Friday: Operation Clean the House

Today I was purposeful about spending some time on Operation: Clean the House.  I had plenty of things I was supposed to do, but O:CtH makes me feel like I'm actually accomplishing things, especially things that don't need to be done again the next week.  Anyway, I worked on the laundry room.  I cleared off the dryer, cleaned the inside of the washer, and mostly finished cleaning the cabinet.  I got rid of a bunch of random things along with several bottles.

I also used a coupon for a sleep over with three of Joshua's four stuffies.  I also got to sleep with Giraffe.

However, Creeper was really sad to be left out and gave me a coupon for a sleepover with him.  Note that Creeper is just learning how to write.

Thursday: blog

Isaac's math class at Hope lets them stay for up to 45 minutes after the class to make homework corrections, get more help, or just hang out.  It's super nice for me because Joshua gets out a few minutes later than last year and it gives him a place to be until I get there.  I think I showed up about 10 minutes after class ended, and I was able to drop Joshua off at home.  It only adds a minute or two to the drive to go get Isaac, but let's Joshua not be in the car for at least 20 minutes.

Anyway, he had some minor homework corrections so he had time for those, and then he made a puzzle for his teacher.  It was a good one.

After rock climbing he asked me if I remembered that other puzzle that we worked on earlier in the summer, that a and b...  I immediately said yes!  I even blogged about it so we can read that to help remember.  Isaac seemed pretty happy about that.

Wednesday: lecture

 Stuff got done today.  Today is my boring weekly chore day, so I was happy that I was able to get a few other things done too - that doesn't always happen.

My arms are sore from rock climbing yesterday.  It's probably the first time I've actually been sore; Joshua worked me hard.

This evening Ben and I went to the Gentile lecture at Hope College.  It was given by one of the guys that he lived with senior year in Reese, Dr. Chris Avery.  It was interesting and not too long...no one fell asleep. :D  But really, it was pretty interesting.  Afterwards we went to dinner with Andy and Natalie and that was really nice too.  It's nice to be able to leave the kids for a while, but Joshua was also really happy that we were back in time for books before bed.

Tuesday: rock climbing

Joshua and I climbed while Isaac was practicing with his team.  This was probably the best climbing session I've had with Joshua.  I felt like he helped me more than normal...

*We worked on the rock wall of the week - apparently it's a pretty easy one.  Well, neither of us got it but Joshua climbed the middle part really well and give me a bunch of tips.  I got zone and several times got farther than the last time.

*There was an auto belay that I could only get half way up.  I watched Joshua do it and got an idea for how to get a little farther.  I didn't get much farther because my arms were tired.

*Joshua convinced me to try a new route in the cave.  I flashed it!

*Joshua tried a few new routes on the auto-belay based on my recommendation and enjoyed them.

It's a slight running joke that Isaac and Joshua enjoy bouldering more than the belays and I enjoy the belays more and neither of us can understand the other.  We talked it out in the car and I like belays more because it isn't as scary to fall.  They don't like dealing with the harness and safety checks that come with the belays; they just want to climb.

Monday: we'll make it

Today felt odd, but I'm not really sure why.  Grading went a bit faster than expected today and I had coffee with Pat this morning.  I was just sitting down after that to finish the last two lab reports when I got a call saying Joshua wasn't feeling very good.  

So I went back out to get him.  He didn't look amazing, but he wasn't all that sick either.  We both had lunch and took a nap; it seemed to help him out.  I feel like he always has one of these days in the first few weeks of school and I'm not really sure why.

I finished grading along with a few other small random things after nap time.  I don't feel like I got a ton of stuff done today, but it really was pretty productive in the end.  I am not winding down like I normally do at night, which might be a problem.  We'll see I guess.

Sunday: D&D

So, in our last D&D round Joshua had managed to get a potion of acid resistance.  (Not at all ominous, right?)  Today's fight was against some puddings that dealt acid damage.  A lot of acid damage.  What does Joshua do?  Drink the potion?  Oh no.  He throws the potion at one of the puddings.  (Isaac and I did not really agree with this action, but not too vehemently.  He gets to decide his own actions.)

Our fearless dungeon master was not expecting that.  The internet was not expecting that and had no guidance on what happens when an acid monster drinks an acid resistance potion.  So Ben made it up.  The pudding globbed over it, eroded the container, and reacted very poorly to the potion.  It didn't quite kill it, but almost.

Was this the best choice?  Still unclear.  There were two other puddings to deal with and they rolled well, so a lot of damage was given by them.  However, they were also very strong, so getting one out of the way quickly was helpful.  Either way, it was a fun choice.

Thursday: busy day

 Thursdays will be our busy day.  The other days all of have aspect of busy, but Thursday is the day I have extra help sessions and in the evening we're all going in different directions.  (However, I did make all my appointments today!  On time without reminders even.)

