Friday: car

We sold the Ford Focus today.  It was bittersweet.  But the car change was also a good choice.  Anyway, Ben found a third-party seller to sell it to and the whole process ended up being so much easier than I was expecting.

So hurray!  We're back to two cars.

Black belt boot camp was this evening.  As previously, I did enjoy it.  We have five forms for the upcoming test (in the end of April) and I'm currently really bad at #5 and not great at #2.  However, we spent a ton of time on #1 because apparently some people were still not getting it.  I think it's a hard balance of having to study by yourself and polishing up the form in the class, but it also seems like something needs to change.  We did spend quite a bit of time on #2 and that was helpful for me, as I'm currently polishing up the form and still making small mistakes.

Thursday: home

I worked today.  Aunt C came over for a bit to break up the day for the kids, but they were still home several hours by themselves.  I found this on my camera roll...

Wednesday: a lot

There was a lot to do today.

I started off blind-folded.  I had been hoping to go on a walk with the kids, but it was rainy all morning so that didn't work out.  However, they were playing well in the basement when I got up so I stumbled to the couch and took apart a lego set.  Not very exciting, but it could have been worse.

Once the kids were upstairs Isaac made me breakfast.  The dryer broke a few days ago in the middle of laundry, so I've slowly been getting all that on the line and that was the one thing that couldn't really wait.  So I made the kids help with that.  It was a group effort.  I did my exercises.  I worked through my forms.  Actually, I kind of liked doing my forms blindfolded other than that we don't have a large enough space.  The kids tried to help me not run into walls, but it only kind of worked.

There wasn't much time left, but it felt like a long time.  Isaac made me draw things and laughed at me.

 

However, I think the joke's on Isaac because when Ben came home he could tell what I drew right away!  (Sunflower, bridge, giraffe)

Next, and this is my favorite part, Joshua made me an Easter egg hunt.  While I was blind-folded.  I told him what room we should go in.  Then I told him where I wanted to search.  He got me to the right place and I proceeded to knock down all the stuff.  He finally resorted to just putting my hand where it should go, which was a relief.

What did I learn from this?  I'm still not sure.  Perhaps that I've been raising my kids well - they can do things by themselves and were willing to help me.  I don't think that was the point of the exercise though.

We went to the beach to get a picture of Joshua with Big Red.  It was warm out today, but still rather windy by the beach.

And then rock climbing.

Tuesday: class

Registration for next semester started yesterday.  There is a shift from 4 credit classes to 3 credit classes and so students are all registering for an additional class to get a full load.

It's causing some angst, to put it mildly.

I have two classes, and usually during spring registration they hit about 20/28 by the end of the week and they get filled in with incoming freshmen.  Already today I have one class completely full and the other at 25/28.  Students that are going-to-be-juniors (ish) were registering today, although I'm not sure if they finished and going-to-be-sophomores started or not.  The bulk of my classes are usually sophomores with many juniors, some seniors, and some freshmen.  

At one point there was talk of adding a third section, but we'll see what happens.

Monday: stuff

 This morning it felt like we did a bunch of the stuff on the kids' lists that we haven't had time for recently: finishing up an art project, making root beer, playing games.  We had an early lunch and after rest time started Joshua's Holland Scavenger Hunt.  Since they had eye appointments, we selected a few of the items that were sort of on the way.

It started in the graveyard.  I didn't know which side of the street to look on, so that lead to some frustration.  (Especially since there was a time limit.)  Eventually we got on the other side of the street and found the correct gravestones.

We then had to find a house with Veneklasan brick. The first one, to which we were given a location, was probably the right bricks but didn't have the distinctive two colors.  A bit down the road was another one that seemed more representative.

The appointments went fine.  When we got back I made the kids go around the lake with me.  My goal for the next test is to be able to run 1/8 mile, fast walk 6/8 miles, and then run the last 1/8 mile in under 12:55.  (I know, this isn't an amazing goal.  But it's mine, and I do not enjoy running.)  I did hit the time goal, which is the most important, but I did have to pause it a few times for the kids to catch up.  They were on their scooters so I thought this wouldn't be a problem, but apparently the roads were bumpier than I remember and so they kept getting off the scooters.

Saturday: aftermath and kitties

In the morning we saw the aftermath of the weather.  A trampoline blew through Nathan's yard.  The basketball hoop fell over.  Luckily, first the wind turned the hoop before knocking it over, otherwise it would have hit the car.  Many trees were down; we took a walk down the street and saw a bunch.  (There were some tornados nearby, but not in the same town.)  We had driven down this street about an hour before the storm.

In the afternoon we went to a cat café.  First we pet and played with the cats and then had a treat.  There was only one active cat at a time, but petting cats is pretty fun too.

The kids played some game off the balcony with stuffed animals almost all the day when we were home.  I didn't really understand the rules, but they were all playing well so that was a bonus.  Isaac didn't play it quite as much, but he did play a lot of games.

Friday: a busy evening

The evening started out with Black Belt Test #1.  I was a bit nervous going in about the physical fitness portion...I needed to do a mile in 15 minutes.  While I was able to fast walk a mile in 12:55 yesterday around the lake, I expected that trying to do it after the bulk of the test was going to be hard.

For me, the test went well.  However, we wasted a lot of time as some of the students were not doing things correctly and we spent extra time doing some things over.  (And for some of the forms, over and over and over.)  I was trying to leave to still get to Fort Wayne tonight, so they let me submit my time from yesterday, do the physical fitness portion on my own, and call it a night.  I still got out a good 30 minutes late, but I wouldn't be surprised if the others were there for at least another 30 minutes since it takes a while to wrangle everything.  I also wouldn't be surprised if not everyone is invited back for the next round, since this was the easy round.

Anyway, I took a quick shower and ate quickly and left.  There was more lightning than I think I've ever driven through before.  There were a few stretches of heavy rain, but I stuck with some cars that were going a bit slower and it wasn't a problem.  I did have to take a quick stop to go to the bathroom thanks to all the water I had drank (drunk?) earlier.  Even with all those issues I only pulled in about 15 minutes after my original ETA.  Also, as expected, my check tire light went on around Allegan.  It always has for the last many years, and so I was happy to see that it knew exactly where to turn on.

The kids went right to sleep and Nathan and I were talking only to have his phone alert go off.  Hmm...a tornado warning.  Then my phone went off.  We debated if we needed to move to the basement for few seconds, then went to ask Liz.  After another minute or so we decided we probably should.  I tried waking up Isaac with no luck.  I tried waking up Joshua with no luck.  I was trying not to alarm them, but that might have worked better.  I finally got Joshua to respond, but he immediately fell back asleep.  Then I told him to wake up again, only to have him fall asleep again.  He finally got up on the third try and I got him moved to the basement.  Then I went to get Isaac and had to yell at him to get him to up and at this point things were getting a little scary outside.  But Isaac was slowly taking one step at a time and was not waking up enough to go any faster, even as I was loudly and strongly encouraging him to do so.

The adults hung out in the basement for about 10 more minutes, but all the kids were back asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillows.  We then realized that the tornado alarm had been going off but we couldn't hear it.  I'm not sure if there was actually any tornados, but there was some very strong winds that knocked over a lot of things (more on that tomorrow).

Lesson that I've learned: if the phone warns you of weather, moving to shelter should not be up for debate.