Monday: VBS day 1

Today was the first day of VBS.  It nicely didn't rain during VBS (but of course rained before and after).

This year I'm teaching 2nd grade, because Isaac wanted me to be his teacher.  It turns out that (so far), I really like 2nd grade.  They can read.  They are mostly independent.  But they aren't too old to be excited about everything. 

We also had a small group.  I felt a little bad, only having seven kids instead of the 15 that some groups around me had, but not too bad.  I usually end up with the super small groups which is weird, but fine.

The scheduled activities also ran quite behind schedule today.  I feel like this is somewhat normal for a Monday, but it felt worse than normal.  So we only had fifteen instead of thirty minutes for the official Bible lesson as a class, but it was fine.  I cut out some of the extra stuff and then we went to outside time.  I could tell they were ready for it.

Leaving was a pain though.  One of the exits from church is unavailable due to construction.  Normally by the time we're ready to leave the parking lot is busy but almost empty.  Today the parking lot was still backed up...so we went to the playground for a few minutes.  Not all that long, but it was better than waiting in a car.

Last Saturday: Brickworld

Last Saturday we went to Chicago to see Brickworld.  It's held at a large convention center and you see what other people have made out of Lego.  It's rather amazing.

Joshua loved the mechs the best, especially the two below.  We took a lot of pictures of mechs.  Joshua was a bit to short to fully enjoy the show, so I carried him quite a bit.  He could see things, but a lot of stuff involved looking down and he really could only look across.

We kept going around.  In the end, we probably only saw about half the show.  What we saw was all really cool though. 

We also took a break for the kids to play at the green block table.  There were about four sizes of bricks, all in green.

Joshua made this puppy and I was so impressed with it.  I could tell it was a puppy right away!

Then he made another one.  "They're both puppies, but they like each other."

Isaac was working on some wheels, copying something else on the table.

After lunch, we saw the Great Ball Contraption.  It is kind of like a Rube Goldberg machine, where many individual pieces work together to move a bunch of little balls around a circle.  The favorite module was the Ballcano.

This is the leader of the group.  Ben 'fan-boyed' over him just a little bit.

Then we saw some selected exhibits.  I loved the flowers.  There was a potion shop that was rather amazing too.

Some photo places:

And on our second (or third?) try we finally made it out.

Saturday: friends

We had some friends over this afternoon.  The kids played.  It was nice and relaxing.  The weather was beautiful.

Friday: repairs

Dad came over to help with some home repairs today.  We (he) got through the first three really quickly.  He changed a bike chain, dealt with a toilet, and fixed a rub in the ceiling fan.

Joshua was a bit bored, and so made a whole bunch of traps for us.

The last project should have also gone easily and, of course, didn't.  We were trying to take off a bi-fold door to replace the hardware.  We had taken off some of the same doors in the laundry room a few years back and I remember it being a lot easier than I thought it would be.  Well, we tried and it didn't work.  We tried again.  (And by we, I mean Dad.)  We looked at the hardware from the other doors.  We tried again and got somewhere, but it was still stuck.  We looked at the track in the laundry room and then tried again.  We pounded and prodded and the door was not coming out.  We had just given up and were about to put everything back together when Dad lifted the door one more time...and it came out of the bracket.  Easy peasy, like it was just waiting for us to give up so it could gloat.  Anyway, we switched out the hardware with the doors in the basement and now Isaac's closet door works.

After Dad left Joshua and I stopped at both libraries.  One to get some books on hold, and the second to get "The book of Monsters."  (A lego book.)  Joshua wanted to show something to Ben, and was deeply disappointed when I returned it before the showing.  He remembered by himself that he wanted to get it back, so we did.  Along with a ton of other Lego books.

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.