Thursday: blueberries, sawing, cat box

This morning we went to pick blueberries.  Aunt C joined us at the last minute!  Joshua had his own bucket this year and did a good job getting blue ones.

We came back home and talked landscaping for a while.  There is a bush-tree in the front and it's dying quickly.  We started sawing it down.

We also get a cat box this evening.  This way the cats can be outside when they want to.  Both cats fit in the box, but they need to be friendly.

The boys had a lot of fun playing with the boxes and packing.

Wednesday: Wizards Unite

Today Joshua woke up much better, but still not at 100%.  He was acting pretty normal, but still getting a bit winded periodically.

So I decided to do some Wizards Unite with the boys.  It would give me some exercise and Joshua could be in the stroller.  He still got out of it regularly, but it was at least there when needed.

Tuesday: sick

Ben's gone, so it seems appropriate that Joshua got sick.  I feel like Nathan and I always did that to Mom when Dad left.

Anyway, he woke up a bit early with a cough that wasn't doing anything but wouldn't go away.  As in, coughing every minute.  By the time we got to the doctor the cough wasn't as bad, but his breathing was labored.  And he was a lump.  You know kids are sick when they don't move.

He had a chest x-ray but it wasn't pneumonia.  We got some medicine.  After the nebulizer he had a good half hour that he played with the train track, but after than it was back to not feeling great again.

When he was talking to Ben today he said, "my breathing was labored" in his little four-year-old voice.  It was super cute.

Needless to say, we had a lot of screen time today.

Monday

We went to an Elephant and Piggie play at Hope this morning.  It was good and the boys smiled and laughed many times.

One of the Squirreles thought that an animal on Isaac's shirt looked like a squirrel, so they talked about that for a while.

Both kids liked Piggie the best.  I liked Gerald.

Joshua's Great Wolf Lodge band finally broke off today at karate, five months after putting it on.  Yes, there were tears.  Not too many though.  I suggested that we put the leather band on that we got there too.  It needs to be stretched out a bit, but should be good to go by tomorrow.  (Honestly, I'm glad that it broke off.  It was getting rather scratchy.)

Ben's away for the week, but not having too bad of a time so far.

Weekend: friends

We had lots of friends over this weekend.  Brian and Amy on Saturday, Abby and Hanneke on Sunday.  The weather cooperated very nicely; especially this evening as it was perfect outside.  It was lovely to see them all and I managed to take a total of zero pictures.

Thursday: Sandy Pines

Today we went to visit Uncle Lee and Aunt Sue.  It was a beautiful day for it - cloudy and not too hot.  The first thing Isaac asked when he got in the door was if they had the same bread as last time.  What what??  This was the first I had heard of this amazing bread.  Apparently we had a sourdough last year and Isaac remembered it well enough to request it again.  Guess we'll need to get some.  The boys wanted to play mini-golf first; Joshua improved a ton since last year.

After mini-golf we swam in the pool for about ten minutes before it was closed due to thunder.  It worked out well though; by the time we got back to the house for lunch it started to rain pretty hard.  During lunch Isaac got his sourdough and we all tried radishes.  Isaac wasn't too fond of them, but Joshua ate two of them!  Since he doesn't like most vegetables, we'll be getting some at the store on Monday (and seeing if he still likes them).  It rained during lunch and then soon afterwards stopped, so we were still able to go get ice cream.

It was a lovely visit.

Vacation Monday: Ladies escape, acrobats swing

Doug picked up the groceries in the morning.  It filled up their car!  They also put about two items per bag, so we had plenty of plastic bags.  (Shown here is only the non-cold stuff.  The cold stuff was whisked away.)

The ladies went out by ourselves in the morning to an escape room.  It was the first one that Heather and I had done.  I loved it.  We all contributed and we got a little stuck a few times but didn't call for help.

Since we escaped so early, we walked around downtown for a bit before lunch.  We went into a five and dime and laughed about a bunch of things there.  We walked down to the...river? lake? and then went out to lunch.  We also got some fudge, which everyone kept saying was a tradition.  I finally admitted that I only remembered getting fudge in 2017...and it turns out that getting fudge is a new tradition.  One that I was totally on board with.

While we were gone, the rest of the people just kind of hung out.  The kids found some wiki stix and played with them a ton!  (They also ended up on the bottom of the table.)

They also played some arcade games.  We were all really hoping that the games were part of the rental cost, but alas, they needed quarters.  Not a huge deal though as we had plenty of other things to do...

...like the Switch.

In the afternoon we went to see the "Acrobats from Shanghai."  According to the announcer, China is millions and millions miles away from here.

My favorite acts included a hat toss,

some yo-yo type things that I can't remember the name of,

and hoop jumping.

In the evening Laura was going on a walk with her kids, and I thought sounded like a good idea for my kids too.  There were a bunch of rocks around, and they made better toys than the little playground.  We met up with the others about half way through our walk.

Finally!  The kids were down!  Some of the adults played a game of Diamonds.