Friday: Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas Eve!  We worked pretty hard this morning; Isaac finished his pie and I made the deviled eggs.  We moved Ben's and Isaac's computers back in the office.  The computer filters also got cleaned and the cords were stowed properly rather than just shoved in a corner.  I also got some blackout curtains up.  Next week we'll go to Joann's and find some colorful fabric to put on top.

It's nice to have Ben back in the same room as me at night.  We don't always interact a lot, but it was boring upstairs by myself.  (Although I did learn that Joshua comes out of the bedroom a lot in the half hour after he goes "to bed".)

After lunch we opened presents.

The cats easily figured out which one was theirs and were quite obvious about it.

Thursday: productive morning

 It was a very productive morning.  We did our errand and got donuts first thing.  We finished wrapping presents.  Isaac made a graham cracker crust all by himself.  Joshua made a scavenger hunt, which started with a cute note in a bottle and then went to a pirate ship.  I got my computer and sewing machine set up in the basement, although not much else moved back in.

Wednesday: house

The office is finished!  Well...everything needs to be moved back in and set up and new curtains, but the painting is done.  I'm very happy with how it looks.

Isaac and Joshua went to Dad's house to help take apart an old organ today.  It sounds like it was a successful day; the boys actually helped and enjoy it.  It was an especially good day because I has having problems with one of the plugs I was replacing and Dad helped fix it when dropping the boys back at home.  (My desk couldn't be moved to the right spot until it was done, so while it wasn't urgent it was important.)  (Also, why paint over plugs?  I don't think I've ever seen a painted plug that looks good.)

Oh!  We shouldn't forget about the grocery adventures.  I went today (thankfully by myself) and it was so busy.  I had been hoping that I was still early enough to beat the crowds, but it didn't really happen.  However, I pared down my list to just the actual things we needed this week and used the checkout app and it wasn't too bad.  This week there were pretty much no cinnamon/crescent rolls.  I'm still not sure where the vitamin C is that I'd like...I'm being picky with that one though because there are options.  Still no pretzel bites, so I think those might be all gone.  There were also no dried chives.  Isaac wanted to make deviled eggs and Ben and I love them, so that idea was quickly approved.  I need to look in the really old spices or we'll figure something else out.

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!!