We played some more D&D today. Isaac changed it up quite a bit and a spider that I was controlling scouted out a big dungeon that we need to go enter. The best part was when a sentry saw the spider and proceeded to think to himself that he needed to call in the cleaning people because some of his bad guy group was scared of spiders.
I don't know what Isaac and Joshua were doing, but Ben and I found this hilarious.
The professional pictures from senderpics.com came through from the competition.
Not much of note has happened in the last few days. The kids didn't have school yesterday. Today they were back to school and I was back to work.
Oh! There was something I wanted to mention.
I realized that pop cans can go in the 12 pack box the "normal" way or perpendicular to the normal way. It's much easier to repack them for recycling if they're perpendicular. I can't believe it took me so long to realize that this was an option.
Isaac had a rock climbing competition today! It was near South Bend and he was in the afternoon session. It meant that we could have an easy morning and we were home by dinner.
The format of the competition was four minutes on every route, but Isaac got to see someone climbing the routes last night and he could look at all the routes in the gym ahead of time. He started watching them last night and laughed. The first one he watched had a start parallel to the floor - they were difficult! He was a bit worried going into them.
He ended up doing a great job. He got points on three of the four routes - and he could tell he was making progress within the four minutes so he was very happy at the end of the competition.
The videos are the best try that he had.
I went on a field trip with Joshua today! I'll be honest, I didn't really want to. We went to Outdoor Discovery Center and I have been there a lot. It is always cold. The end of October is just not a great time to have a field trip that is 60% outside.
I also thought I was off the hook - I was just the back-up driver. Well, it turns out that most of the other confirmed drivers only had seats for three and another driver was needed at the last minute. So I stepped in.
It was cold. It was cold right away and my toes never warmed up. We did get to go inside for a few of the parts, so there was at least a reprieve from the wind but I wouldn't call the insides warm.
However, the content was new. (I think the 3rd and 4th grade trips are almost the same and having done at least three of them and had no desire to do another.) It was about indigenous cultures and the leaders were good. I learned some things which is always fun. I also got to throw a dart with an atlatl. My second throw almost hit the turkey that we were aiming for, although I'll admit that I was really just trying to get it to go as far as possible. I think I was the closest person to the turkey, so I was happy with the goal change.
I got home and took a short nap before picking the kids up from school. It was enough time to go home for the nap, but not enough time for a good nap. So after I got the kids home I continued my nap. Field trips wear me out.
I made pizzas for dinner, brought Joshua to a trunk-or-treat, finished up dealing with some food...although I didn't actually finish dealing with it I now realize...and finally got to be done with the day. It was a good day, though not my favorite type of good day.
I did a bunch of new things today.
1. I played Captain's Ball. It's a mix between basketball and ultimate frisbee. It would have been nice if a few more people showed up, but it was still a nice time to meet new people, see Natalie, and get some exercise.
2. I had a door malfunction during my second class. One person came through the door and it never shut all the way. When the door doesn't shut all the way the alarm goes off after 30 seconds. The TA and I took a look at the door and we didn't see any obvious reasons for it to not close. We did learn that if we swiped our ID card at the card reader it would stop for 30 seconds. So for the next 30 minutes my poor TA's job was to swipe her card at the card reader every 20 seconds so that the alarm wouldn't go off. I did call the secretary right away and told her what was going on. She realized the problem immediately and, while she didn't know exactly what to do, she knew where to start. People came after 20 minutes, but didn't have the right parts to make it stop. Then they were going to unplug the door at the control box, but whoever wired it up didn't label any of the cables like they were supposed to. They did finally get the door to stop beeping; I'm not really sure what they did but I was relived. I was able to easily survive the first thirty minutes without the TA, but there were a lot of questions as the students were working and it was helpful to have her walking around too.
3. I passed my lead belay class. Today was practicing more of what we started last week, practicing falls, and trying a different belay device. Falls were more fun than I was expecting...I get pulled way up into the air too. I also really liked the other belay device for lead climbing as I didn't get the rope stuck so much. I was surprised about that too as I was determined to like the device that I started with.
We signed up to host a trunk at church this year. Amazon has some great trunk decorating kits so we chose a cheap one. We, and by we I mean Joshua, added a few embellishments and we ended up with a bunch of compliments. The kids also made some swords from Lego.
It ended up being a lot more fun than I was expecting - the kids were cute.
I had gotten four bags of 75pc candy, two boxes of 75pc granola bars, and about a dozen mac and cheese packets. SNAP is set to expire soon and my guess is that some of the kids that went by us are food insecure. The mac and cheese packs went slowly, but they disappeared in the first 45 minutes. The granola bars were taken pretty consistently: we went through a box and a half. We also finished all the candy I had brought in the first hour and needed to restock a few times from the traveling candy bucket. (I knew it would be available, so I wasn't worried about not having enough candy.) That does mean that we had over 400 trick-or-treaters and probably closer to 500! The post-event email said they had record candy donations and thought they were well stocked but still needed to make a grocery run for more candy part way through - they estimate there were over 1000 people that came on the campus over the night. (They also ran out of hot dogs.) Since the goal was just to get people on campus in a welcoming way, I would say it worked.