And so we finally reached 8pm and time for books.  I did fine with the prayer and the Bible reading and then started reading our story book...and also falling asleep.  There were a few words that I stretched out a lot, but then the kids would start laughing at me and I'd wake up.  I could tell the whole thing was a bit rough...normally I read a few words ahead to help with context and voice and whatnot, but tonight that wasn't working.  I was reading one word at a time and it was not going well.  

It's been a while since I've read out loud and fallen asleep, but there were a few times when the kids were so small that it happened.  I always felt bad about it because I love to read, but sitting down, snuggling with warm bodies on not quite enough sleep just did me in.

Wednesday: chores

I was able to work on chores today.  It's amazing how it can sometimes feel like a luxury to have time time to do them.  For the most part though, they were boring chores.  I did make some raspberry jam, although it didn't seem to be setting very well.  Oh well, I'll use it like jam anyway.  My to do list has gotten slightly smaller, but there are still a lot of things on the "this is important to do soon" list.

I put the baby gate back up today.  After asking people multiple times to please take stuff downstairs and put it away and everyone, including myself, 95% ignoring me, I put it up as a reminder barrier.  It has an aggressive sign that says "BRING SOMETHING DOWNSTAIRS."  It's been amazing in the four hours it's been up - about a third of the stuff has been brought down.

I also got a jury summons for next month.  Of course.  It's been a crazy week so let's just add that on top of it.  I asked for a deferral until December and they granted it.  I know December is often busy too, but teaching wise it's easier to hand off to someone else.  Don't worry - I'll complain if I get called on a week I didn't want to be called on.  (The first week of December would actually work really well.)

Tuesday: 300

Today was crazy busy, but otherwise fine.  I just finished the stuff I needed to get done, but it's now done.  I do expect that following weeks will be better, but the fact that the kids had Friday and Monday off along with it being the first week of college required some extra work.  I'm going to be optimistic about it at least.

We were all at rock climbing tonight - Isaac for dev team and Joshua to climb and me to climb and have a parent meeting.  Since we were going to be there a while, Joshua decided to climb one of the routes 300 times.  It isn't a high route, but 300 times is still a lot.  He climbed and then jumped off the top.  Half way through the time I told him his rate was a little slow and he needed to pick it up, and he did!  He was a ball of sweat that barely wanted to move when we left, but he was proud of himself.

Monday: D&D, pool party

I was in Isaac's bedroom this morning and he said, "When Joshua is done on the Switch can you come and take me out?"  I said, "take you out like hit you really hard?"  No.  He just wanted me to get him out of his bedroom...which makes more sense, but his phrasing was so weird.

This morning we did another segment of our D&D story.  There was a mimic that surprised us, although we really shouldn't have been surprised.  I think mimics are my favorite monster right now, although that is partially because they've been coming up in a lot of good stories recently.

This afternoon we went to a pool party.  It was really fun and wore everyone out.

Saturday: D&D

We continued our intro to D&D campaign today and it was the best part of the day for everyone.  Isaac and Joshua have dreams of DMing their own campaigns and we've barely started this one.  Honestly - that could be really fun.  They often make up games that somewhat work, but if they can make up the game within the framework of the D&D rules it could be fun.

Friday: puzzle take apart day

 Over the summer, we put together puzzles.  Let's be honest, it was mostly me putting together the puzzles and the kids helping with the last few pieces.  (Isaac helped a few additional times too.)

Today we laid them out:

22 puzzles.  Smallest: 16pieces.  Largest: 1000 pieces.  Total: 10870 pieces.  Five of them had stars, nine had plants, 19 had eyes, and three had hearts.  My favorite to put together was the minifigure puzzle.  I've done it several times and it's always fun.

A stack of the boxes.

We played a little bit of eye-spy, but it turns out that it is really easy.

Then we watched a movie and took them apart in about an hour.  The globe was by far the hardest to take apart.  I had a great time doing this and would absolutely do it again.  But since the kids didn't really help, I might wait several years.

Thursday: hot mess

I was a hot mess today.  I had eight appointments/classes today and I managed to be late to four of them.  At least they were all with different people and the ones that mattered the most had kind people.  I managed to pick the kids up on time.

It'll get better; there were just several things about the meetings today that made them weird.

Wednesday: chores

I did chores today.  They were the boring chores too - the ones that need to be done every week.  I mean, I'm glad that I did them because I had a clean kitchen for about an hour and I like having a clean kitchen.

I was refilling my vitamins and found an army man.  Isaac put them all over the house and hid them in really good places.  I find about one every four days.

Tuesday: dinner

Today was the first day of classes.  I don't enjoy the first day of classes.  It's probably the second worst, only behind the day before the final exam.  I talk so much.  It's about boring stuff too.  Half the class is completely bored and the other half is overwhelmed.

