Vacation Tuesday: Men escape, kids escape

We had brought some Lego set for Isaac and Joshua to do when they woke up (or during nap time).  Our kids often get up on the early side, plus we had the time change.  They got up early the first several days but by the end I was waking them up.

 

Doug made a delicious french toast for breakfast.  (Side note: several people took pictures of him at various times.  They all look the same except for the bread.)

The wiki sticks were still being played with quite a bit.  Here is Isaac's rainbow.

The guys were getting ready to go to the escape room.  In the meantime, Ben couldn't find Isaac.  It ended up being a great game of follow the leader/look for Isaac!

Happily, the guys escaped too and were able to come home to us after lunch.

While they were gone we went to the pool for a bit.  Sadly, the splash pad wasn't turned on this time.

We came home a bit earlier than everyone else.  I gave the boys some yogurt smoothies and they happened to have Spiderman characters on them.  For the next half hour their drinks talked to each other.

To reach the pool you had to go up a mountain and then down a mountain.  This is the down on the way back.  We learned on the first day that all but one of the houses are rentals.

This is our house.  Behind the big bush is the bridge that you needed to use to cross over the rocks that have been shown in other pictures.

Laura and I decided that the older boys would love going to an escape room, especially since eight and under are free.  We took their siblings with us just for the experience more than thinking they'd really love it.  (However, Joshua has told me that he wants to go again.)

The one we chose was a good one for the kids.  There were a whole bunch of locks and keys, so they all got to take turns doing those.  There were also four buttons for to open the fireplace wall, so that was exciting.

As expected, Isaac did love it and has subsequently received a gift certificate to go to one in Holland.

More rock coloring.  I think here they are doing some "we're glad you're home" or so for the child that needed a "quick" trip to urgent care.

I can't remember what was going on, but Ben was cracking Violet up!

We had another yummy pie.

Several games were played throughout the day again, but this one might have been the only one that was only with kids.  Joshua was teaching Greta how to play Sleeping Queens.  He did a good job, and they managed to play through a whole game.  (I had thrown our card holders in at the last minute and it was a great decision!!)

This is the awkward couch.  Three unrelated people managed to sit on it and so had to "try hard" not to touch each other.

Friday: kids talk

There's been some interesting stuff said over the week...

Amanda: what do you want to do when you're an adult?
Joshua: go to Crazy Bounce with kids
Isaac: Buy a Switch and decide how much screen time to give my kids.

***********

Isaac: well, my mouse is in fight club.
Amanda: do you talk about fight club?
Isaac: no

************
Roommate Amy saw us on the street having a treat and stopped to say hi.  Then she continued doing her errands...

Pat: I can't remember, did you live together in college?
Amanda: yeah, for three years
Isaac: and then you got divorced?
Amanda: haha.  No, we weren't married.  We were friends living in the same room.

Thursday: blueberries, sawing, cat box

This morning we went to pick blueberries.  Aunt C joined us at the last minute!  Joshua had his own bucket this year and did a good job getting blue ones.

We came back home and talked landscaping for a while.  There is a bush-tree in the front and it's dying quickly.  We started sawing it down.

We also get a cat box this evening.  This way the cats can be outside when they want to.  Both cats fit in the box, but they need to be friendly.

The boys had a lot of fun playing with the boxes and packing.

Wednesday: Wizards Unite

Today Joshua woke up much better, but still not at 100%.  He was acting pretty normal, but still getting a bit winded periodically.

So I decided to do some Wizards Unite with the boys.  It would give me some exercise and Joshua could be in the stroller.  He still got out of it regularly, but it was at least there when needed.

Tuesday: sick

Ben's gone, so it seems appropriate that Joshua got sick.  I feel like Nathan and I always did that to Mom when Dad left.

Anyway, he woke up a bit early with a cough that wasn't doing anything but wouldn't go away.  As in, coughing every minute.  By the time we got to the doctor the cough wasn't as bad, but his breathing was labored.  And he was a lump.  You know kids are sick when they don't move.

He had a chest x-ray but it wasn't pneumonia.  We got some medicine.  After the nebulizer he had a good half hour that he played with the train track, but after than it was back to not feeling great again.

When he was talking to Ben today he said, "my breathing was labored" in his little four-year-old voice.  It was super cute.

Needless to say, we had a lot of screen time today.

Monday

We went to an Elephant and Piggie play at Hope this morning.  It was good and the boys smiled and laughed many times.

One of the Squirreles thought that an animal on Isaac's shirt looked like a squirrel, so they talked about that for a while.

Both kids liked Piggie the best.  I liked Gerald.

Joshua's Great Wolf Lodge band finally broke off today at karate, five months after putting it on.  Yes, there were tears.  Not too many though.  I suggested that we put the leather band on that we got there too.  It needs to be stretched out a bit, but should be good to go by tomorrow.  (Honestly, I'm glad that it broke off.  It was getting rather scratchy.)

Ben's away for the week, but not having too bad of a time so far.

Weekend: friends

We had lots of friends over this weekend.  Brian and Amy on Saturday, Abby and Hanneke on Sunday.  The weather cooperated very nicely; especially this evening as it was perfect outside.  It was lovely to see them all and I managed to take a total of zero pictures.

Thursday: Sandy Pines

Today we went to visit Uncle Lee and Aunt Sue.  It was a beautiful day for it - cloudy and not too hot.  The first thing Isaac asked when he got in the door was if they had the same bread as last time.  What what??  This was the first I had heard of this amazing bread.  Apparently we had a sourdough last year and Isaac remembered it well enough to request it again.  Guess we'll need to get some.  The boys wanted to play mini-golf first; Joshua improved a ton since last year.

