Tuesday: spaces

A student from a few semesters ago stopped by my office today.  She was having trouble doing something in excel...the person before her had it working, but had since then graduated.

I took a look at the previous person's equation and the new equation she wrote: they looked the same.  I tried out a similar equation, but different, and came up with the same wrong results.  Well, hmm.  Before getting to much farther into it, I checked for spaces.  ...those spaces at the end of words in an Excel cell that you can't see but that make all your formulas wrong?  There they were.  Remove the invisible spaces and ta-da!  It worked!  Fixed in under 10 minutes.

I apparently saved her from having to work from 2am to 5am coming up here in a few days.  Now, she spent two hours trying to trouble shoot the problem so I'm not sure I was a huge net help, but it would have been boring work and she appreciated it a ton.

I've noticed the invisible spaces tripping people up a lot more lately.  They've always been on my radar, but I check for them a lot faster these days. 

Monday: kids

Joshua's been building some rather creative Lego creations lately.  They've certainly taken a turn from the 'let's put a lot of tiles on a board.'  Below is his lookout tower.

Isaac brought back his New Year's Wish paper from school.  I guess exponents are in our future again.  (We did them a few months back, but I guess he wants more.)

Sunday: the storm

The storm went pretty much as predicted.  By the time I went to bed things were calming down.  We did have lots of icicles though!

The boys briefly played outside today.  Isaac collected all the icicles and was eating them throughout the day.  Joshua tried out his new snowball maker and was so excited when it made a perfect snowball!

Saturday: normal day

It was a rather normal day today.  We could say that we didn't go anywhere because of the ice storm that hit this afternoon, but really we rarely go anywhere on Saturdays.

Legos were done.  Things were cleaned.  Screen time was had.  Grey Bear and Pokeball had some sort of competition and I heard Joshua say, "Pokeball is getting toasted!"  The expression doesn't quite transform like that, but it's still cute.  Isaac and I played a few games.  Joshua and I played a game...he won after I had a great lead but the dice hated me.  (I needed to get a red on 1 of 6 dice.  The red is on one side of each die.  I rolled four times without getting a red.  (The internet tells me there is a 1.2% chance of this happening.  Low, but not as low as I thought.))

Last Sunday: good bye

We had a relaxing morning.  The kids continued to play well together.  Isaac beat more people with laser chess.  Then everyone left right after lunch.  I crashed...it had been a busy week and the cold was coming on in full force.

(Notice the balloon sword in the bottom of the picture.  It was nice to refresh my balloon animal skills.)

Last Saturday: helicopters

Today the boys and Evelyn went to Hope to make helicopters.  Pat, Liz, and I went to the mall.  (We had a rather productive shopping trip, finding items for both ourselves and our husbands.)

(Snack time is important.)

The rest of the day was playing, talking, and eating.

Last Friday: DeYoung Christmas

We met Nathan and his family at The Good Earth.  The cousins got right down to business, catching up and figuring out who is the silliest.

Dad and Pat came over later in the afternoon and we opened presents.

Then we played with the presents and had Thai food.  Isaac was at an interesting stage of life; he was young enough to play with the other kids and enjoy it, but he also did his own thing several times so that he could play with his older toys.