Tuesday: better

Today went better than yesterday.  

Joshua settled down for a surprising amount of the day with some Lego sets and podcasts.  He listened to the one on Bees twice.

Isaac and I made banana bread.  He did the dry ingredients, and with the exception of needing another bag of brown sugar just did it.  He'll be able to do all of it before I know it!  He also has been making a lot of sliding puzzles out of Legos, and he watched a video on how to solve them.  He worked on them for quite a while.

Sunday/Monday: houses

On Sunday we finished our graham cracker houses.  Houses is a loose term.  It really was a castle, house, stable, arrow.

Yesterday the boys were a bit bored and it was obvious.  I was trying to finish grading.  They were just a bit bored so they still had stuff to do, but they also kept talking to me.  I finally finished at 11:30, which was really later than I had hoped but not too bad.  

The afternoon went a bit better.  We wrapped some presents and played several games.

Early evening we had a heater issue.  While the heater did manage to fix itself (at least for the night), it made us concerned.  Someone is coming in the morning to look at it, but we also increased the temperature of the house so it would have longer to fall if the heat didn't come on.  Needless to say, it was quite warm all night.

Saturday: games, houses

Today was a rather normal day, but it felt a bit odd.  Maybe because the boys played differently than normal. There were a lot more games and coloring than normal.

We also started our graham cracker houses.

Friday: the morning

It was a wonderful morning.

*I was stopped in the parking lot by one of Isaac's friend's dad to let me know that Isaac is the only friend she feels she can trust and that he's funny.  While this saddens me for many reasons, I'm also really glad that Isaac is a safe person and a good friend for her.  (And the thankfulness goes both ways.  This is the first year I'm confident that he has friends to play with on the playground.  I don't think he was ever lonely before, but it's nice to have friends.)

*We had our mom's group at church.  It's always a nice time with good food.

*I continued grading when I got home.  There had been one student taking the first exam that uploaded the wrong file and I caught it will I was giving the second exam.  I had my USB stick with me, so I just found the file in the recycle and brought it home with me, thankful to have found the problem before I left.  However, while I was at the computer I threw on the files from the second exam's student too...I was there, it only took 30 more seconds, whatever.  Today I found out that the second student had completely neglected to upload any files!  But I had them!  I didn't have to email her or quick run to Hope and hope they were still on the computer.  Hooray!!

Thursday: exams

Today I had two exams, back to back.  It wasn't quite as bad (i.e., boring) as I expected, but it wasn't really all that much fun either.  I was able to get a lot of grading done today though, both before and during the exams, but there's still more to do.

It makes for a tiring day.

On the upside, I realized that Hope doesn't start classes until the 10th.  The boys start on the 3rd, so I feel like I get an extra, unexpected week!

Wednesday: grocery adventures, again

Today's grocery adventures.

1. There was still no chicken bouillon cubes or granules, but there was a powder.  I probably would have grabbed it had I still needed some.

2. There were no soft pretzel bites this week.  I picked some up about two months ago thinking they were a one-time thing that would be at the store, but then they remained out every week.  I'm hoping they come back, but I'm not all that optimistic.

3. I saw more people with masks on at the store.  We still still a definite minority, but at least it was only uncommon instead of non-existent.

Tuesday: office

We finished cleaning out the office for painting.  Some of it I just threw in boxes to deal with later, but some of it I went through more closely as part of O:CtH.  I got rid of a surprising amount of nursery schedules...dating back to 2012.  Ben has a surprising amount of empty phone boxes.

Here's a close up of the wall paper.  I wonder if it started as a white, textured wall paper and they colored it some way.

Anyway, it's all gone now!  The desks were rather easy to move too, especially since we had removed everything from them.  It was easy for two of us to do it.  The kids were excited to go down and see the progress after school.

Horizon was quite sure that he wanted to sit in my lap tonight.  Usually he goes to Ben, but Ben is sitting in a temporary place too and it might not be as comfortable.  I even moved quite a bit and Horizon just stayed on the red blanket.