Tulsa pictures: Sunday

Hmm, I expect there will be a lot of extra pictures.  I'll caption them as I desire. :)  They also might not be in order, and it's a bit annoying to get them in order.

The kids really wanted to get in the pool in the evening.

The royal chairs were left open for Dusty and Laura.

Dinner: the kids ate in a different room from the adults

Friday: the day

The boys had their last day of ninja camp.  It started to pour about 30 minutes before the parent ceremony thing, so everyone was in the gym instead of outside.

Joshua's new excitement is toasting the bagels for lunch and then getting them on a plate.  He cares about it a lot.

This was Isaac's math homework for the day.  There were questions and it didn't come out perfectly, but he did a pretty good job overall!

Family pictures

 It was hard to choose my most favorites, so I just selected all my favorites.

Thursday: bike

Joshua's making great progress with riding his bike!  (I thought I snapped a picture, but it didn't seem to work.)  We put the pedals back on three days ago.  Three days ago was pretty rough.  Two days ago he put on long pants (to avoid scratches) and changed his starting style to just using one leg for speed.  He got his feet on the pedals, but didn't get much farther.

Today he got a little farther!  He started just before our mailbox and got to the opposite side of the driveway, cycling the pedals several times.  I expect that within a few more days he'll be all set.

I'll admit, I wasn't sure at the beginning of the summer if our 4x/week bike to the end of the cul-de-sac and back was going to be enough to learn how to ride.  Now I think it might be!

Wednesday: magic trick

Ben came home today and showed the boys a magic trick.  It involved spreading the cards out and telling the boys which card to pick (i.e., a four of spades).  It was put to the side and the other child was told which card to pick.  Ben picked a card and then showed all the cards that were chosen; they all matched.

Isaac wanted to do it.  Ben wouldn't tell Isaac how to do it, so Isaac spread out the cards and told Ben which card to pick.  Isaac looked at the card and it wasn't the card that Ben was supposed to pick (obviously).  The look on his face when it was wrong was priceless though.  It seemed as though he had really expected it to work.

Tuesday: ninja camp

I received a nice picture of Joshua at ninja camp.

While that was happening, I went grocery shopping.  I saw this crazy wall of BelVita cookies.  Of course, cinnamon brown sugar was not one of the flavors I wanted.  Too bad, since that's all they had.  (They also only had strawberry bubly.  Whoever bought out the rest must not like that flavor.)

Monday: the day got better

The day started off with Joshua not knowing what he wanted for breakfast.  It turns out that I don't have a new breakfast for everyday and breakfast often gets boring.  That isn't to say that there aren't plenty of options; Joshua just didn't want any of them.  

Then I made him put on shorts with pockets.  He was out of soft shorts with pockets so I made him put on - horror of horrors - slightly hard shorts.  It broke him and we had 20 minutes of sobbing.

During that 20 minutes Ben left for work and then he cried because he didn't get to give Ben a good-bye hug.  It's not that he missed Ben leaving and Ben had even poked at him a little bit.  He just didn't get to give him a hug.

Good news though, he continued working on his Lego dragon and had calmed down by the time it was time to go to Ninja Camp.  Both boys seemed to have a great time at it, although pick-up and drop off was a bit crazy.

I did laundry today so that he can have soft shorts tomorrow.  I had also ordered a few more pairs late last week; they should be here tomorrow.  One the other hand, he took a quick shower after ninja camp and put the same slightly hard shorts back on, even though I told him he could wear soft shorts.  So I don't really know what to think.

Saturday: quiet

 The kids are with the grandparents this weekend and so we had a quiet day.  It was lovely.  We went to a new, and delicious, restaurant for dinner

Friday

 We had a belated yummy breakfast for Joshua's birthday.  I was about to open the roll of cinnamon rolls when Isaac asked if I wanted him to do it.  Yes!  Absolutely!  He was so thoughtful...and he jumped when it popped, so I felt justified in my fear of opening them.

Joshua managed to outgrow all of his clothes at once.  He still loves them, but I look at them and realize they're way to small.  So I finally went to the basement to get Isaac's old clothes and switched out a whole bunch.  I also made him pick 10 of the t-shirts because there were just too many.  I added a few and while he still has plenty of t-shirts, I'm hoping he'll periodically enjoy the ones on the bottom and have a cleaner closet.  I will admit, there were a few 24M/2T shorts that got a lot of use!

Wednesday: here and there

 While Joshua was at science camp Isaac and I biked to the donut store.  It's the first "far away" place we've biked to. (Although to be fair, we biked to a nearby playground when he was still using training wheels).  We only had to cross one minor intersection and one major intersection, so I figured it would be a good starting outing.  It went well.

