Isaac has been working on his own D&D champaign for several months. He has spent a lot of time on it. It isn't finished, but it is far enough along that we decided that we should just start. We started last week but it was just a introduction section.
Today we went into the forest. We met a shady character but nothing happened. We met a wandering traveler and didn't buy his shiny rocks. We ran into a group of goblins. Joshua is the most charismatic of all of us (and I was a warhorse) so he decided to talk to the goblins and see if we could just go safely by them.
They wanted his shield. (Of course not.) They wanted his sword. (No way.) They wanted something shiny. Oh no! We didn't buy any shiny gems. Without missing a beat, Joshua offers them the shiny wrapper of his granola bar. They decided they also wanted the granola bar. And, just like that, we were able to continue on our way.
Yesterday Joshua came home with his baritone. It's so big compared to him. Luckily though, the school has enough baritones that he can have one at school and one at home, so he doesn't have to lug it back and forth.
Today was nice. We went on a bike ride in the morning. The weather was lovely and the road was nice and smooth. (There have been a ton of scooters and roller blades now that the road is smooth. It's been fun to see.)
In the afternoon we went to the other rock climbing place. It was a good time. There were some fun routes. Joshua only had a medium good time, but we did a take-away and he bought himself a donut and then read for a bit.
Nap pile! Creeper despises nap pile but everyone else loves it.
Tornado was stalking something outside:
But they must have learned that it's safe to come to the deck, despite the cat in the door and the fact that I was picking raspberries 10ft away. (They enjoy the dropped bird seed.)
I also found this amazing dragonfly on the raspberry bushes. It is prime raspberry season, so I didn't pick all the raspberries. Therefore, I decided I could leave him alone and get the raspberries tomorrow.
This morning Isaac had a local rock climbing competition. The expansion was opened up (briefly) for the first time. There weren't quite as many people either, so it was a bit less busy than normal. Isaac was in the intermediate category this year so it was quite a bit harder. However, he still got two tops and several zones.
My raisin bread was good.
Cheryl and I did a guided painting in the evening. My grass looks way different from the example painting, but I couldn't get nice little thin strokes like the example (the second one below). It ended up being a feature; you can see the moon through the grass.
My chores today were a bit better. I started working on the storage room again. While it never got as bad as it originally was, over the summer it did get significantly worse. I didn't get to the bad part (yet), but did finish the mini project that I had started before summer.
I made a new bread today - apple juice and raisin. It smells really good, but I just pulled it out of the oven so I haven't tasted it yet.
I forgot to share this lovely conversation from two days ago:
Isaac: where'd you get so much cinnamon and sugar? I though we only had a small spice jar of it. Amanda: ...I made it.
Isaac: ...
Amanda: ...
Isaac: oh! You mixed cinnamon and sugar!
Anyway, we had some first day pictures. Joshua was not excited about this.
I got a lot done, but it wasn't exciting.
We made mini-donuts with the sourdough starter today. They were good, but not amazing. I don't think they'll be on my list to make again soon, although the kids could probably persuade me to make them one or twice a year.
Today was fine; nothing too exciting to write about.
We met the new Student Ministry Director (grades 6-12) after church. It was billed as a meet and greet so I thought it would be about 15 minutes, but everyone sat down and it was more meeting like and took 45 minutes.
The family game was Century: Golem edition. It's one of the games Joshua willingly plays. Anyway, this game played out very differently as we bought almost all of the gem trading cards. Usually we only buy a few, focusing on buying the golem cards. Everyone had fun with it because it was playing out very differently. (I still didn't win. I triggered the end of the game, but didn't manage to win. Again. I'm not sure if I've ever won this game, but don't have any proof of that.)
We had some friends over tonight. It was a lovely time, as always. The kids played in the basement, in the lake, and then in the basement again. The adults enjoyed catching up.
It was a normal day today: I had plans to get lots of things done and only got a few things done.
Today we went to Sandy Pines to visit Uncle Lee and Aunt Susan in our yearly visit.
We started with a round of mini-golf, followed by lunch. They have pretzels at the canteen, and they're always a hit.
Then we went on the ropes course. This is the first time we've been around when the ropes course was open. It was a good one! I thought Joshua was going to freak out on the second leg, but he made it through that one and then he was good from there out. He even did that leg a few more times with no issues.
We also walked in the creek for the first time! We decided not to do the pool, so the creek was a perfect way to cool off. And although most of the time it was only ankle deep, it was so cold. We walked up it a bit to see their backyard.
Overall, it was a lovely time as always.
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.
Who likes wide rule notebooks, anyway.
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.
Happy cat day!
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.
