Thursday: Q's Race to the Top

Joshua and I got home from dropping off Isaac and decided to play a 'box game.'  (As in, a game in a box vs. a game with imagination.  Box games are my preferred game.)  He got out Q's Race to the top, which is not my favorite game.  He insisted though, and so we played.

However, it didn't end up being so bad.  That's because neither of us played by the rules.  For that matter, we didn't even play by the same rules as each other.  Joshua picked a card color, rolled the die, and then went that many colors up (like candy land).  I rolled the die and then took a card of the matching color I landed on.  We never looked at the other side of the card.

The game was over in about five minutes.  Joshua won, not surprisingly, but I was pretty close.

Wednesday: today

It was a rather normal day today.  Dropped Isaac off at science camp.  (Although before that we went to see Dad at Hope College and as always the kids (almost) cared more about the treats they'd get than seeing him.)

Then I picked up Ashlyn.  Our normal house cleaners are on vacation for several weeks, so she's going to play with the boys while I clean.  It worked very well.  I just put on my audiobook and pretty much ignored them for the whole time.  The only downside is that I see a lot of the nit-picky stuff that gets glossed over when other people are cleaning, so I didn't get quite as much done as I was hoping.  But the kitchen got cleaned and the floors swept and laundry put away.  The table was clean for about forty-five minutes too, but then Joshua got a Lego set out again.

We went on a short bike ride.  (Well, Isaac on the bike and Joshua in the stroller.)  It...didn't go as well as I expected.  Isaac almost hit someone's garage door.  (BRAKES!  How do you even get so far up a driveway that I need to yell that??)  He didn't want to pedal down the bike path because he was going the opposite way from normal.  But we survived.

Tuesday: Nemo

Nemo with Nemos.

We had a bit of a meltdown this afternoon.  I wanted him to clean up a bit.  I told him what to clean up.  I would even tell him the exact thing to clean up, but he "couldn't."  So he cried in his room.  Then he complained that his throat hurt because it was too loud.

Then he threw some water.  (This is his normal operating procedure.)  Throwing isn't allowed, so time out was initiated.  He opened and slammed some drawers.  (I'll admit though, it was a rather weak slam.)  He wouldn't go to the time out spot so I picked him up and he hit me.  This is a first time for that.  They were weak hits as hits go, but I had to use the "let's go talk to Dad" threat.  I've never threatened to go that route before but I didn't really know what to do.  Luckily, the threat worked.

Ten minutes later he finally started work and finished before too long.  The tantrum was way longer than the cleaning, but I'm sure that was lost on Joshua.

Monday: we got in - we got in - we got in!

Ben and I put our names in a lottery to do an Inside Tour at Lego in Denmark.  We didn't get in.  But Ben got an email today saying that there was a cancellation and we got the spots!

We spent the day being excited and making preliminary arrangements.  I was able to get off work (we go in September) and parents are willing to help with the boys.  Next up, besides RSVPing, are to get flights and figure out exactly where the boys are going to stay.  There are several other details to deal with too, but one thing at a time.

https://www.legohouse.com/en-gb/whats-on/lego-inside-tour?ignorereferer=false

Sunday: Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to a wonderful Dad


Happy Father's Day to my dad too, even though I only talked to him for a few minutes today.

Friday: play

Well, the boys played together a lot today.

In the morning they played while I did chores.

At the library they played while I read.

On the beach they played while I read.

While putting off chores they played while I quilted.

It was rather awesome.

Thursday: life

Today was another rainy day.  I love it, but I know the farmers need everything to dry out a lot so they've been a bit bitter sweet.

We started off the day with the math game prodigy.  It plays a lot like a video game.  Joshua wanted to try too.  The youngest grade level is 1st, but I shrugged my shoulders and said he could try.  It went better than I expected.  He knows his shapes.  He got about half of the number questions right, which is really more than I was expecting.  Teaching him how to use the interface was interesting though.  We found the "read the question to me" button, but then he would often just say the answer.  (Although there was one cute moment when he yelled (due to headphones) in his cute little voice: "Mom, I don't know what vertices are!")

We went to a church playdate at someone's house due to the rain.  The kids balked a bit at first, but they had a great time in the end.  As normal, they went downstairs and I pretty much only saw them when they were hungry.