We went to visit the "robot wheel" during lunch break.  The robot wheel isn't on the accelerator right now, but the name sticks.  Right now they're irradiating mice to simulate a trip to Mars.  The students working in the lab were so nice (and the mice were rather cute.)  The biologist told the boys all about the mice and so kindly answered all of their questions and showed them where they go in the accelerator.

We had to wait a few minutes at the beginning, so Joshua opened his birthday presents in the basement.  I expect this will be a fun picture in about ten years when he decides to go to Hope. :D

Tuesday: birthday party

It was another day of running around...and an appointment had even been canceled!  It's nice having the boys at home one at a time, but I haven't been in and out of the car this much in a year.  We got to Hope a bit early so watched the construction for many minutes until it was time to drop of Joshua.

Isaac made a solar oven.  It wasn't very sunny though, so it didn't seem to work well today.  (He then made another one at science camp.  The parent info sheet gave an option to make one at home, so I was rather surprised by this.  Isaac said he knew it was going to happen though, so then who really cares I guess?)

Joshua's possibly-scary dentist appointment went better than I expected.  There is one big cavity, but the others the dentist mentioned don't need work at this point.  I gave Joshua the option of some laughing gas (although I called it sleepy medicine) or laughing gas plus some additional sleepy medicine and he chose the latter.  Probably a good choice.

Then Dad came over and helped Joshua with his streamers.  It was cute.

Joshua chose taco salad for his dinner.  Not what I was expecting, but happy to oblige!  It did end up delicious.  Some presents, some cheesecake, and ta-da!  Another successful birthday party.  (You can't tell from the pictures, but we had left the light-up sticker on his shirt from the bounce house birthday party.  So he put the shirt back on for the sticker.)

Monday: science camps

Science camps started today!  Joshua's is in the morning and Isaac's is in the afternoon.  It's a bit of an annoying schedule, but we'll just have picnic lunches nearby.

Joshua seemed to enjoy his and said it went by faster than expected.  Isaac was only so-so on his...he's learning about energy and knew a lot of today's information.  But I told him tomorrow morning he could try to build a solar oven for s'mores, and he was excited about that.

I learned today that there are bathrooms in Centennial Park.  Joshua had to go, of course, and so I thought there might be port-a-potties behind the hill.  Imagine my surprise when there were actual bathrooms!  I've lived in this town so long and have spent a fair amount of time at this park, but never knew there were bathrooms.

Joshua and I went grocery shopping in the afternoon.  He seemed to think it was only for his birthday party, but I was rather sure that we needed all sorts of groceries.  We found the butter that Katy worked on (butter with seeds) and got one of those.  Then when we were checking out we got a coupon for Land-o-Lakes butter.  Katy recently changed to marketing and is working on coupons like that, so we got very Katy shopping trip.

I finally got a nap and Horizon cuddled with me.  Upon waking, I moved over to the couch as I was having a hard time actually waking up and Tornado cuddled with me.

Sunday: leaving

Today was leaving day.  I woke up way to early, because I was nervous about things that were going to be fine.  But when you're up, you're up.  Oh, I guess the major thing of note is that both boys were negative for COVID.  Greta had a cold and passed it around a bit.  As colds go, it's pretty minor.  But the last thing I wanted was to get to the airport, have a boy cough one too many times, and be required to get a test before getting on an airplane.  Greta's had come back negative earlier in the week so it was more an airport peace of mind than actually thinking they had COVID.  It was Joshua's first test, and I really don't think that he should get to go through the whole pandemic without at least one.

Our first flight was delayed a bit and we were a tad worried about our connection, but we reached it about 15 minutes before boarding started.  It mostly meant that we had lunch in Tulsa instead of Chicago.

Joshua feel asleep on the way home in the car.  He fell asleep a lot in the car on this trip, which I take to be a sign of a great trip.

I got a text later that night that said someone had made popcorn and it took less than five minutes to make!  I laughed out loud and disturbed Ben.  The house had many good features...the private pool, the space, the number of tables, and the number of sitting areas.  The kitchen however, was lacking.  It took us two days to figure out how to get the microwave to sort of work properly.  The oven breaker needed to be cycled twice during our stay*.  The kitchen was lacking some basic pans.  The tables let off a ton of black stain when we first got there.  The house was acceptably clean, but there were still empty bottles around and a rather dirty floor.  I'd recommend it to people with some caveats.

*Ben told us in detail how he fixed the oven the first time.  I found the story rather boring**, but paid attention because it was a relief to have a working oven.  It was a good thing I paid attention because I was easily able to reproduce the fix.

**Sorry Ben.  Breaker boxes just aren't exciting though.