Sunday: goings on

A while ago Ben made a Lego H and filled it with greebling.  Isaac made an I shortly after and the two have been on our wall for a while now.  I finally made an A to join the family.

Isaac went down a rabbit hole today.  It started by looking at one of Dad's books on nuclides and wanted to know more about element 118.  He looked it up on-line and found information and continued clicking links.  I had happened to see a pictorial element encyclopedia at the library yesterday and grabbed it, not sure it would catch anyone's attention.  Well, it definitely caught Isaac's attention.  He spent an hour or two with it today.

Friday: around the house

 Isaac came out of his bedroom this morning with a pile full of single socks, some of them dirty.  Of course, I have collecting the single clean socks in a different location.  No wonder there seem to be so many singles in my clean, lost sock collection.

Horizon does a good job of telling us when the humidifiers are empty.  It's a bit eerie, honestly.  Ben is wondering if there's a sound it makes when empty that people can't hear but cats can.

I continued to work on the quilting area as part of O:CtH.  There's actually a place to sit on the futon now!  I also starting looking at the walls and noticed they were a mess!  I got a rag and tried to clean the spots, but only a few came off.  (This surprised me a bit, as a rag usually works pretty well.)  Next up is the magic eraser, but I also found the paint for the walls...there's a few spots that will need some touch up.

Thursday: conferences

We had parent-teacher conferences this afternoon.  We actually got to go to the school and have them in person, which was nice.

Both boys are doing great.  Joshua's conference was once again a bit boring and we didn't stay the whole time, but that's ok too.  We talked with his teacher, learned a little about his friends, and were glad everything is on-track.  (Not only on-track, but going very well.)

Isaac's conference was a bit more interesting, but nothing new.  He still doesn't like to write, but he knows that and we know that.  He's working on it.  His spelling is getting better, although could still use some work.  He's reading harder books and math is going well.  He often plays by himself at recess, but I think that is more of a choice and less that he has no one to play with.  (I still hear about people at home, so this doesn't really bother me.)

As a side note, I found Isaac's classroom much more comfortable to be in than Joshua's.  I think his teacher might have put some light green fabric on the ceiling and the whole room didn't scream bright primary colors. Joshua's classroom felt like a normal classroom.

As another side note, the boys weren't able to connect the IPad to the internet at Hope to watch something during lunch.  (I had checked the laptop, but forgot the IPad.)  Anyway, after trying a few things they made the very reasonable decision of just eating and then extending their screen time by ten minutes.  I was proud that 1) they didn't come get me and 2) they figured out a reasonable solution.  Yay for growing up!

Wednesday: annoying things

First let's talk about groceries.  I felt reprimanded at the checkout because I hadn't printed stickers for all my produce.  I've never needed to before; I've just scanned the barcode on my app.  The lady said that they're cracking down on checking produce and checking the bottom of the bag.  While I completely understand this, also understand that I am only going to print out a ticket upon request.  I don't need extra stickers filling up my house.  So anyway, I go to get a bar code for the pears and the first two machines were out of stickers.  I finally got a sticker, we go to scan it and it doesn't show up as something I've scanned.  Instead of immediately saying something like, "oh, sometimes the two weights are slightly off so it doesn't notice it" she makes me feel dumb like I forgot to scan it and I apologize and whatnot.  She eventually gets around to telling me this and we find it in my list and it was $0.01 off.  Since I was all flustered I forgot to add my coupons.

I also forgot to get apples, although that's only my fault.

I also organized our tax stuff today.  I'm a bit annoyed with a few charities that don't send out year-end receipts or put the donated-to-date on each statement.  I also had one that didn't send me any receipts all year.  There's one that I had asked to stop sending paper mailings but send me a year end and of course that didn't happen.  Anyway, I sent out two emails to the "worst" offenders today.  I think that if they can't get something a little closer to what I'm looking for we might switch where our donations go.  There's a ton of good work being done in the world (and to further God's kingdom), so I can choose one with contribution receipts.

Tuesday: maskless

Today was the first time we were allowed to go without masks at Hope in two years!  

For the record, I've been on-board with all the masking decisions.  They seem to make appropriate decisions at the right time.  I'm sure not everyone agrees with that assessment, but I've been happy.  There's also been some autonomy within classrooms.  I could have required N95/K95/surgical masks at the peak or even now could require students to continue masking.

Anyway, I'm going to have to relearn everyone's name because they all look different now.  The good thing is that they all sit in the same seats, so I can go by that instead.

Monday: O:CtH - quilting area

Today I started cleaning the quilting area.  I didn't spend a lot of time on it, trying to get some of the big and obvious things, but it does already feel a bit better.  There was still some trash from when we got the new freezer last summer, so that's all been taken care of now.

I got a bunch of other stuff done on the to-do list too.  It was a pretty productive day.

Sunday: morning

The boys woke up over an hour before they were supposed to.  This meant that our fan wasn't on and I could hear them and woke up.  I rested a bit after that, but never got back to sleep.  We had a good morning, but it started so much earlier than I was hoping.