Last Sunday: Fort Wayne

Joshua managed to finagle a French toast stick and waffle sandwich from Aunt Liz.  Good thing she was making breakfast and not me.

The kids played some game with their stuffed animals all weekend.  There were very specific rules, although I'm not sure what they were.  Something about hitting people with your stuffed animals.  Sometimes they got thrown back up, sometimes they were brought back up.

Joshua was taking pictures with the phone.  This is (probably) the adults having breakfast.

We helped clean up the sticks from the storm.  There were a ton of sticks and even with six of us it took quite a bit of time.  I want to say an hour but that seems excessive.  The three younger kids won the "who can get the bigger pile of sticks" competition so they got to choose their post-stick hunt cookie first.  Below Joshua is turning into a stick.

After lunch we went to the wooden playground.  We've gone several of the past years as it is apparently the place to go and Joshua requested it.  It's always a bit cold for the adults.  We lasted about an hour and then said it was time to go.  Since it was a bit north of their house, we left for home right from the playground.  The trip home was uneventful and it was nice to see Ben.

Sunday: a juxtaposition

He is Risen!

He is Risen Indeed!

As we celebrated Easter today, I also remembered the Mom's death.  This is the first time (that I recall) that the two have fallen on the same day.

And really, it brings deeper meaning to the celebration of the resurrection.  Jesus conquered death, which means Mom is in heaven, praising God with all the believers.  What more could we want? 

Saturday: booby traps and scavenger hunts

It was Joshua's turn to choose the family time activity, and so he chose Lego Challenge: make a booby trap for Indiana Jones.

Amanda: half way down the hallway there's a stone that when you step on it missiles come flying out.  The other missiles are there as decoys.

Ben: When you step near the treasure the floor moves and the bolder comes crashing down.

Isaac: when you pull the diamond away from the stand the steps turn into a ramp and you slide down

Joshua: two with when you step on a piece missiles fly and one fake floor that sends you into a pit.  (Two of these he made yesterday.)

Here's the video of them in action:

Joshua and I also finished his scavenger hunt (and went to the Peanut store).  None of the pictures are amazing, but I did have a very nice time.

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.