We had more hail today than I think I've ever seen in one day. It woke us up twice in the early morning with the largest pieces, about .25" in diamater. Big enough to be loud, but not that big. We then had some more shortly after the boys went to school. And some more around 4pm. It was a bit crazy.
I also finished the closet and little hallway in the office for O:CtH! There's a lot more room for fabric now. :D
Before:
Joshua usually has to wait about seven minutes between getting outside to leave after school and actually getting to leave because Isaac has a later dismissal time. Today it was supposed to be raining so I left work 10 minutes earlier since I had forgotten to give him an umbrella. It was also rather cold and windy. Anyway, getting to wait in the car for those seven minutes was apparently one of the best parts of his day. :)
My phone updated and suddenly all the text was a ghostly green. It matched the green of all the ghost stuff of the Lego sets. Between Ben and I we figured it out, but it was a bit annoying. It's now a blue/grey and much nice to look at.
Both cats joined me at nap time.
We had Isaac's parent teacher conference today. (Joshua's teacher was out sick, so that one has been rescheduled.) Anyway, things are going about as expected. Writing is going a bit better than expected, but he needs to work on reading all the little words for reading. (Ben and I think it's a bit odd, but at the same time you need to follow the rules I guess.) Things are going better socially than they have in past years. The math set-up is going well.
I wouldn't call today a bad day, but it also wasn't the most enjoyable of days. Teaching was just ok. The boys had a half day so right afterwards I went to pick them up from Cheryl's house. Isaac proceeded to mope for the next hour because I wouldn't give him any screen time. (I did finish my work in less time than I expected, so that was nice. However, I expect I'll need to do some extra Friday or Monday as some new stuff rolls out.)
After snack time Isaac proceeded to mope some more but at least got his chores done. Then the busy evening - piano, karate, dinner, karate. Both karate classes were good, but the juggling of classes and dinner is a bit tricky...and the classes are still on zoom, which makes it easier. It's also an odd mix of really busy and waiting during this time that really threw me off.
"My name is Joshu-ow-ow-ow".
I'm not sure what Joshua was doing, but my guess is that he was crazily moving around while saying this and then bumped into something.
We also played games online with Brian and Amy tonight, and that was very nice. We haven't talked for a while, so the little bit of catch-up we did was fun.
Well, with the CDC granting emergency approval for kids 5-11yrs to get the COVID vaccine, it was a race to get an appointment! Well, only kind of. At 10:30am when I looked the Saturday appointments at Walgreens were all gone, but there were plenty on Sunday. At 11:30 all the Sunday appointments were gone. Earlier this evening there were still a bunch of appointments for Monday. So that's ...good and bad.
I also finally got the bathroom vent fixed after a year. It fell out. But it is in the ceiling, so it made it a bit more complicated.
For Halloween I made mummy dogs, per Joshua's request. (He remembered them from last year.) However, I only had giant eyes, so I said they were Minion Mummy Dogs.
Our schedule has changed a bit and now we have very busy Tuesdays. School/work, right to piano lessons. (We do have about 30 minutes between school and piano lessons, so "we" get homework done during that time.) We get home and Joshua has (zoom) karate before too long...which I also participate in. There's an hour to finish making dinner and eat. Then Isaac and I have (zoom) karate.
Phew. There's a lot of things that make this still quite doable. I've decreased the number of chores. While zoom karate is a bit annoying, it also gives the boys some extra time at home and we don't need to spend time going back and forth.
Joshua got all the pictures this weekend.
He started with a note about his blockade. "Cats only. Super Secret Passage. Super secret hideout <--. Cats only! No humans allowed. Only kids and cats allowed. No parents allowed." I asked if kids were humans and he didn't really answer.
It's getting cold out. I wore my slippers all day today and made the kids wear more clothing for outside too.
This evening Joshua made a blockade that he was really proud of.
Ben and Isaac have been working on a tower. This past week the boys were given some additional direction: to make bad guys climbing up the tower to the good guy castle (which is still under construction). They went at it with gusto and all sorts of things are storming the castle.
Aunt C and I went to pack lunches for Kids' Food Basket today. They were in a new building since I did it over a year ago and it was a lovely set up! The packing tables were so much nicer.
Today I finished the filing cabinet!
I know, it really isn't that big of a deal. But I bet I got rid of at least two feet worth of paperwork. I sorted paperwork. Everything is now in its correct place.
The top drawer now* looks like this. It was so stuffed that you could barely get anything in it.
I recycled a lot of statements, bills, and other non-important items from years 1998-2012. It was actually a little sad. We've gone through several credit cards and banks that I had completely forgotten about. I had forgotten that we got postcard bills from Hanbury Sanitation in NY.
I did figure out where I got my filing system from though, as the file folders Mom made for me looked quite similar to my current ones. She even stapled like-documents together for easy recycling.
Next I think I'll clean under my desk because there's a bit more sorting of stuff that needs to be done. Then maybe start at the top and slowly work downwards? Stay tuned...it won't be that exciting.
