Thursday: Operation: Clean the house - quilting area

I'm calling the quilting area finished.  There are a few more little things I could do, but I either put them on my to do list as a separate item because I want to wait on it (one more quilt to hang) or it just really doesn't make since to do it now (put together more batting scraps).

While it's hard to tell, everything in front of the futon is actually part of the other room.

The futon did get cleaned up...it just also happens to be the best place to currently store all the soft stuff used for courses.  I'm hoping to eventually get a better shelf for them, but in the meantime I know they'll be off before too long.

                             

The bike had been in Joshua's room because he wasn't using his room much last year and so that I could exercise while being close for virtual school.  It was time to move it to a new place though.

                             

I know it looks only a little cleaner, but it is quite a bit cleaner.  It's also been dusted and the walls had a bunch of dings fixed up and some fresh paint.

I think I'm going to take a break on O:CtH.  There's only two weeks left of school, so I'll try to knock out a few of my outstanding to-do list items.  The summer is looking busy, so the goal will be to just keep things under control.  I'm not sure what room I'll do once fall starts; it'll give me something to think about over the summer.

I was a little surprised how slowly this project moved.  There were some good reasons; the painting of two rooms took extra time and the bigger rooms that I did really needed a lot of work.  I'm not sure it'll be any faster next year, but I suppose we'll find out!  Stay tuned!

Wednesday: back at it

I've decided to start wearing a mask in public again, at least for a little bit. I know that Ottawa county currently is classified as "low risk", but I'm not sure if I agree.  I feel like many people I know are getting it and people are probably taking home tests and not reporting the results.

Furthermore, I've been a close contact and not been notified properly.  I understand that people don't seem to care much anymore, but...  (I did not get COVID from the close contact.  It's been several weeks now.)

I also scheduled the boys' booster shots.  I know they're in a good position since they've been vaccinated and had COVID, but they're eligible so we're going to get them.  I was a little mean and scheduled them on a Friday after school, so if they don't feel good it's going to fall on a Saturday.  But they're doing so many fun things in school right now that I didn't want to schedule it on a school day.

This came home from school yesterday.  I'm not sure Joshua completely got the point.  "I will show integrity like Rosa Parks by not giving up my seat."

Tuesday: a day in the life

When we were at the Museum of Michigan's history, I enjoyed reading some of the journal entries that were around the early 1900s exhibit.  I know that the blog does a decent job of the normal things that happen in our lives, but at the same time there's a lot that is ignored because it is so normal.  Well, with the exception of Grocery Adventures.  Today was a rather boring day, but here's how it went.  (Note that it is also "Too much Tuesday", so we have more activities after school than any other day.)

6:45am: wake up.  Pack lunches for the kids, make them breakfast.  They chose yogurt.  Bring them to school.

7:45am: Eat my breakfast while playing an idle game on my phone.  Do my devotions.

8:15am: Decide to take my nap early.  Horizon cuddles up with me.

9:30am: wake up.  Clean the kitchen.  Always the kitchen.  This time I actually took care of all the on-kitchen stuff that was accumulating there too.

10am?: Work on vacation planning.

10:30am: take out the bathroom trash and a few other small chores

11am: Intend to get right to work on some Hope College work, but play on the computer a bit before getting down to it.  I also sent out some texts and dealt with some emails.

12:15: make lunch.  Leftover pizza, half an apple, and water

12:30pm: read for a little bit

12:50pm: continue the chores.  Bring out the deck chairs, move the strawberry plant to a better place, rinse out the bird feeders.

1:30pm: Continue Operation: Clean the House.  Put the bike back in the bike roller, clean up the stuff that's accumulated in the last two weeks, and realize that part of this should be sewing together small batting pieces into large batting pieces so that they actually get used.  I save that for a different day though.

2:15pm: decide to read again because I'm pretty happy with what I accomplished today

2:35pm: doze off

3:05pm: get stuff together, pick up the boys

3:30pm: get gas ($$$), pick up my flute from the repair store

3:45pm: start waiting in the parking lot.  Isaac has his piano lesson, I read.  Joshua does some homework and has screen time.

4:30pm: Isaac comes out, we go home for a quick turn-around.  I remember to start the rice cooking and change into my karate uniform

5pm: karate.  It was hotter than I expected.

5:30pm: go home, get dinner finished up.  Eat while watching a little bit of TV.  (Currently the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.)  Wish that Isaac would eat faster.

6:30pm: karate with Isaac.  I worked harder than expected.  Muscle memory is a pretty cool thing though.

7pm: come home, brush the children's teeth, get some audio books all set up.  I don't care that Joshua is bored.