Today was XLOOKUP day!
One of the activities we do is a madlib. This semester I realized that the students are surprisingly consistent on the words they select.
Number: something less than 100. Today I was surprised when someone chose 16281
Verb (ends in -ing): running. This one is chosen at least 50% of the time.
Noun: this one changes all the time. There isn't a consistent noun.
Animal: dog
Dwelling: cave. Again, this is chosen about 50% of the time.
Sport: lacrosse
It was a pretty normal Monday. I started with some chores. Sometimes I get exciting chores on Monday, but today was not that day. The kitchen had been ignored all weekend and there were other normal things to do.
Pat and I met for coffee in the morning and that was nice as always.
Isaac tried to get his COVID shot, but after we got to the doctor's office they said they had just run out of the vaccine. The office isn't too far away, but it was still a bit annoying.
I made homemade applesauce with dinner. It was yummy and Isaac was really excited about it.
Karate had a few more black belts show up tonight that haven't been there for a while, which was nice. That being said, it wasn't a very good workout and that was a little disappointing. We did a lot of self-defense and that is not very exercise-y.
It was Great-Grandma's birthday today, and there was a party. Isaac gave her some of the rocks that he's polished lately.
After a half day of school, we went rock climbing. It was actually Joshua's first time climbing at Scrapyard since the expansion; he's taken a bit of a break. I think the current plan is actually to bike once a week and rock climb once a week.
Isaac also worked really hard to get the route of the week.
Today was the busiest day I've had in quite a while. Everything went pretty smoothly though.
6:25am: wake up. Everyone needed lunches made today plus the cutting of bread and it took me longer to get through everything in the morning. Usually I have a at least 10 minutes to eat my own breakfast, but today I ate at work.
7:35am: leave the house to drop off the kids at school and go to work
9:30: teach
11:15: lunch with Natalie
12:15: make-up test (this was super easy on my end. I needed to be around to administer it, but otherwise I just did my work)
1:30: teach
3:20: pick up Joshua from school
3:40: pick up Isaac from PATH
3:55: get home
4pm: leave to get some library books for Joshua and drop off the compost. The compost place has new (and fewer) hours and they just aren't quite as convenient. The library is on the way, so I thought I might as well go there too.
4:17pm: get stopped by a train. This was not in the plan. I had about eight minutes of wiggle room, during which I was going to eat my dinner in the parking lot. I ate it while waiting for the train instead.
4:29pm: Show up to Joshua's conference, just in time. He's doing amazing! His teacher had so many nice things to say about him - academically and socially. I couldn't have asked for a better report.
4:50: Go to Isaac's first conference. They said some nice things about Isaac, gave us his report, and we talked about books.
4:55pm: Go to Isaac's second conference. This one was with a teacher I really like. We talked about a few minor things (both positive and neutral) so that we're on the same page. I had been on the fence about signing up with her because we only needed to go to one, but I was glad that I did.
5:20pm: get home, look at Joshua's sketch book...it was amazing. He's really upped his art skills recently.
5:30pm: leave for rock climbing
5:40pm: start my lead belay class. It was three hours, but the time went so quickly! There's another class next week and I'll need more practice to get everything down, but things are going well.
8:35pm: leave for home
8:45pm: finish the pizza dough
9pm: finish a few items for work that need to be done after classes
9:15pm: relax
I was effectively gone from the house for 13 hours, but the day at least flew by.
Today was fine.
I got groceries. My foot hurt.
I came home, put away the cold stuff, got a load of laundry started, put a new bottom sheet on the bed and decided it was nap time. It was a wonderful nap. It always feels weird to have a morning nap, but sometimes it's what I need.
I woke up in time for lunch and did a few more chores. I had to push my way through some. I didn't get as many done as I had been hoping, but I also remind myself it's ok. The cats were surprisingly cuddly today and every time I sat down one was in my lap.
After picking up the kids I had a doctor's appointment about my foot. The doctor wasn't worried about it and gave me some recommendations and told me to come back in four weeks if it wasn't better. I'm not even on any activity (karate/rock climbing) restrictions, which surprised me. He said it might take a little bit longer to heal if I'm active, but it's also important to be active.
Karate was good.
I lost the board game. I haven't won this board game yet, but it is Isaac's favorite.
Today's lovie story:
I made Creeper join nap pile today because it was his turn to be special lovie. He was not happy about this and kept threatening to explode. Since we have a strict "no explosions in the house" rule, I told him to take it outside. So he did. HOWEVER, that made Grey Bear really upset because he loves going outside and never gets to anymore. Joshua is their adult, so I made him deal with it. He made a new rule: all lovies can now either choose to go outside during nap pile or enjoy nap pile. Grey Bear will have a hard time deciding.
I thought it was supposed to rain all day, but it didn't really start until mid-afternoon. That was fine with me; I was in windowless rooms most of the time until mid-afternoon anyway. There was some small hail scattered in too.
Classes were fine. The kids only had a half day of school, and it is so nice that I could pick them up and drop them off at home without needing to arrange care for them.