*I did add some folders to it that really belong in the top drawer but had been moved down to drawer two for space reasons. So it doesn't look quite that empty any more.
It was a pretty normal weekend for us. We did a bunch of Legos. We played a few games. Tornado won the Olympics. Same ol' same ol'.
The boys had the day off of school today.
We started the day by watching the Wizard of Oz (while taking apart Lego sets). We recently read the book, so I thought it would be a fun activity to see how the movie is different. They mentioned several things during the movie, but then they mentioned things throughout the day too. So it was interesting to see how they were thinking about it. Isaac said he liked the book better. Joshua wasn't really sure; I think we wanted to like the movie better, but the book had some things he liked too.
Then Joshua had made a festival out of Lego. It's the same fishing over the banister and ring toss that we did not that long ago, although the drinks and fishing poles were made out of Lego. I thought I was going to have to be the fish, but instead I got to fish and do the ring toss! He even used candy from his treat box so I didn't need to supply that either. It was pretty fun, and he seemed quite proud of himself to help me have fun instead of work.
One flower was still blooming. Aunt C trimmed down the rest of the flowers for us, but kindly left that one.
Today a lot of things were finished. Someone came to fix the toilet. We finished changing over our insurance. I did several small chores.
It meant I had a bit of time to work on O:CtH. Unfortunately, I just continued to work on the top drawer of the filing cabinet. I sorted a lot of old insurance paperwork. I also found a savings bond that had matured, so I cashed that today.
We got Joshua a TV tray so that he can eat on a couch instead of on the floor. He's old enough and was having a hard time eating over his old tray. I think it'll mean we need to change the furniture around, but I'm not sure what the best way is yet. For dinner I made the annual fall meal of ham and squash. However, I decided to air fry squash cubes instead of cook and mash it. It was an excellent choice! They almost tasted like sweet potato fries. (Joshua, of course, barely ate them. Everyone else enjoyed them though.)
This morning Joshua had a minor meltdown because his legs weren't working. It was a bit surprising...in the past this has only happened at night and it hasn't happened for a while due to changes with how we run stuff at night. Anyway, I told him to make sure his Mickey Mouse mask was all the way in his pocket and he scowled at me. Thirty minutes later I got a message from his teacher wondering if it had fallen out in the car because Joshua didn't have it and was worried about it. (It was in the car.) Silly boy, he should have listened to me.
He also wrote this for writing: "That is a weird pumpkin totally weird so so so weird." At least he didn't lack for words.
I also got the picture from a few weeks ago when Isaac and Joshua found each other on the playground.
I put the boats in the garage today. I had been planning on cleaning the garage at the same time, but let's be honest...cleaning the garage just doesn't sound like fun.
I worked on the office instead. At one point it almost looked like it was starting to get clean. I had cleaned a few things off the floor and filed ...er, stuffed...things in the filing cabinet that needed to be filed. Then I decided it was time to deal with the filing cabinet. I used to do it on a yearly basis, but it's been about four since I've cleaned it out. I know that a lot of it is just moving paper from one place to another to store for seven years until I officially don't need (most) of it any more, but it still makes everything more organized. Anyway, I'm still mostly at the beginning of that process and so there are a ton of papers back on the floor.
Joshua's COVID test came back negative! It wasn't quite back in time to go to Bible study, but at least it is back in time to go to school.
Joshua made spaceships disguised as a volcano today. It was pretty cool.
Instead of Bible study we went for a hike. The boys wanted to run up and down a specific hill, so that's where we went. Afterwards they started playing with pine needles and unexpectedly continued to do so for about a half hour.
Now that the kids are in school I feel like the blog posts have become a bit boring. Well, too bad for you. It's what I am doing right now.
Today's "interesting" cleaning was of the couch. I thought that the couch was wearing in one place, but Ben mentioned it was actually hairspray. Ah, well that can be cleaned. It was a bit weird to clean it, but it looks a ton better now. I'll admit, I had my doubts.
Horizon greeted me from on top of the fridge this morning; we think he was chasing bugs. I finally figured out they're pantry moths. While it sounds like they can become a pain to get rid off, these bugs are not my fault (for once). They come in on some food packaging and then populate. I'm also optimistic that they're not out of control yet. I'm finding, and vacuuming, about 10/day, but the numbers have stayed pretty steady. I also found a trap for them that will come next week.
I have been working on cleaning the office too, but the progress has been rather slow. Slow is better than nothing though, and I'll keep chugging along.
I didn't get much done this morning. Er, I guess I should say I didn't get much done that was on my to-do list. I helped Ben a bit and got groceries. I sent several emails that I hadn't been planning on sending. Emails take more time than I expect sometimes.
But there were many things on my "I should do this today" list. (That list is a subsection of the overall to-do list. I do like my lists.) After my nap (not on my list but an important part of the day) I looked at the clock. I had 60 minutes until I had to pick up the kids. The list still had about seven items still on it. Surprisingly, I knocked out those items rapidly! To be fair, they weren't really long things. They just needed to be done.