7:30pm: Ben is in charge of bed time and plays a video game with the boys for a bit so I head downstairs.  I do some word and logic games

8:30pm: I work on some quilting, but realize that I'm about to run out of green thread and take it as a sign to stop for now.

9pm: Continue to stream some shows, work on piecing the next quilt, putz around.  Be more sad than expected by the school shooting.  I think it was because of the post below.  Pray that better gun legislation finally happens, but realize that I'm not actually very hopeful that it will.

expected 11:30pm: go to bed, read

expected 12:30am: fall asleep because my eyes close.

Monday: productive

 Well, it ended up being a productive day.  I wasn't sure I was going to be able to pull it off, but I just kept checking things off the to-do list.  I brought Grandma to her doctor's appointment and then "made" her go fabric shopping with me.  I thoroughly enjoyed the trip.

Joshua gave his animal report at school today.  He was the only penguin (which he's holding).  There were apparently a lot of giraffes.

 

Thursday: field trip

Today was the big field trip day!  They were unable to get a bus driver, so parents were driving.  That was probably the part that made me the most nervous.

And rightly so!  Google maps told me several times to take an exit that was very clearly closed.  Very closed.  It obviously rerouted me right away, but I couldn't tell if it was just sending me in a circle to go to the closed exit again or it it was properly rerouting me.  I took a quick detour to a parking lot to assess the situation, realized it had properly rerouted me, and we were back in business.  The other issue was the that parking lot had changed so that you had to pay to enter, using a credit card, with a crazy complicated machine that you couldn't see the screen because of the sun and the enter key ink had been rubbed off so it was hard to tell which one it was.  If things went well it took about a minute.  If things went poorly it was taking about three minutes.  There were at least twenty cars.  Needless to say, we were a bit late for our Capitol Tour because of it.

But after those fiascos the day went very well.

This was a class picture, but I zoomed in on a small part.

The tour guide did a great job giving details, information, and answering questions.  The Senate was in session and it seems like every tour group guide gives their senator a card so that they can be welcomed by the entire senate.  The senate did a great job clapping and welcoming us, even though they probably need to do it at least three times an hour whenever they're in session.  That would get so annoying.

After lunch we went to the Michigan history museum.  It was also pretty cool.  We had a docent guide us through the first floor and it was so much more fun to listen to him than try and read the signs.  The signs were good, but he added the details that you might not otherwise pick up.  We had to do the upper floors by ourselves and we went through them pretty quickly, but it was still very interesting.

The drive home was uneventful.  We listened to a Brains On! podcast about elevators, which I also found interesting.  I wish I could remember things better, because in a few weeks I probably won't be able to tell you much of the history behind elevators.

Wednesday: productive

After yesterday's sleepy day, today felt very productive!  Groceries were purchased in good time.  (Yogurt cups are still somewhat gone and orange cinnamon rolls are back to being gone, but I think I found everything else.)  

I'm driving for a field trip tomorrow, so I finished cleaning out the car.  It's been one of Isaac's chores the last few days, and that helped a ton.  I did a quick vacuum and emptied out some of the stuff from the passenger seat, so it's all ready.

I did the painting for the quilting room.  I'm not sure why I thought I'd be able to finish the room yesterday; the paint was the next thing to do and it would need to dry over night.  I ended up using a roller to get some large swaths of wall...the walls were a mess when I started to look at them!  I know we did some of the dings, but surely we didn't do all of them.  There were also a lot of scuffs that wouldn't come off with magic eraser either.  Anyway, I do feel like it looks nicer now, but some of that might just be my imagination.

I had lunch with a friend!  We ended up talking for 1.5 hours...I was fine with that, but it's the middle of her work day and I felt a little bad about that.

I drove Grandma to the doctor.  This was quite easy, as expected.  I was slightly worried finishing with enough time to get the boys, but it worked out just about perfectly.  (And the back-up plan was just to have Grandma come with me to get the boys, so I wasn't really worried.)

The evening was a bit crazy...the kids seemed especially hyper.  They ended up going to bed a little early because Isaac wasn't feeling great and Joshua had some screen time in bed.

Tuesday: sleepy

I had some plans for today, including finishing up the quilting area for O:CtH.  (Yes, it's still going.  It's still super slow.  There are just so many other things to do!  I'd like to get this area done before school is out and then pause for the summer.)

However, it was a sleepy kind of day.  I still got many smaller things done that needed to be finished, but I didn't get the quilting area looked at.  Oh well.  There are still a few more weeks before school is out to finish.

Last night I went to bed only to discover Joshua was sleeping backwards on the bed.  Obviously.  He switched about an hour after I went to sleep.  I didn't think that he slept all that well, but today he said he slept really well.  

