Weekend: cottage

This past weekend we went up to Dad and Pat's cottage.  Nathan and his family were there too, and we had a great time.

It had snowed out, so we ended up spending quite some time outside in the morning.  The kids threw snowballs, 

did some swinging,

cracked as much ice as they could find (carefully),

sledded,

and helped with the fire to burn some sticks.

Oh, they also investigated snow melting on the fire.  The well-packed snow balls melted much slower than I was expecting.

Isaac is really into a book series and spent some time reading.  I was rather surprised, because this is usually not his activity of choice.

The kids watched Lady and the Tramp.

There were also a few Lego sets that came out.  Isaac and Jameson got theirs done pretty quickly, but Evelyn and Joshua worked steadily on theirs both days.

More matching people!

Dad played Azul with Isaac.  Isaac explained most of the rules and did a pretty good job.

Joshua finished his spider lair and so the younger kids played with that for a bit.

It's been a while since I've seen Nathan's family, so it was especially nice to be able to spend some time with them.

Friday: firewalls and schedules

Joshua made a firewall...

He also told me his schedule.  He repeats this on a fairly regular basis.  (It starts on a Tuesday.)

Thursday: stuffed

On the way to the car this morning, Joshua said, "I have a song stuffed in my head."  I can't remember which one was 'stuck' in his head, but it caused Isaac to start singing a bunch of other others.  Joshua kept laughing and saying, "Isaac, you're getting another song stuffed in my head."

Wednesday: snow!

While today wasn't our first snow, it was the first snow that stuck around.  It actually snow/rained throughout the morning, although it never accumulated any more.

We also decorated some cookies.  Isaac really wanted to make one for his teacher, but you can't make just one.

I put 'Boo' on one of the cookies for Joshua.  He was telling Ben about it later, and everytime he talked about it he said, "The cookie with BOO!" and it was pretty cute.

Tuesday: nothing

We have a less busy week this week and I love it.  I don't think we're overly busy even in our busy weeks, but there's nothing 'special' that's waiting for us this week.

I'd like to say that I'm doing things to get caught up with life, but that'd be a joke.

Saturday: Lego League

Today was the expo for Lego League.  It went fine.  There were a few things I would have changed in hindsight (like coaching the kids on the interview process better) but overall everything came together.

They got a trophy and so everyone was happy.

(This was before the main Lego display showed up.)

We got the Legos out for the kids to play with near the beginning because there was a lot of waiting around.  There was still a lot of waiting around after we cleaned up, but it wasn't as much.

Friday: dryer vent, pumpkin experiments

This morning Joshua and I worked on cleaning the dryer vent.  You see, the new dryer hasn't really been working very well.  However, the company wanted us to clean the dryer vent before they sent anyone out.  I guess it makes sense.  The dryer vent was very clean and now the drier seems to be working worse than it was before.  I learned a lot about how to clean the dryer vent though, as I got stuck and annoyed a few times.  Next time will be better...if I can get the pieces apart again.  I might need to call in the people with the good tools to re-separate the sections.  Joshua was a good helper and kept going inside to see if any fuzz had come out yet.  He yelled at me from inside, but since it is sort of in the middle of the house there was no way I could hear him.  I kept telling him this, but he kept yelling and asking if I had heard him anyway.

Then I went to help out with pumpkin experiments in Isaac's class.  I got the "does our pumpkin sink or float" station, which was an awesome station to have.  First of all, pumpkins float.  (I had been debating it in my head so the first one was a surprise to me too.)  Secondly, kids love finding out if things sink or float.  The second group I had had their stem fall off, so we put that in the water too.  That started putting lots of things in the water.  We may not have talked as much about density and instead just put stuff in the bucket of water, but it sure was fun.

When the third group got to me, they had cut open their pumpkins and taken out the insides.  So what did we do?  We filled the pumpkin with water!   Small pumpkins still float and the large pumpkin did not.  As they got filled with water you could see that they floated lower in the water.

Only a few people got their sleeves wet.  I cleaned up after myself, including the bucket of water and pumpkin guts.