Sunday: arrival and Blue Lagoon

The day started around 6:30am, which is 2:30am EDT.  I had a hard time getting to sleep on the plane, and then 6:30 is around the time they served breakfast.  While it did end up being a long day, the sleepiness didn't hit us too often.

Our plane arrived at the gate at 7:30, an hour before it was scheduled to do so.  We went through person control to get our passport stamped.  It was the easiest I've ever been through.  There were no forms to fill out and all the guy asked was "how long will you be here?"  We picked up our bags and headed to customs.  If you had something to declare you went one way, otherwise you went a second way.  The second way went around a few corners and...we were out.  Our new criteria for something being easy is "as easy as customs in Iceland."

We found out that we were in time for the early bus to the Blue Lagoon.  We were unable to actually get into the lagoon any earlier, unfortunatly, but it was a much nicer place to wait than the airport.  It also gave us some time to take pictures and to walk a little trail.

This was part of the Blue Lagoon by the table where we waited.  It was man-made, but by accident.  Workers were trying to get rid of some wastewater from the geothermal electricity plant.  The water actually sealed the rock, making it air tight.  The water gets heated from the lava, brought up, and then permeates back down.  (The process takes about forty hours.)  Anyway, it means that you have a huge hot tub.

Ok, so we weren't allowed in quite yet so we walked around.  It was odd to be walking in a lava field.  There were rocks everywhere.  Most of them are covered in moss.  (Also odd...the countryside has no trees and no visible animals.  The city has trees and grass and animals.  Don't tell Isaac as he has a communities quiz tomorrow and it'll get him all mixed up.)  The land is quite flat, although there are some large hills.  Due to the lack of trees, you can see really far.

So we finally got in.  The water really was lovely.  Some places were hot, some places were warm.  The depth was always changing, although never past my neck.  My first favorite thing was when it rained.  To have the cold raindrops with the hot water was cool.  (It started out overcast, but after a while started to do a rain-sun cycle.  I loved the rain, but the sun was too bright!)  I did get to see a rainbow once when it was raining with sun.

My second favorite part was when we found a spot that was cold on the bottom and hot on the top.  The cold was "this is too cold for a shower" cold and the hot was "this is almost a hot-for-Amanda shower".  It was fun to move your hands up and down and feel the drastic difference.  It also helped you from getting too hot.

We left, checked in at the hotel, and then went to eat.  The food was good; I had haddock and Ben had lamb.  The we walked through the winter cold wind to see an intriguing building.  Harpa is a performing arts center, but has a honeycomb wall.

After warming up and enjoying the odd building, we quickly walked back to the hotel.  It's only 8pm, but we are quickly getting ready for bed!

Saturday: we're off!

Everyone left for "vacation" today.  I put it in quotes because the boys still need to go to school.

They were so excited to leave though!  Dad and Pat came to pick them up and before I knew it Joshua was buckling himself in before he said good bye. We saw a few pictures throughout the day and it looked like they were having lots of fun.

Ben and I finished packing and did quite a bit of cleaning before leaving.  The kitties did not care that we were leaving.

We're about to board again.  Iceland, here we come!

Friday: a cat scare

The cats were confined to the bathroom/storage area for a few hours tonight.  I went to let them out, and only one could be found...but there were sounds in the office that shouldn't really be there.

Our bathroom vent fell off a few weeks ago.

"Um, how likely is it that Horizon is stuck in our vents?"  I asked Ben.

We continued to hear clanging.  How do you get a cat out of a vent?  Especially when you're leaving the next day for vacation?  I opened some vents on the top floor.  We clicked the clicker.  We walked around.

Finally, we saw him.

He was crawling around in the top of the ceiling, but he wasn't stuck.  Very spider-webby, but not stuck. Not really where I want him to be, but something to deal with another time.  Phew.

Tuesday: twins again

Isaac and Joshua independently chose the same T-shirt and shorts today.  There was some frantic planning right before it was time to go to get the same socks.  They were so excited to be twins.

Monday: school paper

Isaac brought the following paper home from school today.  It made me smile so much.

Monday: Now, the math magician part came from an award that he got at the end of the year last year, not from Ben and me.

Tuesday: apparently Ben and I are doing something right????

Wednesday: may I refer you to this post.

Sunday: Legos

Joshua made some Lego tornadoes.  He was very careful with the colors to make nice patterns.

Isaac has been making Lego shakers.  These are little boxes with dots in them.  He made the boxes with different numbers of dots, pillars inside the boxes, and different sized boxes.  They all sound different, which is pretty interesting.

