Tuesday: busy

It was a busier day today than I was expecting.  Midterm grades needed to be turned in, which meant a bit of grading, plus the normal class plans, plus getting stuff ready for Thursday, plus a few extra emails.  I also ate lunch with Dad, but that is more of a fun thing than a busy thing.

It ended up working out well though - I just stayed at Hope an extra hour and then went to pick up Joshua from school, since he has art club on Tuesdays.

Besides that though, it was a pretty normal day.  My book is taking a bit of a lull.  It isn't bad right now and I'm still sitting down to read it at random times, but the story feels like a bit more of the same and that I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.  There's also a love interest that just feels weird.  Maybe it's that way on purpose but still odd.

vacation Monday (June 15) part 2: Fløibanen funicular

 After lunch and a rest at the hotel room we went shopping and then for a ride to the top of the mountain.

We had moose burgers, but Isaac said it wasn't as good as the first time.  We think the person used less sauce.

There was a polar bear while shopping, so I obviously got my picture taken with it.

Once we were done shopping, we went to the funicular.  (A funicular is a cable train for going up and down steep slopes.)  You can see the top of the railway in the picture below.  There were paths that you could walk up too, and while walking around we saw a lot of people that seemed to have done that, but it was nice to not have to do that.  It was also about five minutes away from our hotel room.

Pictures don't really seem to be doing justice to how steep the car was.  The internet says the angle was 29deg

The funicular was for more than just tourists, and on the way up had one other stop and on the way down had three additional stops.

Once we got to the top we took some pictures and enjoyed the view.

...and then found a playground.  It was a rather normal playground, but I felt like I was tearing the kids away so we could go walk and explore a little more.

Ben and Cheryl walked for about five minutes and found a lovely place to sit and enjoy the view.

Isaac on a rock in a fjord.

We continued to explore.  The path/road that we were on had a lot of things to climb on, so the kids were happy with that.  We'd walk a bit, then they'd get to climb on something, we'd walk a bit, etc.

We found a gathering a rocks.  (A pile?  A flock?  A cairn?)  It was probably man-made, but it's sometimes hard to tell.  We searched for a few more rocks.

Walking a little ways further we found another bench/lookout combo

And then we started back.  I had noticed that there was a side trail following the road on the way out, so on the way back I started using it.  The kids, of course, followed suit because it was a much more interesting walk.  (This was more of a hike, which I wanted, than a walk, which was what others wanted.  It was perfect because we were still near each other.)

We found another playground!  I think this one was supposed to be troll themed, but either we were in the wrong place or I just didn't see the trolls.

Walking over another hill brought us to a ropes course.  This was the coolest part, so I was glad that we found it last.  Four of us did all the ropes stuff, although Ben and I stopped at the play structure.

Cheryl had found a nice place in the sun to wait for us.

On the way down!  I just sat on the step so I could see better.

It was decided to go to a tapas place for dinner and it was so much fun.  They gave us popcorn as the appetizer.  I like popcorn.  We ordered two rounds of about eight main entrees and then a round of desserts.  So we had a little bit of everything and two bites of the things we liked the best.  My favorites included the mushroom pasta, Korean chicken, and the chicken skewer.  

The desserts!  I recall them being very good, but nothing stood out as extra extra amazing.

After this I think we headed back to the hotel room.  I have no idea what time it was, but by the time we did showers, the kids wrote their daily recaps, and such it was time for bed.  We discovered that the emergency exit map was glow-in-the-dark, which we thought was pretty cool.

Sunday: Isaac laughing

 I made Isaac laugh so much today, over dumb things.

He wanted to have what was essentially a clip thumb-war.  Using an extra large clip, you try to "eat" the other person's extra large clip.  It was more fun than I expected, but still pretty dumb.

Then this afternoon he made a LEGO contraption that pushed a stick up through a frame when a button was pushed. Then he upgraded it so it worked better and he said, "and if you turn it upside-down it won't fall out."  What I didn't think about was all the other sticks that were also in the frame - they fell out.  His practical joke worked and Isaac obviously found it hilarious.

Saturday: blah

Today I only felt ok.  There were times of feeling fine and there were times of feeling a little yucky but I survived.

We played some games.  I didn't do as much cleaning as I hoped to do...we're having people over tomorrow so it matters more than normal.  They'll only be in the main area though and that gets cleaned up pretty quickly and I did get some cleaning done.

