Wednesday: today

It started out with school work.  The kids don't love this part of the day, but it's good to keep in practice.  It also gives me time to do some of my work.

We went on a bike ride down the street.  (It's hard to get photos of a moving biker.)  Isaac was so wobbly to begin with, but he made it down the street.  By the time he went back and forth a few times he was much steadier.

In the afternoon we went to see Aladdin.  It was really good.  Joshua sat on my lap with 3D glasses...he was rather jumpy at the beginning but finally calmed down.

We took another ride around the lake after dinner.

And then Joshua decided to dress up at bed time.  Somehow he ended up in 2T pajamas.  I think he was being a bad guy.

Tuesday: and there he rides!

We made it to IHop today.  The kids seemed to love it as much as they were expecting to.  The service wasn't as slow as normal, so that was nice too.

I restrung some chairs today.  Joshua decided to come out and sit next to me.  We talked a bit, mainly about nothing.  I teased him he is a puppy, not a human.  He denied it, but by the end of the conversation he said he can switch back and forth between both.

Isaac tested the fluidity of cats.  Tornado was unimpressed, but also unharmed, by the experiment.

After supper Ben came out to see the bike riding skills.  Well, he started pushing Isaac a bit on his back, and Isaac could totally balance.  So we put the pedals back on.  Ben still ran with him a little bit, but after a circuit or two he was doing everything on his own!  Oh, he was so excited!  So Ben got out his bike and they biked around the lake.  While Isaac still can't hold a great line, he was able to do the 90deg corners without stopping!  Whoo-hoo!  (This means he has completed challenge number 2: bike around the lake with only reasonable stops.)

Not to be completely left out, we got out the bike with training wheels for Joshua.  He's a bit to small to use it as a balance bike, so for now he can just use it as pedal practice.  He's currently at about walking speed, so we went around the lake too.

Monday: the first day of break

I'm afraid it was a bit of a disappointing first day of summer break for the kids.

We started with some school time.  Isaac wrote a letter while Joshua drew a letter.

We went grocery shopping.

We didn't go to IHop (although I still tried to give them a special lunch).

I made them finish cleaning their rooms.

It was rather cold out.  It rained all day yesterday and a cold front came through.

Sunday: trapped

A little before lunch time, there is a bunch of giggling upstairs.  After a bit Ben and I come out of the office only to see this:

Oh no!  We're trapped!  How are we going to make lunch?  Well...we then hear some little voices that they are making lunch.  (There is a summer challenge: make your own lunch.  Then I'll take them out for lunch another day.)  Isaac made the sandwiches (and Joshua's cereal) and Joshua made the crunchy beans and was the communicator.  The nutella on the top is an M and a D so we know how whose is whose.

After getting the sandwich, I opened it up to see how well the stuff was spread.

Well, the peanut butter was spread very well.  But...there wasn't very much of it.  And there wasn't jelly or nutella.  The bites with nutella were good, but the rest of it was a bit...bready.  We laughed about it a lot and decided we needed to still eat it.

Later I came upstairs just as Joshua was having a minor emergency in our bathroom.  Only there was a problem...

...well, the mother in me climbed over the obstacle because a kid needed help.

Memorial Day Weekend

I'm almost caught up on our exciting lives.  Here are the pictures from camping.

First off, as always, we got stuff set up.  This didn't take very long, but still needs to be done.  Isaac was in charge of putting the cold stuff in the fridge.  He organized it very well, but not very practically. :)

Then dinner and finally ice cream!

We finished ice cream just in time for the wagon ride.  Isaac seemed less than thrilled for most of the ride, but said everything was ok.

After that they went to the playground.  They came back because they were hungry.  Then they went back to the playground.  This was a pretty common theme throughout the weekend.  Below is Joshua's sticky s'more.  It didn't go over well with him because it was too sticky.

Isaac enjoyed his a lot more.

Saturday was rather cold until late afternoon when the sun came out.  The kids did a few campground activities, but mainly played at the playground.  Ben and I did a lot of reading.  Once the sun came out we went to get ice cream and Joshua showed Ben how hard he could squeeze.

The kids played together...usually they were at the playground, but bubbles, balls, and squirters were also often used.

Ice cream! 

This time Joshua just got graham crackers with chocolate.  It went over much better.  He also got his chin scraped up on the merry-go-round.  Worthy of a band-aid, but not too bad.

We made it to mini-golf on the last day again.  Joshua did a little better holding the club but still needed quite a bit of help.  (He was at least willing to get it this time though.)  Ben got a hole in one and probably won, but we didn't keep track.

Saturday

(We also got the kayaks in the water because it was a nice weekend.  The boys did a lot of playing together today because they didn't want to clean their rooms.)

Friday: last day of 1st grade

Today was Isaac's last day of first grade!

A few days ago was the awards assembly (just for the class).  I thought it was just for a few things, but he came back with six different awards.  I might have gone if I knew he was going to get so many.

We went to the library right after school.  The car was being a bit weird and announcing the texts that were being sent too.  For some reason we decided that Ben should decide what I smell like, so he got a bunch of semi-random texts once we pulled into the library parking lot.  I really liked that I could just hit the "read" button over and over and over again, so I didn't have to actually keep saying that I wanted to smell like stinky cheese.

In the afternoon we went to a neighbor's house for some play.   On the way home Joshua tripped and scrapped up his leg, his side, and his arm.  His elbow was the worst, but it wasn't bleeding enough that I felt as though I needed to use a beach towel on it.  We made it home and he got two band-aids on his elbow and one on his side because it was right where the underwear band hit. 

Then Isaac and I got promoted to orange belts in karate!