This past weekend we went up to Dad and Pat's cottage. Nathan and his family were there too, and we had a great time.
It had snowed out, so we ended up spending quite some time outside in the morning. The kids threw snowballs,
did some swinging,
cracked as much ice as they could find (carefully),
sledded,
and helped with the fire to burn some sticks.
Oh, they also investigated snow melting on the fire. The well-packed snow balls melted much slower than I was expecting.
Isaac is really into a book series and spent some time reading. I was rather surprised, because this is usually not his activity of choice.
The kids watched Lady and the Tramp.
There were also a few Lego sets that came out. Isaac and Jameson got theirs done pretty quickly, but Evelyn and Joshua worked steadily on theirs both days.
More matching people!
Dad played Azul with Isaac. Isaac explained most of the rules and did a pretty good job.
Joshua finished his spider lair and so the younger kids played with that for a bit.
It's been a while since I've seen Nathan's family, so it was especially nice to be able to spend some time with them.
On the way to the car this morning, Joshua said, "I have a song stuffed in my head." I can't remember which one was 'stuck' in his head, but it caused Isaac to start singing a bunch of other others. Joshua kept laughing and saying, "Isaac, you're getting another song stuffed in my head."
While today wasn't our first snow, it was the first snow that stuck around. It actually snow/rained throughout the morning, although it never accumulated any more.
We also decorated some cookies. Isaac really wanted to make one for his teacher, but you can't make just one.
I put 'Boo' on one of the cookies for Joshua. He was telling Ben about it later, and everytime he talked about it he said, "The cookie with BOO!" and it was pretty cute.
We have a less busy week this week and I love it. I don't think we're overly busy even in our busy weeks, but there's nothing 'special' that's waiting for us this week.
I'd like to say that I'm doing things to get caught up with life, but that'd be a joke.
Today was the expo for Lego League. It went fine. There were a few things I would have changed in hindsight (like coaching the kids on the interview process better) but overall everything came together.
They got a trophy and so everyone was happy.
(This was before the main Lego display showed up.)
We got the Legos out for the kids to play with near the beginning because there was a lot of waiting around. There was still a lot of waiting around after we cleaned up, but it wasn't as much.
This morning Joshua and I worked on cleaning the dryer vent. You see, the new dryer hasn't really been working very well. However, the company wanted us to clean the dryer vent before they sent anyone out. I guess it makes sense. The dryer vent was very clean and now the drier seems to be working worse than it was before. I learned a lot about how to clean the dryer vent though, as I got stuck and annoyed a few times. Next time will be better...if I can get the pieces apart again. I might need to call in the people with the good tools to re-separate the sections. Joshua was a good helper and kept going inside to see if any fuzz had come out yet. He yelled at me from inside, but since it is sort of in the middle of the house there was no way I could hear him. I kept telling him this, but he kept yelling and asking if I had heard him anyway.
Then I went to help out with pumpkin experiments in Isaac's class. I got the "does our pumpkin sink or float" station, which was an awesome station to have. First of all, pumpkins float. (I had been debating it in my head so the first one was a surprise to me too.) Secondly, kids love finding out if things sink or float. The second group I had had their stem fall off, so we put that in the water too. That started putting lots of things in the water. We may not have talked as much about density and instead just put stuff in the bucket of water, but it sure was fun.
When the third group got to me, they had cut open their pumpkins and taken out the insides. So what did we do? We filled the pumpkin with water! Small pumpkins still float and the large pumpkin did not. As they got filled with water you could see that they floated lower in the water.
Only a few people got their sleeves wet. I cleaned up after myself, including the bucket of water and pumpkin guts.
The normal church that we have trick-or-treated at in the past didn't do it this year. We went to a different church and it wasn't the same. They had games for candy instead of trick-or-treating. This would have been ok, except that the weather was terrible and so it was packed. Very packed. We played a few games because we got there near the beginning, ate our hot dog, and left. I couldn't quite handle it.
We went to Meijer and got some bags of candy. I told Isaac he needed to go around the table and say trick-or-treat to get it. It turned into a grand game, as always.
We'll move on to the hmm...excel on my teaching station likes to crash. There doesn't seem to be a reason behind the crashing, other than after I've been teaching for a while. I've put in a help ticket and something was done, but it didn't seem to fix the problem. And since it's a hard one to troubleshoot, I usually don't know if it's been fixed until it does it again. Anyway, it became unusable during my first class. I switched to Google Sheets for a little bit, but Sheets isn't 1) the same or 2) as good as excel.
I also feel a bit like an old grump. There are several things coming up in the rest of the week that I just don't want to do. They're not bad things or hard things, I just don't want to do them.
Joshua decided that he wanted to write "No, don't go downstairs" out of Legos. He got the O in no very easily. And then...I'm not sure what happened. He wouldn't even try the N. It took about an hour of tears and a little bit of help and more tears and some snuggles and more tears before it got finished. It was something I at least wanted him to try first, because he's often been able to succeed if he tries, but he refused. However, he got through the W by the end of the night.
