Tuesday: Joshua's birthday party

Joshua had been looking forward to this day for a "long time."  He told Ben this morning to make sure to be home in time to eat the cake, because it was chocolate and he knew Ben likes chocolate.  (He mentioned this to me a few times today too, and I'm not really sure why it was so much on his mind.)

He wore a polo today and looked very grown up.

Dinner of choice was dino nuggets, strawberries, crunchy beans, and chips.  I added some radishes at the last minute too.

He was so excited for his presents!

The cake said "Happy Birthday Puppy" again this year.  He didn't have strong feelings on whether to go with Puppy or Joshua though, so I wouldn't be surprised if next year we have a Joshua again.  The ice cream had chocolate chunks and he talked about them for quite a while while eating.

Monday: swimming lessons

The boys had their first swimming lessons of the season (finally).

Joshua did so much better than I was expecting.  There were several times I could tell that he was not happy to be there, but he kept going.  He's been fragile lately, so I wasn't really sure how it would go.  He even swam a little bit by himself with flippers.

Isaac did a ton better than I expected too.  He managed to swim a bit under half the pool by himself, which he couldn't do at the end of last summer.  I'm not sure where that (in-progress) skill came from, but I'm glad to see it!

So yeah, a great start!

Sunday: made it

Joshua had a hard time today.  With everything, but especially with his snack.  He chose blueberry pizza and I wouldn't let him change to ice cream because the decision had already taken so long.  I ended up going outside and letting him whine/cry it out.  Isaac joined me.

After supper Joshua and I took a walk around the lake.  It was so quiet.  There was no traffic and we spoke about ten words to each other before Joshua fell asleep.

When we got back Isaac told us that he had changed his mind and wanted to scooter around the lake.  So we went around again.

Saturday: garrisons and memory

While Ben and I were sleeping this morning the boys set up a garrison in Isaac's room.  I was glad that 1) it wasn't in our room and 2) it was easier to get in and out in case of "emergency", of which there weren't any.

We were looking through our Lego Minifigure container this morning when Joshua suddenly says, "Mom, this guy goes to the Lego present."  He's been crazily accurate with this stuff before, so I took it, brought it upstairs and checked the instructions.  Sure enough, there he was.

In other news, I feel like I got a lot done today.  And I took a short bike ride, which was really quite nice.

Friday: on food

Joshua had his last Elephant and Piggie class.  Parents got to watch.

Being big Elephants:

Doing the disco (it was in the play)

Doing a bit of the choreography from "Ice Cream Hero".  Joshua is in the front on the right of the picture in a white shirt.

We sadly went grocery shopping this afternoon.  Not sad in that we don't want food, but sad in that it wasn't what we wanted to do.  However, we were all out of milk.  It turned out there were several good sales on things we could stock up on, and the shopping trip got a bit out of control.  Several things will need to wait until next trip.

Isaac lost yet another tooth this morning.  I'm not sure how he's going to eat.  He doesn't have any other loose teeth currently, so maybe his mouth will be able to catch up.

Thursday: on things to wear

Tomorrow's laundry day!  ...except that I haven't managed to finish last week's laundry yet.  Usually I can at least manage that, but it didn't happen this week.  No one has complained, so I must have washed the correct items at least.

Isaac was looking exceptionally lanky today because his clothes were on the small side.  I've known he's been outgrowing the T-shirt for a bit, but think it could last a bit longer.  I talked to him about it and he mentioned it was hard to get the shorts on.  I took a look and realized there were some darts.  I mentioned that I could take those out.  Then I looked at the tag...24M.  Hahaha.  The shorts were really on the small side!  He pulled it off with ease though.  That's one of the best things about shorts.

Joshua made a Piggie hat at camp.  There's also a "Elephant Gerald", but he didn't quite get that one finished yet.

Wedneday: back to normal

Today was back to normal.  At least as normal as it gets.

Joshua went to Elephant and Piggie camp.  Elephant and the Squirr-Els came to visit.  Piggie was sick.  They did the banana dance.  I heard a play by play of the books they read.  It went well.  He also decided to wear pants and long sleeves because he was so cold on Monday.

Isaac wanted to play Dominion today, as he does most days.  Instead of doing some of our other errands, we brought it to Hope and played a game.  It was perfect...it was a super long game and so it was good that Joshua wasn't around.  It was a good game, even though it was long.

After lunch downtown we went to the Spark! Lab at the museum.  We had fun, but I decided we won't renew our membership at the end of the year.  The exhibits are cool, but they don't all change each quarter.  Some of them are better than others.  I expect we will still go on occasion, but only once a year.