Friday: vaccines, dinner

The kids and I got our flu and COVID vaccines at Meijer today.  The sign-up process was a bit annoying, but in the end totally worth it.  We were in and out in about fifteen minutes, which is so much better than last year at Walgreens when it took at least 45 minutes.

We got home, I put the groceries away and I started dinner.  Ben and Isaac needed to leave at 6pm, so I had been a bit worried about getting dinner made in time so we were rushed.  Well, Meijer went so well that dinner ended up being early.  I'm really bad at timing dinner.  It seems like it is always late.

Thursday: groceries

Wednesday is normally grocery day.  For assorted reasons, I didn't get, or even order, groceries.

As I was picking up Joshua:
J: Did you get groceries?
A: No, I worked all day
J: oh, that's right

As we were making snack:
I: did you get groceries?
A: No, I was working

An hour later, after I took a short nap:
I: Did you get groceries?
A: what?  You already asked me like, an hour ago.
I: well, you disappeared and I thought maybe you went to get them
A: no, I took a nap, like I said I was going to.  [side note: we even had a conversation about celery while I was in the bed]

Wednesday: Christmas tree

Today was an odd day.

I woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible sore throat.  Sore enough that I got up to take some medicine.  I took a pretty long nap and have felt better and worse throughout the day, but no fever.

Isaac had the morning off school, which was weird but nice.  He got some work and chores done, and had some fun.  Ben also stayed home for a little bit this morning because he was working crazy hours Monday and Tuesday.  We played a game which was nice...we haven't been playing as many games due to schedules.

I also got started putting the new Christmas tree together.  The pegs are not as consistently sized as ideal, but we're figuring it out.  Below is the top half of the tree in two different configurations.

Tuesday: book interludes

 So, the book series I'm currently reading has put a "major interlude" at the end of the last three books, where we follow the story of a completely different character.  They seem to be in the same world, but probably not in the same time.  (There's a high chance the two characters will meet, but that has not happened yet.)

I do not appreciate it.  The main story tends to end at a cliff hanger, as books tend to do, and I want to know what is going to happen next!  Except I have to shift my attention to this other person.  Then I just get into their story and the book is done and I need to shift my attention back to the original character.  In my current book the interlude is 10% of the book!

I find myself stalling slightly every time I have to change, as it's basically like changing books.  Two good books, yes, but still annoying.

I will still highly recommend the books (Beneath the Dragoneye moons), but so far am not a fan of this interlude mechanic.

Monday: missing

So many (ok, only two) things went missing from right under my nose today.  Since usually zero things go missing, it was a bit surprising.

First of all was a fruit scrap container.  The fruit was feed to the worms.  But where did the container go?  I looked all over, except for in the worm bin.  But why would I have left it in the worm bin??  We'll find out next time, I guess.

Then Joshua had geared up a LEGO contraption and the blades flew off it.  We found one of the two missing blades, but the other one is gone.  We even pulled out the fridge and looked under it.  I think there is still a very small chance that it's under there, but we didn't find it.

vacation Monday (June 15) part 1: swim and sauna

Good morning breakfast!  I think I mentioned it earlier, but now you can see the items.  The brown cheese in the upper left and the dried raspberry ball in the bottom right.

After breakfast we went back to the swim & sauna, this time with goggles.  This isn't a great picture of the boat, but it's the best one I had for the outside.

Inside there were two rooms.  A changing area/viewing room and the sauna.

We could also go upstairs, but the stairs were crazy!  I think these are called witch's steps and I've seen them on-line in a few other places since we used them here.  You really needed to start on the correct foot or the stairs were terrible, but if you started on the correct foot they worked pretty well.

The top was not all that warm, but it was nice and sunny.

Then it was finally time to jump in!  I went first.  I also went second because the second person wasn't ready fast enough.  The water was 11C.

Isaac followed.

Ben was third, but he went from the roof jumping spot so we don't have a good video of it.  Joshua followed.  He wouldn't jump out very far and was pretty much climbing back into the boat once his feet touched the water, but he did it!  By the end he was going a little bit farther.

Cheryl jumped in too!

Then we would warm up and while moving to a new place.  The sauna was so nice and warm after getting in the water.  There was a large window to look out of here too.