Bouquet

 Isaac picked a bunch of little flowers for me yesterday during Bible Study.

Weekend

Friday Ben stayed home from work and we celebrated our 18th anniversary.  We mostly did normal things, but we did them together.

Saturday we started the sprinklers.  It's always a fun time for the boys, but by the last zone Joshua was cold and they don't enjoy the stationary ones as well as the ones that move.  So Isaac ended up finding several of the hidden sprinklers in the last zone by himself!  It felt like a milestone, even though it's something we only need to do once a year.  The sprinklers went really smoothly this year...until the last one.  Isaac and I spent about 10 minutes looking for it before we finally found it.  I was about to give up, but really didn't want to call the sprinkler people just for one silly one.

Today Joshua and I finished a 300 piece puzzle that we've been working on for a few weeks.  It was the hardest puzzle I've done in a while, and it was only 300 pieces!  I ended up finding pieces that fit and giving them to Joshua one at a time.  I usually didn't even need to tell him what region it went to, but it was otherwise rather overwhelming.

Thursday: the day

Dad came over in the morning to help with a home improvement project and he managed to do two fixes in about fifteen minutes.  It was one of those wonderful times when the fixes weren't nearly as involved as I had been expecting.

Errands also went pretty quickly.  Groceries were short.  Last week I had a huge list and this week I had a nice short one.  The only thing out of stock is yogurt that the boys like.  They like assorted smooth yogurts, such as creamsicle, cookies and cream, and lemon.  The yogurts were mostly out last week too, so this week I found a honey flavor in a big tub.  We'll give it a try.

The boys had a half day of school, but we didn't go to the parade.  Honestly, they seemed like they could go either way and it was going to be hot.  (I also saw a Facebook post saying that it was super busy and if you didn't have seat reserved by early morning you weren't going to find any.)  I took a long nap instead.  The boys had some screen time, then some play time.  Then they played on the beach and I read in the hammock.  They don't really need my supervision at all; it's just a nice excuse to read.

Wednesday: Happy birthday!

Horizon and Tornado turned four today!

Tornado really seemed to be gloomy about it.  I barely saw him all day and even when he did show his face he seemed lethargic.

Joshua cared the most about this birthday and made them some houses.

Tornado, after being grumpy and trying to escape his birthday celebration saw the little house and went right in.  Zoom!  Such a good cat.

Tuesday: weather

Friday Joshua wore fleece-lined jeans to school.

Today, Tuesday, Joshua wore shorts and told me he still got too hot.

What happened to spring???

Monday: Tulips

It was the first beautiful day of summer, so after school the boys and I went to the food stalls downtown and walked around the tulips.

Isaac got a carmel apple and Joshua got carmel corn.  I was disappointed in their choices because they weren't things I wanted to share, but they were both really happy with their choices.  I know I could have gotten my own thing, but no getting something for myself was probably the wiser choice.

We had a fun time looking at the tulips.  Joshua found all three orange tulips in the park and got a picture with them.

Isaac found the windmill in the tulips.  I had to put Joshua on my shoulders in order to get a picture and there was a lot of laughter.

And I found my favorite bright red tulips.

Sunday: Mother's Day

It was a lovely Mother's Day.  Pretty normal, but lovely still.  I received some presents, including a recipe card from Joshua.  Step 1: order pizza.  Step 2: remove all the toppings and put frosting on.  Step 3: Put toppings back on.  I was optimistic around step 1, but by step 2 I realized it belongs in Joshua's recipe book.

We also played some games, worked on a puzzle, planted some flowers, and spent some time outside.

Joshua gave me this on Friday.

My mom's name is Amada.
She is 39 years old.
Her hair color is brown.
Her eye color is blue brown.

(A picture of me with a frying pan.)

Her favorite color is blue.
Her favorite food is almost all
Her favorite place with me and my brother
She laughs when she hears Joshua as a joke.  ("Want to hear a silly joke?"  "Sure"  "Joshua")
She is really good at making dinner
I love when she brings us on a trip.

She says ----/\----.  (He didn't know, so just wrote a squiggly line.)

Overall he was pretty accurate.  I don't like "almost all" food, but I only make what I like.  I also don't think I'm all that great at making dinner, but I do make it consistantly.

Friday: pass

I had my last set of exams today.  I had one student who really needed to pull it together and they did!  I can tell many more stories of how I gave extra time to students in order to finish work and got bad work, if anything at all.  So to have a success story made my day!

I also went to the library to pick up books for Joshua's animal report and they had cookies for the 25th anniversary of becoming a district library.