I had an annoying amount of things to do after work. Usually I just call it a day, with the exception of maybe a few small things and dinner, but today there was more. I modified a pair of Ben's pants to hopefully fit over the boot. I started a new loaf of bread because the one I made this weekend smelled weird. I did a load of laundry.
I also went rock climbing with a partner. It was a rather easy session but it was nice. I needed an easy session as I pretend to take it easy to heal my assorted issues.
This morning Cheryl and I volunteered at Kids' Food Basket. It was nice to have someone there that I knew.
I had a dentist appointment: no cavities!
Dad came over and fished with Joshua for a little bit. They didn't catch anything, probably because it was too cold, but they had a nice time.
My back still hurts a little bit, although things are getting better. My toe was hurting a bit more than normal though, so that was annoying. It's been hurting for a few weeks now; I finally put "contact the doctor" on my to-do list, but if it gets better over the next few days I'll take it off.
Today was ok, but I've had better. My back was sore from yesterday. It was an exercise sore, but there was one point this morning where I twisted wrong and suddenly couldn't move. We ended up doing church from home. It did get better, but by the end of the evening it still was there.
We had dinner with friends, which was nice. However, we were in charge of dessert and it didn't turn out well. There were some peanut butter cookies that weren't very peanut buttery. My backup was brownies, but I must have messed up the bake time because they were not completely cooked. As in, they were barely cooked.
Isaac's team took an optional field trip to a new climbing gym in Grand Rapids. Since he needed a ride, I was also going to climb.
The reason they went on a field trip is because the rope walls were twice as tall as the ones at Scrapyard. Oh! They were! I could tell when the wall was supposed to be finished and found myself only half way up the wall.
Unfortunately, there were only two auto-belays. However, the coaches kindly belayed me a few times too! I also bouldered a little bit and sat around watching and talking with people and the three hours went by really quickly.
I'd like to reiterate that I love his coaches. They're cool people.
I am steadily working on cleaning the storage room in the basement. I'm not sure I would say that I'm close, but I'm getting closer. At this rate I'm hoping to finish before Christmas. I was especially glad to have so much time to work on it today because when I looked at all the other stuff that also needed to be done today I wasn't sure I'd have any time to work on it.
I did have to get one thing out from the "we'll rarely need this stuff" shelf today, but I was glad that I knew right where the item was! The step ladder was already in the correct place too, which made it even easier.
There was a fair amount of exercise today. I went for a walk with Cheryl. Joshua and I went on a bike ride around the neighborhoods looking for Halloween decorations. We saw a lot of fall decorations, but only a few Halloween decorations. I went to karate this evening - although we did a lot of self-defense which isn't very intense.
The rest of the day was only ok. I got a few chores done, but not as many as I hoped. The dust bin in the vacuum finally filled up and it took a while to clean it and get all the Lego out. It took about a year to fill up, so I was rather excited about that. I was also very ready for my nap by the time I got to it; I feel like I've been more tired lately but it is probably due to the changing seasons or something like that.
Two nights ago Ben was late coming to bed. When this happens, Horizon sometimes joins me first.
Ben always has the sad job of kicking the cat out. On the night in question I was surprisingly awake and told Ben I would just move my feet a little to make Horizon move.
Ben went to brush his teeth and I didn't move my feet. Horizon moved anyway. I didn't see him leave the room, but I didn't see him in the room either. Ben came to bed and the lights were out. Two minutes later we heard a pad...pad...pad...thump as Horizon jumped back into the bed.
That conniving cat!
Riley is open! A week ahead of schedule!! I had to leave the house and drive eat five times today and I was not looking forward to it, to say the least. But after dropping the kids off at school in the morning I thought I saw traffic going through the intersection... But it was foggy.
The second time I needed to leave the one-lane road was blocked by a big truck, so I decided to try an alternate way. Instead of the alternate way though, I got to go through on the main* way!
*This is still not my preferred way most of the time, but it isn't a bad alternative.
Hmm, it was an ok Sunday. There were some boring parts. There were some normal parts. We played some games with friends in the evening. Our game of space base was so close with a score of 44-43-42-41. I just managed with win with a lucky last roll, but everyone was having lucky rolls at the end.
Here's a picture of Isaac and his team in their new jerseys.
I realized I don't have many large containers. I was looking for anything that would work and found the rectangular cuboid drink dispenser. It fits perfectly! There were a lot of laughs.
Joshua and I biked to the church playground. I thought it would be a cold, but it actually a lovely day.
I dropped Isaac off at rock climbing and went back to work. It was a little sad, but I've been a little behind and didn't get caught up over break. After practice was done Isaac wanted to take this picture for Great-Grandma.
When we got home, Joshua was waiting for us. He had gotten a huge trophy for sticking with piano for two years. He was rather excited about it.
I had lunch with one of my karate instructors today. (We do this once a month.) We wore the same sweatshirt today! It's a really comfy sweatshirt. The black version was on sale the other month, so I bought that one too.
I biked to lunch even though it was rather cold. Construction is still crazy annoying, but I've somewhat figured out how to get around. I can get out of the neighborhood on our one-lane back street. After school pickup I take the highway to James and it only takes about twice as long to get home as normal. But considering normally it only takes seven minutes we're really not doing too bad.
