Monday: kids

Joshua made me a Valentine today.  (The 4x1 sticks are a V for Valentine.)

Joshua pulled this one out to play by himself.  Both boys know that it's a game that is on the chopping block whenever I get around to cleaning the game closet as I was unimpressed with the lack of strategy on the game and it isn't played much.  (Note that it says "a game of strategy" right on the box!)  Well, today Isaac pointed out to me that it really says it's a game of strategy for squirrels and that I should have read the box more closely.  I got a good laugh out of that one.

Sunday: attack!

Because we can't go a day* without having some sort of an attack in this house, the boys set up a carrot army to attack Ben's carrot castle.  They used all the remaining carrots.  The carrots with flowers are extra strong.

*a day?  More like two hours.

Saturday: pick-a-brick

We pulled out the pick-a-brick today from Ben's trip this last week.

It included a lot of carrots.

This was Joshua's final creation.  You can see Ben's carrot palace with carrot bad guys in the background.

This is mine.  Besides the carrots there were a lot of plant type pieces.

I like my bush.  I didn't at first, but it grew on me.

Friday: power outage

At 6:30pm, all the lights went out.  After the first moment of "what's going on?" I quickly realized the power was out.  The boys were all confused though, as they haven't experienced many.  Luckily, it wasn't pitch black out so we could still see a little bit. 

Also, phones now have flashlights, which is rather awesome.  We got the little lanterns from the basement, along with some candles.  The boys still finished their chores.  Then we had a little bit of extra screen time because I was ready for the day to be done and it's hard to do some of the other things (i.e., Legos) with the lanterns.

I like this picture.  There are candles for light (and a lantern) like the olden days, but then he's using a phone as a calculator.

The power came back on at 8:30, right after I had fixed Joshua's lights for the 10th time and was about to crawl under a blanket.  It really was perfect timing.

Thursday: Valentines and sparring

This morning I got to my office and there were some Valentines on the outside.  The Women In Science and Engineering made valentines for the women around the building.  They didn't forget me.  I was a bit surprised as I'm kind of on the sidelines, but it was super nice.

This evening Isaac and I had sparring at karate.  I'm usually rather intimidated by it, and today was no exception.  I'm usually put with the adults and high schoolers and am always the lowest belt rank (by quite a bit).  We were playing one point matches.  I won the first one, although it was against someone I know so it was a bit easier.  Then I was put against a large high schooler black belt who has a lot of experience.  But I won!  The teacher gave some good advice ahead of time.  I lost the last match.  I watched Isaac a bit too and he did well.  He isn't the most aggressive, but he still puts himself out there and gets a lot of kicks and punches in.

Wednesday: Lego Duck

The LUG (Lego User Group) that I'm a part of is having its members make the Lego duck.  We were given the instructions, but could then make it our own.

I chose blue.  But then I didn't want to make it all blue so I added grey and now it is a winter duck.  It's reading because I like to read.

Tuesday: writing

I was looking through Aunt Sue's book of memories today when I came upon this picture.

It's one of those pictures that I've seen several times throughout my life.  I looked on the back to see if there was a date.

There was.  In Mom's handwriting.  I don't run across her handwriting very often anymore, but it's nice when it happens.