Friday

 We had a belated yummy breakfast for Joshua's birthday.  I was about to open the roll of cinnamon rolls when Isaac asked if I wanted him to do it.  Yes!  Absolutely!  He was so thoughtful...and he jumped when it popped, so I felt justified in my fear of opening them.

Joshua managed to outgrow all of his clothes at once.  He still loves them, but I look at them and realize they're way to small.  So I finally went to the basement to get Isaac's old clothes and switched out a whole bunch.  I also made him pick 10 of the t-shirts because there were just too many.  I added a few and while he still has plenty of t-shirts, I'm hoping he'll periodically enjoy the ones on the bottom and have a cleaner closet.  I will admit, there were a few 24M/2T shorts that got a lot of use!

Wednesday: here and there

 While Joshua was at science camp Isaac and I biked to the donut store.  It's the first "far away" place we've biked to. (Although to be fair, we biked to a nearby playground when he was still using training wheels).  We only had to cross one minor intersection and one major intersection, so I figured it would be a good starting outing.  It went well.

We went to visit the "robot wheel" during lunch break.  The robot wheel isn't on the accelerator right now, but the name sticks.  Right now they're irradiating mice to simulate a trip to Mars.  The students working in the lab were so nice (and the mice were rather cute.)  The biologist told the boys all about the mice and so kindly answered all of their questions and showed them where they go in the accelerator.

We had to wait a few minutes at the beginning, so Joshua opened his birthday presents in the basement.  I expect this will be a fun picture in about ten years when he decides to go to Hope. :D

Tuesday: birthday party

It was another day of running around...and an appointment had even been canceled!  It's nice having the boys at home one at a time, but I haven't been in and out of the car this much in a year.  We got to Hope a bit early so watched the construction for many minutes until it was time to drop of Joshua.

Isaac made a solar oven.  It wasn't very sunny though, so it didn't seem to work well today.  (He then made another one at science camp.  The parent info sheet gave an option to make one at home, so I was rather surprised by this.  Isaac said he knew it was going to happen though, so then who really cares I guess?)

Joshua's possibly-scary dentist appointment went better than I expected.  There is one big cavity, but the others the dentist mentioned don't need work at this point.  I gave Joshua the option of some laughing gas (although I called it sleepy medicine) or laughing gas plus some additional sleepy medicine and he chose the latter.  Probably a good choice.

Then Dad came over and helped Joshua with his streamers.  It was cute.

Joshua chose taco salad for his dinner.  Not what I was expecting, but happy to oblige!  It did end up delicious.  Some presents, some cheesecake, and ta-da!  Another successful birthday party.  (You can't tell from the pictures, but we had left the light-up sticker on his shirt from the bounce house birthday party.  So he put the shirt back on for the sticker.)

Monday: science camps

Science camps started today!  Joshua's is in the morning and Isaac's is in the afternoon.  It's a bit of an annoying schedule, but we'll just have picnic lunches nearby.

Joshua seemed to enjoy his and said it went by faster than expected.  Isaac was only so-so on his...he's learning about energy and knew a lot of today's information.  But I told him tomorrow morning he could try to build a solar oven for s'mores, and he was excited about that.

I learned today that there are bathrooms in Centennial Park.  Joshua had to go, of course, and so I thought there might be port-a-potties behind the hill.  Imagine my surprise when there were actual bathrooms!  I've lived in this town so long and have spent a fair amount of time at this park, but never knew there were bathrooms.

Joshua and I went grocery shopping in the afternoon.  He seemed to think it was only for his birthday party, but I was rather sure that we needed all sorts of groceries.  We found the butter that Katy worked on (butter with seeds) and got one of those.  Then when we were checking out we got a coupon for Land-o-Lakes butter.  Katy recently changed to marketing and is working on coupons like that, so we got very Katy shopping trip.

I finally got a nap and Horizon cuddled with me.  Upon waking, I moved over to the couch as I was having a hard time actually waking up and Tornado cuddled with me.

Sunday: leaving

Today was leaving day.  I woke up way to early, because I was nervous about things that were going to be fine.  But when you're up, you're up.  Oh, I guess the major thing of note is that both boys were negative for COVID.  Greta had a cold and passed it around a bit.  As colds go, it's pretty minor.  But the last thing I wanted was to get to the airport, have a boy cough one too many times, and be required to get a test before getting on an airplane.  Greta's had come back negative earlier in the week so it was more an airport peace of mind than actually thinking they had COVID.  It was Joshua's first test, and I really don't think that he should get to go through the whole pandemic without at least one.

