Friday: birthday

 Ben had a birthday!  It was pretty low-key, but still a lovely day.

Wednesday: Christmas decorating

Today we started decorating for Christmas.  There's really way too much Christmas stuff up now (and we still have one bin to go), but the boys are at a perfect age.  They want to help put the stuff up and they can do some of it themselves.  So...we go a bit overboard.

It's an old tree and some branches are falling off.  We gave them to the cats, hoping, rather fruitlessly, that they'd choose on those instead of the actual tree.

We did have to take down a lot of the Halloween/fall decorations.  While I made a few of these, the boys are getting very good at making things that you can tell what they are.

Also, the last two weeks saw a significant decline in O:CtH work due to a busy week and now no school.  Therefore, I'm initiating O:CtH - Christmas edition, in which we get rid of some of the decorations that we never put up anymore.  A bit sad, but we also keep getting new things and it's time. 

Monday: life

I finally remembered to move Mom's turtle inside for the winter.  Look at how happy it is to not be in the cold anymore.

 
Joshua decided to make an Easter Egg hunt.  Some of the eggs had candy, but some of them had exercises.  It was actually a rather fun mix.

Ben has been hanging up a piece of yellow yarn in our bathroom, so I took it to an extreme and had Isaac make a spider web.  He also made some spiders.

Sunday: overheard

Between yesterday and today, the kids said some surprising things.

1. Joshua made a tiny fort out of his small soft chair and a blanket.  Then the fort collapsed on him.  Instead of tossing these light things aside to escape or calling for help, he cried silently.  (Seriously, real tears.)  Afterwards, when I happened to find him, he said it was too heavy and his voice wasn't working.

2. I overheard Joshua singing a song.  The only lyrics were "They will perish" over and over and over again.  The tune was rather upbeat though.  I asked him about it a bit later, and he said that the bad guys are bring the ultimate bad guy to destroy the good guys.  The ultimate bad guy was pretty much undefeatable, although there was a chance that Mouse might be able to defeat it. 

3. We were talking about airlines and Isaac asked where we go when we fly southwest.  I said to Florida.  He countered with, "I thought that was south."  I responded with the fact that the airplanes can fly in multiple directions, although in hindsight maybe he didn't realize Southwest was the name of the company.

Saturday: crafts

Isaac made a snowman.  The top is a bit blurry because he used a lot of tape.

Joshua worked really hard to set up a jellyfish craft for the two of us to make.  We got it started, but are gluing on tentacles one at a time so they're taking a bit longer.

Friday: COVID

It was a good day today...I went to a Mom's group at church, had lunch with Betsy, and got my COVID booster.  

For posterity, I'd like to note there was a lot of COVID talk that happened today.  Several schools in the area are canceling school for next week, which works well since it's Thanksgiving week.  But they're closing school due to too many staff and students being sick.  Michigan is the worst state in the country, again, and Ottawa county is one of the highest counties in Michigan right now.  The hospitals are full and they're begging people to get vaccinated.  (I just saw the numbers of new COVID cases in Michigan and they either broke the record or are in second place.)

And yet it seems like many people ignore this.  While the CDC does recommend masking for all people in public right now, some vaccinated people choose not to mask.  While I don't agree with this, I can also understand it as the risk is significantly lower and everyone chooses a different risk level.  I think I'll get off my soap box right now, as I also doubt that anything I say here would change anyone's mind.  For that matter, most of the people that read this I think are vaccinated, so then it's like preaching to the choir.

As for my COVID booster, I'm feeling surprisingly well right now.  My arm is just a tiny bit sore, but otherwise I feel ok.  I'll make sure to have some medicine by my bed tonight just in case though.  I can never convince myself to get up and take it once I'm in bed.

Thursday: socks and cats

I put my boots on today at the last minute because my shoes were still wet from yesterday.  I quickly realized while walking into work that I had a problem: my sock were falling down.  It's that annoying thing when they scrunch near the front of your foot instead of staying in place.

After thinking about it a bit, I decided to take off my socks.  It was definitely the right choice, but it felt weird.  I was happy to get home and put on my socks and slippers again.  I think the problem is that the boots are slightly loose.  Next time I'll try either two pairs of socks or my tall socks.

When we got home, while I was thinking mainly about my socks, I noticed one of our cupboard doors open.  I found it strange, because it is the high one going into the kitchen.  I try to close all the cupboard doors if I leave the kitchen and Ben is really good about closing them.  It's also in the way, so it gets closed faster than many of the other cupboards.

Fast forward a few minutes, as my feet were warming up, and I find Isaac looking in all the low cupboards for a cat.  Tornado likes to go into the cupboards, so he was looking for him.  Yeah, it turns out that Tornado had opened the cupboard and climbed into it.  I'm not sure if he was stuck, but maybe.  We opened it up all the way and he jumped out.  Silly cat.