Friday: last day!

 School's out!

My alarms went from this:

...to this:

So here are all the pictures:

Isaac and his teacher, Ms. Huyser:

Joshua and his teacher, Mrs. Stolz:

Joshua made her a minecraft Pete the Cat:

I made Isaac deal with a lot of his papers.  He tried to pawn it off on me and I wasn't having any of it.

We went to the library and found out that you can sit in the chairs now!  It's a new library, so we haven't been able to sit there before.  The boys tried out all the chairs.

Grey Bear got a crown!

Thursday: penultimate day of school

Today was the penultimate day of school!

Joshua had his special kindergarten awards ceremony with a Pete the Cat hat.  (Pete the Cat is his teacher's favorite, so there's been a lot of Pete this year.)  He was suppose to dress up fancy, but we apparently don't have much fancy clothes.

He got an extra award for always going the extra mile to be a good example.  He wasn't so excited about the gum, so he'll trade it in with the parent stash for something else. :D

In Joshua's party packet was some popcorn.  Somehow he talked me into letting him and Isaac have popcorn while watching a Minecraft video in the middle of the day!  I was a moment from saying no, but then realized school is almost done.

This was Joshua reading to Grey Bear and me.

Wednesday: the downs and ups

The day started with an up: Joshua didn't wake us up early because he couldn't find his beans.  He did eat his two beans last night that he "had to eat if he ever wanted to eat again" and I was very clear with him last night that he had to eat them before a granola bar and he should not wake us up due to problems.

Another up: he ate them.  It took drinking two fizzy waters at the same time and a bunch of terrible expressions, but he ate them.

The down: the installers weren't able to install the dishwasher due to the wrong hoses / hoses breaking.  Apparently it was up to me to get the right stuff, so they left the dishwasher and will come back another time.

An up: Ben and I were both able to virtually attend Isaac's award ceremony this year.  Unsurprisingly, he got an award for math.

The down: I had a really hard time motivating myself after nap/rest time.  I suppose it was only the dishwasher that brought me down, but I just went with it and read my book.

The super-up: I went to Lowe's when Ben got home to get the pieces for the dishwasher.  I had talked to Dad quite a bit so I knew what I was looking for.  The first person I talked to didn't have a clue...they were from a different department in the aisle I needed.  But then!  The installers were in the same aisle!  They kindly helped me pick out what I needed since they knew exactly what was needed.  (I would have gotten the correct things, but the final set-up might have looked a bit different.)  This made my day.

Tuesday: calls and cats

I made a lot of phone calls today, one of the things I really don't enjoy doing.  Then I realized they were all for Isaac.  It seems like I should have made him make the phone calls, but let's be honest, there a bit more complicated than he could deal with.

Joshua took several pictures of cats today for something related to school.  I added a few more.

Joshua also made a bunch of minecraft-themed pencil toppers.  After testing all of them, I chose the sword.  It was a good day for it, since I actually had some things to write.

Monday

Hmm, it was a rather normal day I guess.  Both boys had slightly different (and more fun) work for school since it's the last week.

It was also a nice cloudy day.  (Rather humid though too, due to the periodic drizzles we had.)

Sunday: communion, recital

We started the morning with a kayak ride.  I don't have any pictures, but it was a nice (short) ride.

Church had communion, and so we did too.  It was a little bit make-shift, but Christ is in all parts of life, even half a loaf of bread and fruit punch.  (I'll admit though, fruit punch was a weird flavor.  I should have opened a bottle of mead.)

Isaac had his piano recital today.  Due to weird phone messages, it's in two parts.

Saturday: hike

We went on a hike this morning.  Ben and I had woken up too early and the day was going to be too long if we didn't go somewhere.  It was supposed to be rather warm today, so I made the decision early.  The boys actually seemed to have a good time, which isn't always the case for hikes.

And look!  An outside picture where Joshua has his eyes open!

Thursday: stuff

I've almost finished the laundry.  I feel like that is all I've done for the last three days; I didn't do it last week and then we went camping and it rather exploded.

We're also in the middle of dealing with a bunch of things that require other people.  Assorted work on the house, meetings, etc.  Ben and I sent several emails to each other the last few days and then took a while when he got home to discuss everything else.  It's nothing all that major or stressful, but it feels like a lot of things to remember.

Therefore, it was especially funny when we had a conversation today that spanned about five hours.  Ben told me something when he got home.  After the kids went to bed I responded.  An hour later he responded.  (It wasn't a fight.  It was just one of those random things where the other person had information and it took a while to relate it.)

In other news, Joshua made a penguin giving a piggy-back ride to Ben.

Wednesday

 I took in the sleeping bags after airing them out and someone promptly claimed them.

Cheryl took us out to lunch.  Besides camping, it's the first time we've been out to eat since ...I can't remember when.  Probably about last May.

Tuesday: back at it.

I got a remote page turner for the kindle!  I've been looking for one for a while.  Either I didn't look very hard or it recently came on the market.  I am excited for warm hands and not having to move my hands when I'm comfy.