I got home and Cheryl offered to bring over dinner.  It was lovely - I'm always so tired after the first day.

Isaac had dev team trials tonight.  It was hot.  August has been beautiful and then this week has been normal August hot again.  But when I picked him up he was all smiles.  He thrives doing this.

Monday: first day & to dos

 It was the first day of school!

I spent a majority of the day working on Hope work.  I feel like I got a good portion done, but there's still a decent amount to go.  I got the "you really need to do this" and most of the "you really should do this" items done.

I got a few things checked off my home to-do list, but not many.  As expected.  Ben found yesterday's plot hilarious and endearing, so he showed it off at work. <3

I was rather tired after dinner but went to karate anyway.  It was a good choice - it was a small class but a good one.

Saturday: rock climbing, botanical gardens

This morning started out with a rock climbing competition!  Both kids participated, and I was so proud of both of them.

This was Joshua's first competition.  Technically, he did fine.  Out of seven routes he topped two and zoned two.  I was super impressed with two things though: 1) His perseverance.  He took a few breaks throughout the 2.5 hours, but he tried a lot of those routes a lot of times.  Over and over.  2) His ability to talk to people.  Several people gave him some pointers and he came away with a few new friends.

Isaac did a great job technically!  It was similar to the last competitions in that he flashed six of the routes and needed a few tries on the last route.  After getting those done he tried some of the other routes.  I enjoy watching him because he is methodical.  He also got a compliment after falling off the white #3 youth about smiling as he was getting up.  I think he was happy that he got farther than the previous time, but it was still nice to hear.

My favorite pictures are when they are both on the wall though.

We had chosen the first session of the day so that it wouldn't be so busy.  Probably still a good choice, but it meant we had seven hours before awards.  After a snack and a small lunch (because we just had a snack), we went to the botanical gardens.

This was a great choice!!  I had read there were tours at 11 and 12:45, but we just missed the 12:45 window.  We stopped in the visitor center for a map anyway, and the website was somewhat incorrect.  The tours are individual tours whenever you want with a docent.  In a golf cart.  For free.  Sign me up!  It was a warm day, so not having to walk the whole thing was nice.  The docent was very knowledgeable and was able to tell us all sorts of things we would have otherwise been ignorant of.  A kids' garden is going in and so she gave us some plants to taste and smell.  We got to go inside the cow barn.  It was amazing.

This got us to about 2:30, and we went back to the gym to read and rest.  We found a nice cubby and relaxed for a while.  We walked to dinner, which wasn't amazing, and then back to the gym.  Finally...award time.

Unsurprisingly but still excitingly, Isaac got first place in the beginner category!  The others had already left, so he had to stand there by himself.

He got a nice plaque.  He got some other swag too, but he was most excited about the plaque.

And then we went home.  We were exhausted.  (There was a band outside though.  Ben said there had been music since 10am.  The live band probably started around 5pm and didn't stop until 10:15pm.  I don't want to be a downer because it's fun to have fun things, but it was a overwhelming when we just wanted to crash.)

Sunday: last day

Today was the last day before school.  It was a pretty normal day; we worked with Lego, had rest time, went to church.

We also started a Lego D&D campaign.  So far we woke up not knowing who we were and killed a skeleton.  It was a nice, gentle way to get started.

While my to-do list stayed only slowly inched up in number over the summer (63 in June and 83 two days ago), it suddenly exploded with 103 items today.  Several are on the shorter side, several are on the longer side.  I also have quite a bit of 'real' work I'm hoping to do tomorrow, so I don't expect all that much will get done.  But everything is in order, like I do during the school year, and I'll slowly check them off the list.

Yes.  I keep track of how many items are on the to-do list.  It's rather weird, but it also helps show me how things are going.  There are a few items, now at the bottom, that have stayed on the list since I started tracking.  I sometimes think I should take them off but still think they would be good to do so I don't.

Friday: Traverse City

Since the boys have a rock climbing competition tomorrow, we decided to come up to Traverse City a day earlier and make the trip worthwhile.  We left around 9am, because I was anxious that we wouldn't be able to eat lunch and get to our 1pm appointment in time.  (Spoiler alert: we had a little extra time.  The boys ate faster than I expected and there was no traffic, but it was just right in the end.)

Our first stop was Wheels on Rails, where you can use special rail bikes to bike down a decommissioned railroad.  Overall, I'd say it was a great excursion!  Since we only had three people we also had one of the guides sit with us (they're bikes for four people), so we got some extra info about the area.  The weather was beautiful.  The way out was on a very slight downhill, but made pedaling very easy.  The way back was a little harder, but between the four of us we moved right along.  I'd say the "worst" part was that a 1hr45min trip was advertised and it was really about 1hr15min.  I'm glad we didn't do the shorter one.

