Saturday: parenting key

I think one key to parenting is moving toys around.  Often this is putting toys away (although that could be done by kids too).  Putting some toys away and bringing them out later is good.  Yesterday I found that moving the Duplo table from one room to another made it awesome again.  The proceeded to play with it for 45 minutes.

Thursday: Ben's still gone

Ben's still gone, so Dad and Pat invited us over to their house for dinner.  It was a lovely way to break up the evening, and the kids were so excited!

Wednesday: Ben's gone

Ben's on a road trip for the next few days.  Isaac has been asking to go to the Play Place at McDonald's for about six months.  So we went today.  We got there and he was so confused.  I think he was thinking about something else, but I'm not really sure what.  The only other play place that he's been to (that I know of) was on the way to Virginia while I was pregnant with Joshua, 2.5 years ago.

We ate, and then the kids played.  Isaac was a social butterfly, playing with many of the kids that were there.  Joshua was very disappointed because he wasn't big enough to get up the "steps" to the fun part.  I agreed with him that it was rather sad, but I also wasn't going to go in there and help him out.  He played in the toddler area for a bit and then ate some more french fries on my lap.

Monday: picture

I have a quilt over the banister right now.  It needed to finish drying and I need to check it for threads.  Isaac saw it and wanted to take pictures in front of it.  He really wanted to.  So every three seconds I took a picture.  (Only a few of the ones that look empty are actually empty.  He was adding toys one at a time.)

 

Delayed - Disney

Cheryl, Allison, Jamie, and I went to Disney last weekend.  It was a packed weekend full of fun!  (Warning - picture overload ahead.)

Friday during the day we did Epcot.  One of the main reasons we were there was to do the Food and Wine festival, so we did lots of eating (and some drinking).  We stayed at the Beach resort which was just a short walk into Epcot.  (Short if you go the correct way.  Jamie and I had a hard time following arrows this trip.  But...I think it could have been marked better.)

We did some of the rides and saw Mickey, Goofy, and Minnie.  The weather was warm, but there were often clouds so it felt nice.

 We picked out oysters to get pearls.  I got a blue pearl and it was perfect.  It is now a necklace.

In the evening we went to the Not-so-scary Halloween Party.  We dressed up as the emotions from Inside Out.  Joy and Sadness were the most recognized and we kept hearing, "Sadness" or "Joy and Sadness" from everyone around us.  We first stopped by Mickey.  It was a bit scary at first.

Then we watched the parade.  It was probably one of my favorite parades ever.  It was probably due to all the choreographed dancing.

We went trick-or-treating.  (They gave out handfuls of candy at each stop and it was awesome.)  We went on a few rides, including the mine ride.  I think that is one of my favorites, although it feels just a bit short.

Saturday Allison had to leave. :(  The rest of us went to Hollywood Studios for a few rides.

After a short stop at Disney Springs, Jamie and I headed to Animal Kingdom.  We mainly went to do the roller coaster, but decided we had enough time for the Safari too.  It was rather dark by the time we finally got to the safari, but since they hadn't closed yet we went for it anyway.  The weather was perfect so the least that would happen would be a nice ride.  We saw bunches of animals though!  Hippos, elephant, assorted grazing beasts, alligators, and, best of all, the lions.  The male lion was pacing and growling as we went by.

Sunday we had a quick stop at the pool, did one last ride at Epcot, ate some more food, and sadly said goodbye.  My favorite drink was the limoncello, my favorite food was Schinkennudeln from Germany, and all the desserts were delicious.

It was wonderful to have a vacation...I've been needing one.  Near the end I wished the boys were with me as we were doing something fun, but then I would remember that I waited 30 minutes to do this fun thing and was glad they weren't there. :)

Friday: a good day...except for about 15 minutes

Let's start with the 15 minutes.  It was late afternoon and almost bath time.  Isaac had just discovered that sticky stuff that comes on the back of credit cards and wanted to keep it.  I told him he could play with it for a bit, but that it would then have to be thrown away.  He played with it, he threw it away.  And he promptly started crying.  "I'm going to cry forever if you don't let me have it back."  "Ok."  A few minutes later the screaming started.  I sent him to his room and told him he could come out when he had calmed down.  A minute later he gagged and threw up.  We got in the bathroom and he threw up again, mostly missing the toilet.  I was annoyed, but at least he stopped his tantrum and got in the tub.

This morning we went to a bounce house at a semi-local greenhouse.  The boys loved it.  There were a few tears and a few hugs through the mess with Joshua, but mostly just fun.  (It turns out that if you make a noise while hugging kids don't really think you need arms to hug.  It sometimes works out very nicely.)  Isaac did a great job protecting his little brother on the slide.  Everyone else in the party had to leave for assorted reasons, but I think we stayed there almost two hours.

Bath time went really well too.  The boys played for a long while and when Joshua finally decided he was done his toes were blue.  I added some hot water for Isaac and got a space heater out for Joshua.  I think Joshua was having too much fun with his brother to worry about the temperature.

Thursday: acting

Today I made my students stand up and act out a nested if function.  As a play it would be short and boring, but for an excel function it was rather wild.

Curious about the function?  =IF([gender]="M", IF([eye color]="blue", "stand by the green paper", "stand by the yellow paper"), IF([eye color]="blue", "stand by the blue paper", "stand by the purple paper"))