...the sauna was nice and warm, but only for about ten minutes.  Then it got too hot, so we all slowly migrated to the floor.  There was a substantial difference between sitting on the lower bench and sitting on the floor.  The thermometer, near the ceiling, showed 89C.  We thought that it must be wrong, but after looking it up it was probably correct.

More jumping at the very end.  Cheryl jumped in twice (which we were all excited about) and I think everyone else had 12ish jumps.  Isaac also jumped off the roof.  There were two big lessons.  First, remember to keep breathing.  It is easy to want to clench everything up in the cold water, but you need to breathe.  Secondly, make sure the person before you is almost out before you jump in, so that you don't have to wait to get out.  Our motto was, "That was terrible!  Let's do it again!"

I had a blast.  I would 100% do something like this again, and I'm really happy to say that I've swum in a fjord.

Thursday: cleaning

Joshua stayed home today.  Ben came home early to work from home, but Joshua was mostly on his own.  He was feeling better, although still not his normal self.

Isaac and I went rock climbing this evening.  (I didn't climb well.  I'm blaming it on the blood donation, but I'm not sure I can do that after a week.)  When we got home Joshua had cleaned up the kitchen, the table, and the mini-hallway.  It looked so much better.  It's not as though I didn't get things done yesterday with Joshua around, but I didn't get all of my normal things done.  He said it was because he really appreciated how well I took care of him while he was sick. <3

Wednesday: LEGO take apart

For most of the day Joshua was ok.  He probably spent about 95% of his day on the couch (by choice).  He got extra screen time and listened to audio books for quite a while.  While he was listening to audio books, he was taking about some of our LEGO sets.  The ones that have needed to be taken apart have been piling up, so I was super excited that he was willing to do this.  (Sometimes we do it during church if we do church at home, but we haven't done that much.  Sometimes Ben does it during dinner, but lately he's been on sorting the loose LEGO drawers because some needed to be split into two or more categories.)

I went on a walk with Natalie - the weather has been beautiful lately!

In karate we went over our knife defense.  I attacked my partner, Will, first, who did a nice job of dealing with the attack...if it wasn't a knife attack.  He punched my face and I swished the knife and then he had no legs.  We were working with knives, so by the end of the night he also had no fingers.  (I wasn't paying attention, but I probably didn't have all my fingers either.)  (Also, Will is much better than I am.  There are just a lot of things to remember.)

Tuesday: Fall break

Today was fall break, so Dad and I worked on the Christmas tree.  We had a great system down, and managed to drill 216 holes in about two hours.  I'm really curious and excited to see how it looks, but I need to wait for the Christmas tree stand to come first.

I got home and talked with Aunt C for a little bit.  While the morning had started out cold, by 11 is was really nice out.  I had lunch and then Ben called because he had made arrangements to deal with some e-foil stuff.  Things lined up pretty well, so he was dealing with that until mid-evening.  (Although he got extra ragoons so I could have some, even though I didn't have Chinese for dinner.)

At 2:20 I got a call from Joshua; he wasn't feeling well.  It didn't completely surprise me because he was a bit off this morning.  He really did seem pretty off, and when he took his temperature it was 99.1F.  Hmm, that's an annoying amount because the fever is starting but isn't high enough to say for sure no school tomorrow.  We decided that Joshua would take a nap and we'd check again.

Joshua slept for over two hours - he hasn't taken a nap in a long time.  When he woke up he definitely had a fever, so he gets to join me at home tomorrow.  He perked up a bit with some medicine, but never was his normal self and said he was still pretty tired.  We'll see how tomorrow goes!

Sunday: driving

I've been doing a lot of the driving for the kids this school year.  There are a lot of good reasons for this that I won't get into.

Anyway, Ben usually does the pickup after Sunday school.  His schedule changed at the last minute today, so I went to pick up the kids.  Then, about a minute after I left his schedule changed again such that he'd get home later and wouldn't be able to pick up food for dinner.

We laughed about the timing.  So many things are conspiring against us.

Saturday: eyes

For LEGO group today, we were bringing monster cookies.  I had a few candy eyeballs, but it would have been one small one per cookie.  Joshua was sure that we needed more eyeballs.  After discussing for a while, he said he would come with me if I went to the grocery store to get them and that he would help put them on the cookies.

I didn't want to go, but I did want to spend time with Joshua, so we went.  Ben also needed a few things picked up so it worked well, but it was an extra 45 minutes in the morning that I wasn't planning on.