After some melty ice cream, we stopped at a rock shop in downtown Traverse City.  It was a bit disappointing, and seemed a bit expensive for stuff.  We walked around just a little bit and then headed to another rock shop a mile away.  This second one was much better and the kids were excited to expand their collections.

I took a short nap at the hotel and we walked to dinner.  The boys are calling it the best pizza they've ever had!  It was stone fired and it was very good, but I was a little surprised by their enthusiasm.  We ended the day by going to a nearby beach.  There were a few rocks for Isaac to look through, and the kids played in the sand for a while.

Thursday: shoes

Today was a rather busy day.

We had treats with Pat.  We tried a new rock climbing game.  We went to Target to look for shoes.

Do NOT go to Target for shoes.  It was a mess!  There was no organization and there were random shoes everywhere.  That being said, I managed to find a pair of shoes that Isaac kind of liked.  But then he didn't love them and we decided he didn't actually need new shoes.  Sigh.

We also went to meet the teacher tonight.  Joshua's room took all of about five minutes.  We spent a bit longer with Isaac's teachers.  His homeroom/science teacher is a rock climber too.  We had to waste a bit more time because Joshua had a piano lesson so we visited all the special teachers.

Wednesday: would you rather?

This morning we biked to Joann's and the shoe store.  We didn't come home with any shoes; Isaac did like the fit and Joshua wanted non-tie shoes and most of them stopped at size 3 when he needs a 3.5.  Maybe tomorrow!  (Maybe not.)

We also went to Craig's Cruisers to finish up using some tokens from earlier in the summer.  We had a lovely time and got exactly 750 tickets, so we were able to get some medium interesting prizes.  On the way home Isaac came up with this horrible would you rather: would you rather run into yellow lights at every stop light or have extra long red lights?

Tonight I was trying to finish up a quilt.  Tornado had claimed it though and wouldn't move.  I started the sewing machine - no movement.  I started sewing - no movement.  I put some quilt on Tornado - he nestled deeper.  I finally had to stop and work on something else because I couldn't do anymore without blatantly moving him.

Tuesday: shoes

 We did our school shopping today.  We did a pretty good job of shopping the supplies that were left over from last year, so we only needed a few things.  We also took a look at the shoes, but Isaac didn't like any at Meijer and Joshua didn't like the bottoms of the one pair he was interested in.  The whole shopping trip, while long, was much better than last week's trip which was timed poorly and took forever due to a pillow snafu.

At rock climbing, we also looked at new shoes.  Both kids have mentioned that theirs might be getting a bit small.  Well, Joshua could move into Isaac's, but Isaac didn't like the size up in the shoe he is currently wearing.  So we didn't get any new shoes here either.  But there's a plan for when either of them decide they need new ones.

I also used some of my birthday tickets: Joshua made his own lunch and I got to sleep with all the lovies.  There were so many I had a hard time getting a good picture.  (Night-sight doesn't work on selfie mode.)

Monday: birthday

Today was my birthday!  The kids do such a good job being excited for me.  (Ben does too, but he is excited for birthdays like I am.  The kids are super excited.)

In the morning we picked up Aunt C to try a new hiking trail, and it didn't disappoint!  Sanctuary Woods, which had over 170 stairs, was a beautiful place.  Normally the trail would be about 3/4mi, but we took several adventure trails and went further.  The claim to fame for this trail is that you can see both Lake Mac and Lake Michigan at the same time.  This is true, and we found the place, but it wasn't well marked nor was it all that free of trees.  It would be interesting to go during the different seasons to see what it looked like.

This is the place to see both lakes.

I've found Tornado sitting like this twice in the past two days.  The first time I just laughed at him, but the second time I took a picture.

Joshua had a friend over in the afternoon.  Isaac and I played a game of Dominion, and I also took a short nap and did a little work.  Larry and Cheryl took me out for dinner - they were a little slow and it was a little cold, but it was also a lot of fun.

Sunday: screen time day

Today was the only weekend day in all of August that we were mostly not busy.  So we had a screen time day.  We usually have one a summer and I wasn't paying attention to the schedule well.  We still went to church and went to visit Great-grandma, but otherwise the kids could have screens whenever they wanted.

Speaking of Great-Grandma, today I brought over our quills and so she and Ben could try those out.  I think they were on their last legs, but they worked well enough.  And we played some Uno, as normal.

Friday: errands, rock climbing, video chat

 We did some errands this morning.  We had to delay a little bit because it was raining hard and they involved a bit of walking outside.  One errand involved getting 15 foam noodles.

We met some friends for rock climbing.  I also got a new route!  Isaac told me I needed to trust my feet on a teeny tiny foot hold and so I did and it worked!

We (are currently) having our bi-weekly video chat with friends.  We haven't talked about butter (YET!) but we have hit cheese.