Wednesday: game

 Joshua's been playing a game around me these last few days.  It's one of those games where he follows me around while I work and I need to just say a few things here and there to progress the story.  (Usually.  Sometimes I need to be more involved.)

Part of the armor has also come with wrist-maps.  This map is a pretty simple one, but I've seen some more elaborate ones too.

Tuesday: sleep over

Since Ben is gone I said we could have a sleep over tonight.  Joshua was very excited.  I got the little mattress out in the morning and he got his bed all set up.

I think he might have been a bit disappointed in the execution though, because I didn't go to bed at the same time as the boys.

Monday

Ben's gone for a few days, but other than that it was a pretty normal day.  We finally went back to the dojang for karate.  We do the family class when we go, and everyone likes that class a bit more.

Isaac read something about cheetahs for school, and Tornado was acting all needy, so I gave Isaac a mini-cheetah to hold.

Sunday: in pictures

 Ben grilled some steaks for us.  I think it's the first time we've actually grilled steaks, and they were delicious.  At least, they were delicious for the adults.  The kids didn't appreciate their few bites.

All my towels were in the wash.  (It took two days before I realized the dishwasher could at least serve as a drying rack.)  I found an old bib.  It was a bit weird, but worked.

I put the cat box up yesterday and Horizon enjoyed it this morning.  They stopped using it in the middle of the summer last year, so I wasn't sure if they were going to go back in or not.

Ben's "favorite" animal is a penguin, mainly due to a joke one day in the car with the kids.  So whenever I see a penguin book I get it.  This one was especially cute.

Isaac made a stop motion video.

Saturday: the good and the bad

Let's start with the bad news: the roof is in need of significant repairs due to hail and our insurance provider has not been approving any roof claims due to hail.

OK, that was the bad news of the day.  There was much more good news.

*The roof, while in need of repair, is not leaking.  It needs to be dealt with soon but is not urgent.  

*Dealing with the freezer was a bit easier than expected.  It helped a ton to have a hand-dolly and a walk out basement.  It took Ben and Larry a bit of time at the store because they apparently moved the unit, but that was probably the worst.  Lowe's even recycled our old one (for a fee), so it's gone!  Getting this all situated calmed me down a lot.

*All the flowers/plants are set for the summer.  Well, more-or-less.  We need to fence the strawberry because something ate our first one.  Isaac choose a watermelon plant and Joshua has some snap dragons.  There are also a few other random things that we're trying to grow from seed, so we'll see how it goes.

*The boys were incredibly content today.  This isn't to say that they just did their own thing, but they easily found things to do.  At one point this involved nailing, drilling, and inserting screws into a board, but it lasted a while.

*It felt like we used most of the appliances in the kitchen today.  While this isn't close to true, using so many was a slight mistake because there were a lot of dishes and still no dishwasher.  But dinner was good and there's banana bread for breakfast.

Friday: freezer

This is just not really our week.  The basement freezer went out and we discovered it today.  We made another trip to Lowes...they had them in stock!  Alright!  ...but delivery was two weeks out, which really doesn't work at all.  Ben's dad is going to help out tomorrow with their truck.  We're also getting a temperature alarm, which we probably should have thought of a long time ago.

We're also getting the roof checked tomorrow.  Based on the week this has been, I don't expect good news.  (To be fair though, we have no reason to expect bad news.  So I suppose I'm actually optimistic since the disherwasher/freezer and roof have nothing to do with each other.)

Horizon nipped Isaac today, so Isaac made it his goal to make a cat proof fort.  Of course, while he was making the the cats kept getting inside, which was rather ironic.  I also saw both of them sitting on top of the fort this evening, probably out of spite.

Oh!  We also went to a playground this morning.  In the mess of dealing with the freezer I completely forgot about that.  The boys played for a surprinsingly long time.

Thursday: dishwasher

Well, we got one more load through the dishwasher before it died again.  Now the control panel doesn't respond and the drains continuously if it's closed.  I have the power to it off overnight to see if we can get another cycle. :)

In the meantime, we purchased another dishwasher.  Of course, the one(s) I wanted weren't in stock so it'll be over a week until it gets installed.  However, I feel much more able to handle this today (now that grades are put in) versus Monday (when I wasn't sure if my graders were going to finish their part).

The really big news, though, is that I went to the store without a mask.  To be fair, I went two times.  The first time the boys were with me and so I wore my mask because it doesn't seem fair to not wear it when they have to.  The second time the boys weren't with me though, so I decided to live daringly and not wear it.  After so many dreams of not remembering my mask, it was weird to purposefully not wear it.

(Who would have thought, two years ago, that this picture would be big news?  Oh look, you're smiling in a store.  What's so abnormal about that?)