Our mattress was feeling sloped so I was taking a look.  (We recently raised the headboard and didn't support the slats properly.)  That's besides the point though.  The insides edges of the bed were ridiculously full of dust.  One more thing to put on the periodic cleaning list...

Joshua worked really hard on making an alien ship today.  He really did a great job.

This is how I found Isaac watching one of his videos today.  Giraffe has been sitting on his head a lot lately.

Memorial Day weekend

We went camping this weekend at the Conference Grounds.  It was a bit cold, but it didn't rain at all which was nice.  We go with some friends (and some family/friends of them).  It's nice to have some people to do things with, but there aren't many expectations and we can do our own things too.

We got there right around dinner on Friday.  I often try to get there a little earlier, but between the kids being at home and it being cold we waited to leave.  Not much was all that interesting about Friday night, but the kids enjoyed the playground and we had a fire.

Saturday we did the fun run.  It was a bit of a fun walk.  The boys completed the mile in 15 minutes while I showed up a few minutes later.

Afterwards we collected Ben and took a walk to the lake.  There's actually a bit of sand this year, which was nice.  ...not that we played in it though as it was also rather cold.

We went on the wagon ride.

And played mini-golf.  Joshua got his first hole-in-one on hole one.

Ben also participated in a game of dodgeball.  Sadly, the parents lost.

Sunday we did some frisbee golf.  Sometimes the boys were way too silly, sometimes they did a nice job.

A very old frisbee finally hit the dust.  This is rather unimportant, but I did like the juxtaposition of "life is good" on a broken frisbee.

The boys loved the merry-go-round.  I went over a few times to give them pushes and they would just stay on as long as I'd push.

Ben and I enjoyed our books quite a bit too!

Monday we slowly packed up, took a walk, the boys played on the playground, etc.  Nothing very special, but it still took us until about 2:15 to leave!  Packing up doesn't really take that long, but there were assorted talking, reading, and walking breaks.  Many people seemed to leave before lunch this year which was a bit surprising and it felt empty by the time we actually pulled out.

Thursday: home

Ben's home! Ben's home!

Wednesday: game

 Joshua's been playing a game around me these last few days.  It's one of those games where he follows me around while I work and I need to just say a few things here and there to progress the story.  (Usually.  Sometimes I need to be more involved.)

Part of the armor has also come with wrist-maps.  This map is a pretty simple one, but I've seen some more elaborate ones too.

Tuesday: sleep over

Since Ben is gone I said we could have a sleep over tonight.  Joshua was very excited.  I got the little mattress out in the morning and he got his bed all set up.

I think he might have been a bit disappointed in the execution though, because I didn't go to bed at the same time as the boys.

Monday

Ben's gone for a few days, but other than that it was a pretty normal day.  We finally went back to the dojang for karate.  We do the family class when we go, and everyone likes that class a bit more.

Isaac read something about cheetahs for school, and Tornado was acting all needy, so I gave Isaac a mini-cheetah to hold.

Sunday: in pictures

 Ben grilled some steaks for us.  I think it's the first time we've actually grilled steaks, and they were delicious.  At least, they were delicious for the adults.  The kids didn't appreciate their few bites.

All my towels were in the wash.  (It took two days before I realized the dishwasher could at least serve as a drying rack.)  I found an old bib.  It was a bit weird, but worked.

I put the cat box up yesterday and Horizon enjoyed it this morning.  They stopped using it in the middle of the summer last year, so I wasn't sure if they were going to go back in or not.

Ben's "favorite" animal is a penguin, mainly due to a joke one day in the car with the kids.  So whenever I see a penguin book I get it.  This one was especially cute.

Isaac made a stop motion video.

Saturday: the good and the bad

Let's start with the bad news: the roof is in need of significant repairs due to hail and our insurance provider has not been approving any roof claims due to hail.

OK, that was the bad news of the day.  There was much more good news.

*The roof, while in need of repair, is not leaking.  It needs to be dealt with soon but is not urgent.  

*Dealing with the freezer was a bit easier than expected.  It helped a ton to have a hand-dolly and a walk out basement.  It took Ben and Larry a bit of time at the store because they apparently moved the unit, but that was probably the worst.  Lowe's even recycled our old one (for a fee), so it's gone!  Getting this all situated calmed me down a lot.

*All the flowers/plants are set for the summer.  Well, more-or-less.  We need to fence the strawberry because something ate our first one.  Isaac choose a watermelon plant and Joshua has some snap dragons.  There are also a few other random things that we're trying to grow from seed, so we'll see how it goes.

*The boys were incredibly content today.  This isn't to say that they just did their own thing, but they easily found things to do.  At one point this involved nailing, drilling, and inserting screws into a board, but it lasted a while.

*It felt like we used most of the appliances in the kitchen today.  While this isn't close to true, using so many was a slight mistake because there were a lot of dishes and still no dishwasher.  But dinner was good and there's banana bread for breakfast.