Saturday: attack

Oh my, I was attacked so much this morning.  Isaac attacked me, Joshua attacked me, and lots and lots of Legos attacked me.

Joshua made this attacker.  I actually didn't get attacked by it, but Joshua wanted to take a lot of pictures of it and they're the only pictures I have today.

Ben and Isaac finished their game of Dominion.  This was an interesting game because it had a new card, made up by Isaac.  The name is "President's Rule".  It costs 10 and should be played with the Prosperity set.  With it, you can play it as any other action card that are in the piles.  Ben said it actually worked pretty well and was appropriately priced.

Friday: Stu Visser trails

Joshua is very happy to take hikes with me if we take the stroller.  I know he's a bit old for the stroller, but it is also worth it to have an enjoyable time.  Since there are only about two trails in the area that accommodate strollers, I've decided to look for more. 

Of course, there are some.  One is much closer than the other two too.  We went to visit it today.

A bridge.

All of the trails ended in water over the trail.  Next time we need to go when it is drier or take some boots.  I don't think it was more than an inch or two deep, but that is more than I wanted to walk through.

There was a tree over the path.  Joshua ducked to make sure his head wouldn't hit it.

We put some leaves in the river and watched them float away.

We played with the pond scum a bit too.

Thursday: ice cream

Tonight there was an ice cream social/open house at Joshua's school.  He has been excited about this for days.

The whole family went, and we were the only ones in his classroom most of the time.  So he showed us where all of his art was and where he sleeps and what his classroom job is (he likes moving the clip to the next activity).

We went outside so that he could show us some steps (I still don't really understand) and get a picture.  He's wanted this picture for quite a while too.

Then we grabbed our ice cream and decided to eat it in Joshua's classroom.  It was nice...the teacher was still there so we talked to her and understood a little bit more about Joshua's day.  She also had so many positive things to say...that he was very polite, that he could be trusted to stay on his cot, and that he cleaned up when it was time to clean up.  She also mentioned that he doesn't eat much of his lunch and isn't super social, but that's just where he is right now.

Wednesday: labor day

On Labor Day Ben played a prank on Joshua.  Ben said that he got Joshua a little bit more ice cream and even put sprinkles on it.

Joshua barely tried a bite and yelled, "It's mashed potatoes!"  He got a good kick out of it.

Tuesday: tired

I'm tired.

I'm trying to stay on top of things.  It's working...somewhat.  I left the laundry outside overnight, in the rain.  No one is eating "real" dinners, but everyone is fed. 

Sunday: question 261

#261: What do you do when you hear something fall in the middle of the night while you are in bed.

I assume it's the cats.  I do usually listen for a little bit to make sure I don't hear any other non-cat noises.  Usually I go back to sleep.  If I think it is something like a Lego set and the cats are going to play with the pieces (and I'm somewhat awake) I'll get up and take a look.

The odd part about this is that about half the time I have no idea what fell in the morning.

Joshua: 57-61 months

Hmmm...I thought I had done an update recently but I guess time has flown.  Here's a bunch!

57 months:

(I love the hands in the pockets!)

58 months:

(He's on his tippy-toes.)

59 months...the first time I haven't gotten quilt pictures.  Between VBS and vacation, I decided not to care.

60 months: Birthday!  He was so excited to turn 5.

61 months:

Friday: home again home again

Isaac is off from school for the weekend, so once again we were home.  We didn't do much.  The boys played well in the morning.  We went to the store, which didn't go so well.  They were sort of pestering each other and so I said that I got to choose the ice cream flavor and Isaac cried.  He was trying to hold it together, I'll give him props for that.  We came home, reset with lunch, and had a good rest of the afternoon.  I sent them to play outside for a bit and they played longer than I expected.  They hadn't really done that in a while, so it was newish again.

I went in and out a bit.  Here I am sitting on the front porch while Joshua tells me I'm mama puppy and I sleep at night and am awake during the day.  Puppy dog sleeps during the day and is awake at night.  It's currently night time.

I think Puppy proceeded to get lost or something.  I wasn't really playing, so I missed most of the plot line.  The one time I did find Puppy he told me that he didn't want Mama Puppy but instead he wanted his friends.  (What??  I know it'll happen eventually but it isn't true yet.)

Thursday: Question 88

Question 88: what's the most depressing meal you've eaten?

Probably orange jello and chicken broth.  Colonoscopy prep!!  The first meal of the day it's sad.  By the third meal of the day I didn't even eat the green jello that I had made because I was over it.  As a side note, uneaten jello does eventually mold if ignored in the fridge.  It took a surprising amount of time though.