Our first flight was delayed a bit and we were a tad worried about our connection, but we reached it about 15 minutes before boarding started.  It mostly meant that we had lunch in Tulsa instead of Chicago.

Joshua feel asleep on the way home in the car.  He fell asleep a lot in the car on this trip, which I take to be a sign of a great trip.

I got a text later that night that said someone had made popcorn and it took less than five minutes to make!  I laughed out loud and disturbed Ben.  The house had many good features...the private pool, the space, the number of tables, and the number of sitting areas.  The kitchen however, was lacking.  It took us two days to figure out how to get the microwave to sort of work properly.  The oven breaker needed to be cycled twice during our stay*.  The kitchen was lacking some basic pans.  The tables let off a ton of black stain when we first got there.  The house was acceptably clean, but there were still empty bottles around and a rather dirty floor.  I'd recommend it to people with some caveats.

*Ben told us in detail how he fixed the oven the first time.  I found the story rather boring**, but paid attention because it was a relief to have a working oven.  It was a good thing I paid attention because I was easily able to reproduce the fix.

**Sorry Ben.  Breaker boxes just aren't exciting though.

Saturday: last day

Today was our last day. :(  I had earlier told Joshua that he needed to be happy today because he was allowed to stay up late yesterday, but then today Joshua asked if he could be sad tomorrow since we're leaving.  

We had a leisurely morning with a delicious breakfast and a game.  Then we did the annual pictures.  Kids in age order, the whole group, and families.  We added a kids-in-age-order-with-gaps-for-Marshall-and-Violet and an adults in age order (per Joshua's request), but those will come later.

Then we went to the pool.  Joshua had a great time swimming back and forth to the wall without his life jacket; I was a bit surprised at how long it lasted, actually.  Then lunch and rest time and ...back in the pool!  Only Ben joined the kids this time.  It was hot out, so everyone stayed in for a while.  (We actually lucked out on weather.  It was hot, but not crazy hot until today.  It's just supposed to be hotter (and more normal) next week.)

After having the kids eat outside on the lonely tables for the first time, we did water balloons!  Ben killed all the balloon animals at the same time so the kids wouldn't be devastated.

We did our annual picture viewing (minus Katy's pictures), watched some Olympics, and enjoyed being together one last night.

Friday: the Gathering Place and Olympics

As with all days, it started out with mini muffins.  Mini-muffins are a special treat to these vacations and the boys were so excited for them.

Today we went to an awesome, gigantic playground.  (Isaac rated it 17/10, so I'm not really sure there is any reason to continue our playground tour in Holland...)

On the way we saw our first Native American license plate.  I hadn't even realized they were a thing, although it does make sense.

We got to the playground and the first section was this massive castle structure.  It had four different tours, all connected by bridges.  Joshua brought me to the top of the tallest one, then down to its bridge, and then found a "secret passage".  So he climbed the secret passage and told me he'd meet me at the top.  So I went back up the four stories to meet him at the top.  He told me it was for my exercise, which I agreed with.

We stayed here a bit, but not all that long.  It was hot, so we wanted to keep moving a bit.

Then to the splash pad for a short time.

Then the water play area was open, so we all went over there.  There were pumps, dams, rivers, rocks, and it was rather amazing.  The other wonderful thing was that it all worked.  Again, we didn't stay super long because it was hot and we had other things to do, but the boys probably could have spent the whole day at the park no problem.

When we came home the boys were still in their swim suits and I was a ball of sweat, so we all jumped into the pool for a quick cool down.

After a significant rest time, we had some Olympics.  After a torch ceremony, the events included jumping off the diving board, silliest jump off the board, fastest swim across and back (the short way) and basketball.  We then had slip-n-slide, three-legged race, sack race, disc throw, and limbo.  Joshua won the limbo and he was so excited.

Award ceremony!  We can't have Olympics without medals.  Everyone got four, but they were all so proud to go up and get them.

We had some Japanese food for dinner and watched a sped-up version of the opening ceremonies.  The children were allowed to stay up as late as they wanted, but after a movie (ending at 10:45) Joshua completely crashed.  Isaac stayed up to play a game, but went to sleep right after that...at the same time and Ben and me.