Saturday: Groceries and Spark

 I got my own groceries today.  It was nice, although my phone gave me a few issues.  It was nice to look at all the options and pick the best, not dealing with someone if they were out of the exact thing.  (There was no toilet bowl cleaner and no bake tortillas.)  The grocery store also decided to restock in the middle of the morning, which seemed a bit like a foolish decision to me...Saturday morning is already busy, so why add extra boxes and extra people to the mix?

Yesterday I told Joshua that Spark was ready to go sleep with him again.  Instead of just taking him back, Joshua said I needed to ask Spark how long Spark wanted to stay with Joshua.  So I asked last night, after Ben reminded me, and unsurprisingly the answer was he wanted to stay with Joshua for all the nights.  When I told this to Joshua, Joshua somehow decided immediately that it wasn't a good solution and Spark would go back and forth every night.  This means that Spark's holder gets to stay in my room. This was not quite the answer I was looking for.  I love Grey Bear more, although I suppose the Spark is starting to grow on me a little bit.

Friday: It's Friday!

Today was packet pick-up at school.  Both boys wanted to say hi to their teachers and give them a small something, but the teachers were only available 20 minutes apart.  So we packed lunches and had them in the car while waiting.  Joshua was very excited to use his new lunch box, and I realized how nice it's been to not have to pack lunches!!

 

Cheryl got the boys some new clothes earlier this week.  They've been wearing the matching pajamas every day, but finally did their requested photo shoot.  (The footie pajamas were the clothing item that both of them cared the most about.  I've had to resole most of them, and Joshua just managed to wear another hole through the resole.  Luckily I have plenty of soft scrap fabirc.)

Thursday: Brain challenge

 Joshua was challenging his brain during one of his group meetings today, trying to sound out words.  (He told me that he was helped with key.) (The top one is leaf, not IEF)

Wednesday: this and that

 Well, last night after being so tired I couldn't fall asleep.  I wasn't even thinking about anything important or distressing or even new, but my brain refused to turn off.  It was rather annoying.

Isaac finished all his work today before lunch.  Joshua didn't quite finish, but he takes more and longer breaks than Isaac does.  He only had about 15 minutes left anyway.  

We had lunch with Cheryl and the boys were so talkative!  Not really about anything interesting, but they chatted away naming all the "How to train your dragon" characters and describing their dragons...Joshua's memory surprises me sometimes.  

I did get to take a nice nap.  A bunch of other things didn't get done because of it, but I got the most critical things done.  The nap was the next most important. :D

Tuesday: tired

I'm tired.

Isaac's computer wasn't working this morning, and of course the first thing he needs to do is log on for a video call.  I had him on my computer while I restarted his computer about four times before it connected well to the internet.  I'm pretty sure the problem is his computer; my laptop and Joshua's computer seem to work fine.

Then Isaac had a reading assessment.  They do it by having a bunch of kids on the video call read out loud.  Each student only takes about three minutes, but it adds up when there are 15 students.  This is the second time it's happened and the second time Isaac's been about last.  The teacher suggests reading while waiting, but it really isn't that easy to read while someone else is reading out loud and you need to listen for your name.  So I had his headphones on so that Isaac could do other work.  I can get work done with that background noise, but it meant that I was stuck on my computer instead of doing the other things I had planned for that first hour.  (I still got important stuff done so I shouldn't complain too loudly, but still.)

The rest of the day really went fine, it was just busy.  There was a short break after work before doing some more work and a twenty minute break after dinner.  And, of course, once the boys were in bed I was done working too.  That's how it usually goes, although not always.

I've been trying to pick raspberries for days now and it keeps not working well.  Either I get too cold after going through half the patch, it's raining, or it's too dark.  However, since it's so cold I figure the raspberries won't really go bad like they would during the summer.  There also aren't as many, the peak of the crop has definitely passed, but there's still a decent amount.

Joshua needed to take a picture of Pokeball to reference as he made a paper Pokeball for me.  I'm not sure why he couldn't just reference Pokeball itself, but that apparently wasn't an option.

Monday: decisions

 Well, we made a decision.  We're going to keep doing virtual school for the next trimester.

Most of September I wasn't expecting this decision.  Things were looking stable and at least under controlish.  But there is now community spread.  Some things that were were worried about in August might not apply any more, but numbers are still going up and we've just hit the beginning of winter/Thanksgiving/Christmas and several factors that we considered in August are still applicable.  Virtual school also isn't going too poorly.  Isaac gets more time to do his work, so if he needs to go slowly sometimes it's ok.  Joshua still loves his teacher.  The whole pace of the day is somewhat slower (for the boys) which isn't bad at all.  They're learning fine.  They don't have as much social interaction as they would in school, but neither is anyone else.

So I think this continues to be a good decision for us.  The boys are fine with it.  I still understand why parents would send their children to school and think that can be a good decision too.  

Here's to another four months at home.  (Although note my lack of an exclamation point.)

Saturday: things

The garage refrigerator is up and running!  I'm super excited because it makes leftovers so much easier to deal with.  It also means that we don't need to restock pop in the fridge.

Isaac made new rules for Sleeping Queens.  The game wasn't exactly fun, but since there were specific rules it wasn't too bad.  It was also short, which is always a bonus in made-up games.  (Note, while there are a lot of arrows, we only followed about half of them.)

Joshua also made up a Robot Turtles game.  Several times he told me that he wasn't going to tell me the rules, but then I had to do something obscure like laser a little gem from just the right square so it bounced and got the big gem.  Needless to say, I cajoled the rules out of him quickly.