For posterity, here is Joshua's first day of school report. 

Wednesday: Day 2

Day 2 of school went well.  While Joshua still may not have loved school, there was more neutral items today.  He was also quite excited to get a blanket from them.

Isaac...he still had a good day.  He played with someone at recess.  He did some writing and didn't finish (shoot!).

I got some work done today.  Not as much as I hoped, but realistically about the amount I expected.

We got some seeds from the library.  We've really only had mixed results, but there is a pretty sunflower.  Joshua woke me up the morning it bloomed he was so excited.

I ended up putting a face on the bear.  It was a good choice.

Tuesday: First day of school

Today was Joshua's first day of Young 5s.  It only went ok.  The teachers said that transitions were hard and in the car Joshua noted that when it was time to clean up he had forgotten where to put things.  He was almost in tears right before I left too because he didn't know what he was supposed to do...he had left my side and wandered off a bit while the teacher was helping me put things in the right place.  But he's ready to try again tomorrow.

Isaac had a good day of second grade.  He was old enough to find his spot before school without any help.  He reminded me of one thing when he got out of the car and suddenly was gone!  Last year it took about five minutes of good-byes before he left; this was rather abrupt.  I didn't really hear very much about his day besides that he likes his teacher and he had art.

My day went well too.  Something happened to the side of my tongue a few days ago (like I bit it, but I don't remember it) and it feels like my mouth is full of cotton balls.  It makes it a bit hard to talk.  I was feeling ok with it by the second class and then I had five minutes of stomach cramps.  Maybe something I ate?  I pushed through though, hoping it would go away because I didn't want to take a break.  I didn't know how pick up would go with the kids and I wanted every extra minute.  I was a few minutes later than I wanted to be with Isaac, but I was not late by any means.

Monday: the day before school

It was an interesting day before school.

The cats were cute, as they always have been lately.

Isaac had a bit of a hard day.  I made him do some writing and there were tears.  I was pretty much laughing because he had to write all of about twenty words.  What is he going to do in school tomorrow?  (I didn't even make him fix obvious spelling errors, except for "and".  It isn't spelled "dan" and he should know that one.)  (He also fixed "toys", because he originally had "toes" and since it's a real word we laughed about it a bit.)  I also made him clean ALL of his room.  I've been telling him that it needs to be done all weekend, so I didn't feel bad about making him finish.

Then we learned that Isaac has a new teacher!  His old teacher (kindly) quit before school started and a teacher that has previously taught second grade stepped in.  We had to go to the school anyway, so we were able to say hi while we were there.  The room looks much more ready than "meet-the-teacher" day so that made me feel a little better too.  In a weird twist, Joshua knows Isaac's teacher's name better than Isaac does.  (However, no one remembers Joshua's teacher's name.)

As a end of summer celebration we went to get FroYo.  Isaac was over-the-top excited.

We came home and Joshua immediatly went to the puzzle he was working on.  I had him start around 12:30 when I needed him to be doing something and he worked on it straight until 2pm.  He kept going back to it and now it's almost done.

Since Joshua was content I dominated Isaac in a game of Dominion.  I got a King's Court (3x) and a witch (curse) twice and poor Isaac had a deck full of curses.  It is one of the first games where I thought he could have made better choices with what to buy, but it can be easy to make mistakes when someone is throwing three curses at you.

Sunday: question 27

It was again a pretty normal day, except that Joshua hurt himself about ten times. 

So, on to question 27: what was the last photo you took?

This is an example of loop-de-loop quilting.  The fabric is Kona Sand, a light brown fabric.  This is a pretty easy and fast quilting design.

It is part of the tummy from this bear:

I used the loop-de-loop because teddy bears are supposed to be fuzzy, even if it is supposed to be a Lego teddy bear.  I like this quilt a lot more once I laid it out at the end, but it is still not one of my favorites.  Hmm, I just realized I didn't give it a mouth.  I'll need to ask Ben if I should do that.

Saturday: question 8

It was a pretty normal day, with extra donuts, and so I found some "random" questions to slowly answer on slow days.

8. What are some red flags to watch out for in daily life? 

1. A sore back out of the blue...it means that I might have a fever coming on.
2. The children not moving...it means that they're actually sick.
3. Red flags at the beach...don't swim (hahaha.  I actually don't go to the beach that much so I don't need to watch for it.)

Hmm, I guess that most of the red flags that I look for are health related.  I'm sure there are several personal safety ones that I just watch out for semi-automatically, but I don't think I have any specific items that I watch out for.