom. But he always checks the fan. Every time.
We had it on the other night. He stopped at the door and looked at it. Horizon came in, did his normal checks, and left. Tornado continued to watch the fan. Then he loafed while watching the fan. Ben finally came up the stairs which knocked him out of his trance and he escaped from fan watching, but he stayed there a really long time.
Isaac and I joined Heather for a morning walk. It wasn't a very nice sunrise, but the clouds were pretty and it was still a lovely walk. We saw a very dead sea turtle that had washed up on the beach. It was huge! There were also a lot of beach volunteers standing vigil around it, so we didn't feel as though it was appropriate to snap a picture.
Most of us went on the inflatables in the morning. One family went to Charleston for the day, Ben and Isaac were pulled on boards off to the side, and Dusty was our wonderful photographer/videographer.
It's hard to tell, but I'm at the top of the bump with sunglasses on.
Joshua ran around the ring (bright green). I got around the ring once, but it was tricky.
Overall, the place was a bunch of fun. The obstacle course was large. Joshua jumped off the top of the tall slide three or four times during the second hour. (I elected to slide down the slide.)
Ben and Isaac were in the same lake, but on the cable course. Isaac worked on knee boarding, while Ben did a both knee boarding and a little wake boarding.
The first hour didn't go all that well for Isaac and we almost checked to see if he could take over my spot on the obstacle course. However, he decided to try one more run and got far enough to keep going. He never got all the way around, as the last turn was pretty rough and he hasn't really done many water sports before. I think he had a lot more fun during the second hour though, because at least he got most of the way around. Ben had a ton of fun.
Ben:
Isaac:
We went out on the pier right after lunch. We had to pay for the privilege, which was a bit annoying, but it also probably kept it less busy. We got to pet some sharks. They were smooth one direction and like sandpaper the other way.
On the way home we got some ice cream and Isaac's started to melt...quickly. You can see all the drips coming out the bottom; Isaac, of course, found this hilarious.
As we were hanging out in the afternoon Marshall started asking Ben if he was worried about brain-eating aemebas (because we had been in a fresh water lake for the inflatables). Ben said no, and Eva jumped in with "he'd have to have a brain for that to be a problem."
It was obvious that the kids were older this year. They ate more (left overs were almost non-existent), they stayed up later, they were able to get their own food, they put dishes in the dishwasher, and they entertained themselves so well. It was amazing.
In the evening we went back to the beach.
The pier passes were good all day, so we walked to the end again at night. Looking over the water, it was so, so dark.