Tuesday: home

Joshua woke up with a fever.  Good news though...it didn't come back after the initial temp!

The boys played quite well together today.  It let me get some good stuff done; last night I had been feeling a bit crazy after thinking about all the stuff that needs to be done (especially since some of it I can't do yet).

I went to an adult karate class tonight.  (On Tuesdays they separate the classes by age.)  I was the lowest rank, which did feel a bit odd.  We did a lot of side kicks...my hips started to hurt, but I also got a good work out.

Monday: some surprises

Joshua had theater camp this morning.  We call it Elephant and Piggie Camp.  I'm not completely sure what they did, but there were some games and a few Elephant and Piggie things.  He seemed to enjoy it.

Meanwhile, Isaac and I did some Wizards Unite, visited Dad, visited the Peanut Store, and just spent some time together.  It's only 1.5 hours, which is somewhat of an awkward amount of time.

My next two blog books came in!  The color is the same, but the other things are different.  There isn't a good way to copy from one cover to another...but now I've written it down so hopefully the rest will be the same.

Joshua ended up with a fever today.  He was happy and normal all morning.  He was normal when I picked him up from camp.  He was normal when he got home.  And then suddenly he was not normal.  Why does it always seem to happen on bad days?

Weekend: visitors

The weekend started with a quick trip to the library.  We all finished our summer reading program.

We had some visitors over this weekend, which means that our normal activities changed a bit.  At one point. the boys were trying to attack Ben and I with their wands.  Look at Joshua's great form!  There were two more wands hidden, so Ben and I snuck those out and counter attacked.  There were lots of ices and lavas from Isaac and Joshua.  I had mirror and Ben had shield.

We spent quite a bit of time outside in the afternoons.  Two days we went by the water and one afternoon we got ladder ball out.

Sunday morning we went out for breakfast with Larry and Cheryl.  The boys love playing with the jams and creamers and DeBoers.

All day Joshua wanted help to build a "scorpion vehicle."  I tried, but it wasn't very good.  Ben was apparently asked about five times.  Finally the rest of us were playing a game (we did several throughout the weekend) and Ben got out a Lego set for Joshua.  Lo and behold, it had a scorpion vehicle!  I was very impressed.

Isaac interacted with Felix a bit...more as the weekend went past.

I gave the family a duck-donut-donut ride.  Afterwards I sat in a tube.  I put the duck over me for shade.  Ben joined me and we looked crazy.

It was a lovely weekend.  It's been a while since we've seen Zach and Jenny and it was nice to meet Felix.

Thursday: getting rid of stuff

One of today's activities was to find some books and toys to give to a small child staying with us this weekend.  It started off poorly.

Amanda: Joshua, find some board books that you want to get rid of
Joshua: I can't find any
Amanda: Ok, just take out all the board books and then we can pick from them
Joshua: I can't find any.

Since we had about thirty minutes to do some work I was rather annoyed.  I got all the board books and we laid them out on the floor.  Joshua and Isaac got to pick one that they wanted to keep and then I picked one to get rid of.  Repeat until all the books were selected.  We did the same thing with some toys.  I was very happy with the lack of whining that happened with this system.

I also managed to pass on two books that were favorites of the kids but oh, so annoying.

Wednesday: Dutch Village

Today we went to Dutch Village.  I almost decided to do something else, but the weather looked perfect and we don't have that many completely free days any more.  (We have days that are a lot free, but not completely.)  Anyway, it was a lovely day and an excellent choice.

But first...the boys were super excited to have found Horizon in a new spot this morning.

I took way too many pictures today.  We mainly went on the rides.  The boys also did a lot of duck pumping and some jumping things.

Ferris Wheel

Pumping ducks.  Isaac really liked these.

Swings

Carasole.  Joshua rode this several times (although to be fair, we rode all of them several times), but changed each time to get the horse with the most gems.

Pumping trains.  This didn't go too badly this year.  We've skipped it in the past because you need a bit of power.  Joshua mainly got through it, although was helped with some bumps from Isaac.

I'm not sure why the word "Bears" is on this sign, but it seemed appropriate since we were by Bear Castle.

We left for lunch/rest time/screen time as it was getting busy and then returned later in the afternoon as it was getting not so busy again.  I had been planning to do this to skip the heat of the day, but it never got all the hot out today.

These are the jumping things I mentioned above.  I don't remember seeing them in the past, but the boys loved them.  They had a hard time staying on them at first and fell off so much, but they laughed the whole time.  I made them take baths right away when we got home, mainly because of these.