The pizza we had for dinner was delicious.

Thursday: work

I went in this morning to grade for a bit before a department lunch.  Well, that bit ended up being shorter than I expected because people kept coming in to talk to me.  I didn't mind, it was much more fun to talk to people than to grade.  Everything is more fun than grading.  Except that I still need to grade and I didn't finish what I had been hoping to do today.

There was a short meeting after school for band for Isaac next year.  He'd like to do drums, but that is one of the instruments they can't start until sixth grade.  (It seems a bit silly to me, but I'm sure there are reasons.)  So he's chosen flute for at least a year; we'll see what happens after that.

Wednesday: grocery shopping adventures

Welcome back to the highly riveting tales of my grocery adventures.  It's a bit annoying that grocery shopping is the most interesting thing of the day, but I'll assume historians will care in the future.  At least, that's what I'll pretend.

Anyway, the shelves were well stocked today.  The only thing I wasn't able to get was cinnamon applesauce in the brand that was the cheapest, because it was on sale.  (Both the big jars and the small cups.)  I also had more time than normal, so I went through my whole list and didn't skip things that I knew could wait another week.  The whole trip took me about an hour longer than normal, but I also returned some pop cans and chatted with some people I met in the store.

The grocery bill was huge.  Between some great sales, needing dishwasher detergent, and being told by multiple people I may want to stock up on some things, it really added up.  I ended up with about $32 dollars of dishwasher detergent, but it was buy >$25 get a coupon for $5...and it doesn't go bad and we don't really go through it that quickly.  Ground beef and frozen pizza were on sale.  I got more taquitos, only to realize that I already had two boxes in the freezer.  Oh well...they'll stay good long enough too.  I did some actual meal planning, instead of just scrounging around, so I needed a few extra ingredients for meals.  I got a few extra of the pantry items in case the supply chain issues do become a problem, but I expect we'll either eat them before the issues affect us or I'll never notice the issues because I stocked up and then don't use the item very quickly.  This especially applies to brown sugar.  I thought I was almost out so I got two bags, but it turns out that I already had one bag in the pantry.  So if you need brown sugar, I'm the person to talk to.

Monday: dominion

Isaac and I played an interesting game of Dominion today.  There were several "when you gain a card, gain at least one more card".  I finished the game right before Isaac's crazy turn, but we determined he could have ended up with 10 additional cards.  Surprisingly, while the decks were large they didn't feel all that bogged down with annoying cards.

Saturday: games

Today we played a lot of games.  I played one with Joshua that he had made up based on Quarriors.  It...was not really that fun.  I didn't understand the rules and that never helps.  But he realized it was a test run and he worked really hard on the card art.

I played a game of Dominion with Isaac.  He chose some new cards and it was fun.

I played a game Isaac made up in the afternoon.  Usually the games and cards that the children make up don't work well and I don't enjoy playing them.  This game, on the other hand, worked pretty well (and I understood the rules!)  It was a bit like making a nerdle.

 

Thursday: classes, stitches, ducks

Today was the last day of classes for me!  I had a 7:30am class, and while it wasn't too bad to get up for it I'm also glad that it's done.  The students did a good job of showing up, and I was a bit afraid of that.

Joshua got his stitches out today.  The wound is healing well.

Isaac and I saw another duck on a roof today.  We wondered if we've just missed seeing ducks on roofs before or if the ducks have suddenly changed their habits and are perching on roofs.

Wednesday: duck

Isaac: There's a duck on our roof!

Amanda/Joshua: what?  I've never seen a duck on our roof.

*Assorted laughter by all of us*

Amanda: look!  There's a duck on our neighbor's roof too!

*Isaac almost dies from laughter.*

Monday: eventually

 Eventually the boys will probably be about the same size.

...I have no idea how I'll remember whose clothes are whose when sorting laundry.

One of these things just doesn't belong

 ...one of these things is not like the others, can you tell by the time I finish this song.

I also made peanut butter-nutella-strawberry jam three way sandwich for the boys.  They were excited, but said it was rather hard to eat.

Saturday: a good run

Well, we had a good run.

Today was the first day a child went to Urgent Care/ER.  It's been 10 years - I wasn't expecting to make it this long, honestly.

Isaac and Joshua were playing in the basement and Joshua hit his head on the Duplo table.  Ben and I heard the urgent cry and Isaac came up to get us, and about the time Isaac got up the stairs the cries changed into an "I'm going to die" cry.  Joshua had just touched the place that hurt and realized that his hand now had blood on it.