After mini-golf we swam in the pool for about ten minutes before it was closed due to thunder.  It worked out well though; by the time we got back to the house for lunch it started to rain pretty hard.  During lunch Isaac got his sourdough and we all tried radishes.  Isaac wasn't too fond of them, but Joshua ate two of them!  Since he doesn't like most vegetables, we'll be getting some at the store on Monday (and seeing if he still likes them).  It rained during lunch and then soon afterwards stopped, so we were still able to go get ice cream.

It was a lovely visit.

Vacation Monday: Ladies escape, acrobats swing

Doug picked up the groceries in the morning.  It filled up their car!  They also put about two items per bag, so we had plenty of plastic bags.  (Shown here is only the non-cold stuff.  The cold stuff was whisked away.)

The ladies went out by ourselves in the morning to an escape room.  It was the first one that Heather and I had done.  I loved it.  We all contributed and we got a little stuck a few times but didn't call for help.

Since we escaped so early, we walked around downtown for a bit before lunch.  We went into a five and dime and laughed about a bunch of things there.  We walked down to the...river? lake? and then went out to lunch.  We also got some fudge, which everyone kept saying was a tradition.  I finally admitted that I only remembered getting fudge in 2017...and it turns out that getting fudge is a new tradition.  One that I was totally on board with.

While we were gone, the rest of the people just kind of hung out.  The kids found some wiki stix and played with them a ton!  (They also ended up on the bottom of the table.)

They also played some arcade games.  We were all really hoping that the games were part of the rental cost, but alas, they needed quarters.  Not a huge deal though as we had plenty of other things to do...

...like the Switch.

In the afternoon we went to see the "Acrobats from Shanghai."  According to the announcer, China is millions and millions miles away from here.

My favorite acts included a hat toss,

some yo-yo type things that I can't remember the name of,

and hoop jumping.

In the evening Laura was going on a walk with her kids, and I thought sounded like a good idea for my kids too.  There were a bunch of rocks around, and they made better toys than the little playground.  We met up with the others about half way through our walk.

Finally!  The kids were down!  Some of the adults played a game of Diamonds.

Wednesday: CC's playground

Our plans got changed today, so there were no plans on the calendar.  I asked the boys what they wanted to do today, and they said they wanted to go to CC's playground.  It worked well...I had some work to do and they got to run around in a place that wasn't too hot.

Ben upgraded Joshua's mech last night...

Tuesday: more hitting

Oh, poor Joshua.  Today he hit Isaac, and it was over a really dumb thing.  Again, not hard, but it's something we need to stop.

Last time we told him there would be big consequences, like losing screen time.  And so, he lost screen time today.  To make it even worse, we had planned that today the kids would do their chores in the afternoon so that in the evening Ben could play Dragon Quest Builders with them and he lost the chance to do that.  (Especially since he hit Isaac after they had both already done their chores.)

He was sad, very sad, but also handled it a lot better than I was expecting.  He had lots of questions about how exactly this would play out but seemed to understand why it was happening.

Now the question is...will it help him stop?

Monday: firsts

While we don't have many 'firsts' anymore, they still happen.

First of all, the story starts last night around midnight.  I was reading an article about the NYC blackout and how we're not really prepared for a massive power grid problem.  It may have kept me up a little bit last night after watching Jericho years ago.

Fast forward to 2:15am when Joshua woke me up because it was too dark.  There was a power outage.  I thought a bit about how ironic it would be if this was a massive power outage.  My phone still worked so I could easily find out that the blackout was localized to around our lake.  Anyway, after a few more calls from Joshua I put him in our room for the night.

The boys got their first tool bags.

Isaac took his first drink from a metal can.  I feel like this is something that he should have done by now, but I guess it's not bad that he hasn't.  He thought the can felt really weird.

We played Isaac's new games.  Isaac did a great job with both of them, but Joshua played Ingenious too and did a good job.  He has basic strategy down (group colors, play the color that's the lowest) so it was fun to play with everyone.

The boys also used their tools.  We were very careful when Ben came home to make sure he didn't trip over it.  The cats enjoyed it too.

Sunday: 7 1/2 years

Today we had Isaac's birthday party.  Cousins came over first and they played in the lake a little bit.

Isaac opened some presents.

We had cake.  (It took Isaac a lot of breaths to blow out all eight candles.  They weren't even trick candles.)

And a good time being together.

Saturday: grinch

This morning we got a text from Evelyn and JJ, showing us their cool Lego creations and wanting to know what we were working on.  Joshua didn't want to show what he was working on that minute, but instead showed the robot that he and Ben have been working on.  Joshua did the head, hands, feet, and wings (all by himself) and Ben connected everything together.  (Isaac made a long video, detailing every aspect of the things he was making.  I stopped it after 45 sec, but Isaac wasn't done.  So I just held up the phone like I was videoing.)

In the afternoon Ben took the boys to Barnes and Noble to make a Snitch.  (Or as Joshua calls it, a Grinch.)  It was an easy build for them and they had no problems, but it was a fun little surprise.

Isaac played Dominion for the first time on vacation and loved it.  He wanted to play again tonight.  Luckily the table had been cleaned up today in our "clean the house" effort.  Joshua was on my team and did a good job getting the new cards every hand and saying, "We have a moat!" to the six or so spies that Isaac accumulated.