We got donuts at the grocery store, as normal. Every time I put the donuts in the bag I think I should write a blog post about it.
You see, I always put my donut in last. This way the chocolate doesn't smush and melt to the wax paper. Sure, I try to make it so that the frosting doesn't come off on the wax paper, but I don't really have a good system. So I just put mine on the top and the kids have never said anything when their frosting isn't perfect.
Joshua was nervous. He gave me a hug and the nurse said, "OK, I'll count to three. One." Poke. "Two. Three." Joshua was then quite confused as there was no poke after three.
Isaac wasn't nervous. The nurse said, "Ok, count to three." Poke. Isaac said, "One, two, three." And then I laughed because he counted after the poke.
To be fair, the poke seemed a lot less pokey than it has in the past.
Joshua has been especially cute lately. He's been giving extra hugs and thinking a little bit more about how other people are feeling.
Tonight Joshua and Isaac both sat next to me while we prayed. Joshua realized this shortly after everyone sat down. His response? "I could get Grey Bear for Dad to sit with."
We started out the last day with a trip to the pool. Luckily this hotel had wonderful pool hours...6am-10pm. We got there shortly after opening, due to the time change and kids that don't sleep in. Going down the elevator a father commiserated with me about the early wake up. (Note: I don't need them to sleep in much. But it was a busy day and they got to bed late a little bit of sleeping in would be nice.)
On the last day of our stay we went to the aquarium. In the past Isaac has not enjoyed aquariums, but I've never been to Shedd and I though Joshua would like it. We told him to have a good attitude about it.
Well, after a bit of a hassle getting there due to the marathon we made it. We went to see the dolphin show first and everyone loved it (even Isaac).
We watched the dolphins from under the water for quite a while too.
Besides the dolphins, there were four animals that really caught my eye...the Weedy Seadragon,
Jellies (although they're always a favorite),
Isaac and Joshua (oh, just kidding),
and these...I forgot what they were. They're like tube worms and hid in the sand and would slowly come back up. Once a fish swam by and they all disappeared down into their holes.
Joshua really wanted to take my picture on the sea turtle. I has happy to oblige.
This is more what we're like though...Joshua squinting because he doesn't have his sunglasses on and Isaac going crazy.
After a late start on the train we took away the boys' screens. They fell asleep pretty quickly.
Everything in Chicago starts later than I would prefer (especially when you have two kids that wake up at 6am). However, that was part of the reason for going to the Lego store the night before. We were able to take out the pick-a-brick Legos and enjoy them. There were some special Halloween pieces, including spider webs, spiders, and bones that we don't see very often.
We got to the Children's musuem a few minutes early, so the boys rode the escalator...a lot. There were a few times I wondered if they were having more fun in Chicago riding the escalator or actually doing the stuff.
One of the first things we encountered was the fire truck. We didn't stay all that long, but I did notice that Isaac preformed a great experiment. He wanted to know if the lights flashed on top of the truck when you pushed a button in the truck. He pushed the button and looked. He didn't see anything. He had Joshua push the button while he stood outside. He still couldn't see anything, but also realized he couldn't see very well. He climbed to the bucket which is higher on the fire truck so that he could see the lights, but then he didn't know if anyone was pushing the button. So finally he had Joshua watch and he pushed the button. Joshua said, "no lights". Isaac then looked at us for secondary confirmation.
The special exhibit was Mo Williams. This 'give the cookie to Pigeon or Duckling' occupied both boys for quite a while.
Both boys climbed the schooner several times, but Joshua especially enjoyed it and did it a few extra times.
We then had a snack and a short pom pom war.
Then to the water area! Isaac probably could have stayed longer, but Joshua got attached to this funnel. (It was odd after the attachment to the red balls the day before.) He enjoyed playing with it for a little bit, but after that he felt like he had to play with it but was out of good things to do with it. Then he used it to get himself quite wet...and that was the end of that. We took off his socks and he wore Isaac's sweatshirt the rest of the time.
The other problem Joshua might have been having was that he was hungry. It was quite a bit after normal lunch time and the snack wasn't really that big. We found a pretzel place and split some pretzels. They were delicious.
We took a quick outside break to ride the ferris wheel.
We went back to play a little bit more. There wasn't a ton of time and Cheryl and I wanted to skip the town portion...so we hit a few places including the giant dominos. They started doing pom poms again, but it wasn't working quite as well as the first time so we decided to call it just a bit before we had to. However, the ride back took a bit longer than expected, so it was a good choice.
On the taxi ride home we were talking, trying to keep Joshua awake, and I asked him what a difference was between him and me. The first thing he said was that when he is tickled he shrieks and when I get tickled I don't. Isaac piped in with I'm taller and Joshua's shorter. Joshua finished with I work more and Joshua plays more. While these are all true things, I was surprised that boy/girl differences didn't show up. We had a fairly quick turn around and then went out for dinner at a nice grown up restaurant.