Yes, there was quite a bit of blood.  No, it wasn't terrible.  We got it cleaned up and while it was still bleeding continually, it wasn't spouting blood.  But we realized early on that it'd need stitches.  So Joshua and I headed to urgent care.

The wait wasn't too bad and Joshua was well distracted by his screen.  They got us back, the nurse took a quick look to confirm it needed stitches, and they got started.  The whole thing took about 1.5hours, which isn't too bad.  After they numbed the outside Joshua was in much better spirits, but he hated the internal shot.  He did a great job though and stayed still.

He was in good spirits the rest of the day without any pain medication.  The band-aid was bothering him, so we tried to do a better placement of it before bedtime and he seemed happy with it.  We need to get the stitches out in 5-7 days.

Friday: a reason

This evening Joshua was working on his homework and messed it up just a bit.  I told him to erase it and do his best work.  Oh my, that was apparently the wrong thing to say!  He continued working on it, while crying and not talking to us.  He was almost done when I had him stop for to brush his teeth.  (He was running late and it was almost time for bedtime.)  I told him he could do it in the morning, but he was having none of that.

Fast forward to after Ben read the books.  He came downstairs to me to finish up the one question on his homework and we naturally started talking about what happened.  It turned out that Joshua's teacher had made him erase two lines of writing today because he had done it upside-down on the paper and he was rather upset about it.  So when I told him to erase some work he just couldn't quite handle it.  

Everything clicked in place for me too.  Context is helpful.

Thursday: book

Last night I finished my book.  It was #10 in a series...the last one currently written but not the last book.  I'm a bit sad.  I was invested in these characters and didn't really want it to end.

There was a plot twist, as these things normally go.  Neither Ben or I saw it coming, although in hind-sight we both realized that we should have seen it coming.  It was so obvious.

Most of these books have also had bloopers at the end, and they were especially funny this time.

Wednesday: well child and glasses

 Isaac had his well child appointment today.  He's 59% for height and 16% for weight.

Joshua's glasses came in the mail.  They're not required for when he does close-up work, but we'll try to encourage their use.  They were cheap, so I got two: one for home and one for school.

Monday: snow

It snowed out this morning.  I thought it'd melt quickly, but instead it snowed a little bit all morning.  The bird feeders have been empty for a while as I've pretended it's spring, but I wanted to use up one of the bags of birdseed that is left so I put a bunch out this morning.  It was a perfect morning for it and a ton of birds showed up, to my surprise.

Isaac has a stuffy nose and it's making him feel a bit lethargic and bored.  I got him to read on the couch at the same time I was reading, which is one of my life goals.  The next goal is to get the whole family cuddled up reading at the same time.  With the cats.

Sunday: Happy Easter!

He is risen!  He is risen indeed!

Joshua greeted me with these words as I came out of the bedroom in the morning and it felt good.  

We had a pretty normal Sunday, although we did (finally) make empty tomb rolls.  I've been meaning to for years, but finally had all the right ingredients and remembered.  Joshua was quite surprised that there was no marshmallow in the final product and asked if I had taken it out.  (He also wondered why they are called empty tomb rolls when we put Jesus inside before baking.)  Isaac figured it out right away, but was still delighted by it.

Making the rolls was a bit of a surprise.  Joshua's four when fine.  I got Isaac started, and after one he asked if he could take a break to have first breakfast because he was so hungry.  I asked him to keep going because I wanted to get them in the oven.  After the second one he was more firm...he needed first breakfast then and there. He was still hungry after the third one, and couldn't finish the fourth because he needed more food.  I finished it up while he had a half of an apple.  I feel like this might be a bad sign for things to come. :)

We got Boston Market for our Easter dinner, and the mashed potatoes were a surprising hit.  Not for Ben and I - I know we love mashed potatoes.  But I feel like the boys haven't always enjoyed them.  Anyway, as somewhat normal, I made more potatoes in the evening to round out the rest of the left overs.  The boys were excited to help peel the potatoes (and Joshua even had seconds of the mashed potatoes!)

Saturday: Silent Saturday

As normal, in this day in between Good Friday and Easter when I 'don't know what to do with myself', we do the secular Easter activities.

We dyed eggs.  I think they came out wonderful.  Joshua enjoyed putting rubber bands on and was patient enough to leave them in the dye(s) for a while to create some nice rich tones.  (His are mostly the last picture.)  Isaac tried some interesting techniques, including using a fork to punch little holes, dying an egg and then adding some color dots, and a few two-color eggs. (His are mostly the second picture.)

After rest time we had an Easter Egg hunt.  Surprisingly, there was really only one.  Joshua did hide some of his eggs a second time, but didn't really follow up on having anyone find them so they're still scattered around the house on Monday.