Monday: math

 Today Joshua realized that you can write 1+4 =5 as 5=1+4 and thought it was so funny!  It was a bit of a rough day due to some colds, so this laughter was appreciated.

Sunday: the Dragon Prince

 We recently finished a TV show called "The Dragon Prince."  It's one of the better ones that we've watched with the kids in a while.  The plot was good, the kids enjoyed it, and the adults enjoyed it.  It also had some complex characters and jokes that probably went over the kids' heads.

Pirate captain: "This is my boat.  Her name is Ruthless."

Pirate captain: "Because my wife gets sea-sick and doesn't come on the boat.  Her name is Ruth."

Saturday: early morning

 I couldn't fall asleep last night.  So I finally got up.  There were some bathroom lights on, but I had heard a child get up to go to the bathroom shortly before.  Then I noticed some lights on in the basement.

The children had managed to wake up at 2:30am and decide it was time to get up.  So they started their screen time!  Of course, then they had a terrible time getting back to sleep.  We finally all went back to bed around 3:30.  And then I woke-up early.  

I did go to Meijer first thing though before it got busy.  There were a few things that I've wanted for a while but finally hit a critical mass.  I also took a morning nap because it just wasn't working.

Friday: around the house - and butter

 Today I have a few houses from around the house...

I finally got flowers for Mom.  We also have some Lego flowers, a Venus flytrap (a la Joshua) and baby fly traps (a la Joshua too).

I moved both mattresses into Isaac's room and I'm pretty sure that I just made a large trampoline.

We put Ben's bike in Joshua's room. 

Joshua was really sad about having to do chores.  "You make me do them every day!"

We gathered for games again with friends and we didn't make it to actually playing any games.  This is in part because we spent an hour talking about butter.

Wednesday: tired

 I'm tired.  Again.  I feel like I write these posts on a regular basis, but here were are.  I'm going to try and go to bed on time today.  That's one of my problems: I've been staying up too late.  (But I also don't have to get up as early since the kids don't have to get to school, so it usually evens out.)

Weekend: Fort Wayne

The boys and I went to Fort Wayne this weekend.  We saw Nathan and family briefly for a hike last summer, but that's all.  The children woke up at 5:30 they were so excited to see each other.

It was also Mom's death day.  I haven't gotten her flowers yet, but will.  It seemed more appropriate to have all her grandchildren together.

The kids played very well together.  There was a ton of running around, but there was also some quieter play.  We did kick them outside for a little bit too. :D

We went to a playground in the afternoon.  There was a lot of follow-the-leader, even if they didn't do it on purpose.  Find one child and the rest would be following.

The children were exhausted by the end of the day.  Joshua couldn't handle the location of his sleeping bag and ended up sleeping in my room.  The rest of the kids fell asleep almost right away and they all slept until about seven.  (All the kids normally wake up in the 6:15/6:30 range.)

The next day we went to a different park.  There were some fun sticks...

...and some pictures to find on the sidewalk.

Their bushes and trees were abloom!  Joshua doesn't wear sunglasses anymore though, so I told him to just close his eyes.

The kids all managed to sleep in the same room, but the sleeping bags were moved around several times.  Nathan had to go in there after a while and tell them to go to sleep.  The laughter was so loud...but also indicative of a great sleep over.

Hmm, this was mostly about the kids.  But I had some great conversations with Nathan and Liz too.

Monday: back into the swing

 We took a long weekend to go to Fort Wayne.  It was a wonderful time and worthy of it's own post.  I'll get around to it soon.

...but if I don't start writing something I'm afraid I'll stop.  It's too easy to get a backlog of posts and then not write.

Today we went back to normal stuff...school, karate, etc.  I finally had the boys take down the fort in Isaac's room and am going to put both mattresses in that room.  Partially because Nathan is loaning us a bike trainer and I put it in Joshua's room because he doesn't use the room much.  But Isaac's mattress was taking up a lot of room so I'm moving it back.  And since I'm moving a few things around, I might as well move everything around!